Multiple scientists who serve on an independent board established to guide the nation’s nearly $9 billion basic science funding agency were terminated from their positions Friday by President Donald Trump.
Members of the National Science Board, which helps govern the National Science Foundation, were dismissed in a message from the Presidential Personnel Office thanking them for their service, according to screenshots shared with The Washington Post: “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I’m writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately.”
The National Science Board was established in 1950 to guide the governance of the National Science Foundation, in an unusual structure within the federal government that echoes the setup of a company board in the private sector. It helps guide an agency that operates Antarctic research stations, telescopes, a fleet of research vessels and supports basic science research in laboratories across the United States.
The NSF has a long history of supporting technology and research that powers many innovations the world relies on today. The agency helped language-learning app Duolingo get it’s start. NSF research has also helped evolve technology used in MRIs, cellphones and LASIK eye surgery.
The board’s members are scientists and engineers from universities and industry and are appointed by the president, but they serve six-year terms, ensuring overlap between different administrations. There are typically 25 members, but some slots are empty — including the NSF director, which has been vacant since the former director who was appointed during the first Trump administration, Sethuraman Panchanathan abruptly resigned a year ago.
“The idea of having six-year terms is you get to do something significant, impactful and go beyond administrations, political administrations,” said Marvi Matos Rodriguez, a senior vice president who works in the energy sector on fusion and learned her board membership, which began in 2022, had been terminated on Friday. “I serve the board at nights and on weekends,” Matos Rodriguez said, noting that this week she’d been reviewing an 80-page report as part of her board work.
It’s unclear how many members of the board were dismissed and whether they will be replaced. A National Science Foundation spokesman referred questions to the White House. The White House did not immediately respond to inquiries about why the members were terminated.
Keivan Stassun, a physicist and astronomer at Vanderbilt University, who has been a board member since 2022 said he had personally received confirmation from a third of the board members that they had been terminated by the boilerplate emails, which provided no reason.
He said the board exists to hold the agency to the highest scientific standards, “for how rigorous, intellectual, scientific decisions should be made.” It also approves large funding decisions, such as whether to build a new Antarctic research vessel.
He noted that without a director over the last year, the board has played a major role in advising Congress of the agency’s role in the nation’s investment in science. In the president’s budget request last year, there was a proposed 55 percent cut to NSF’s budget. Congress rejected those cuts.
The president’s budget request for fiscal year 2027 also proposes a deep cut to NSF, and Stassun questioned whether the timing of the cuts were connected to the work the board does in advising Congress of the agency’s importance, even as the president has aimed to cut it.
“This is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (California), the ranking Democrat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. “The NSB is apolitical. It advises the president on the future of NSF. It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the foundation.”
The shake up on the board is the latest turmoil for the agency that is supposed to help keep U.S. science at the leading edge. Last year NSF had to cancel more than 1,000 active research grants.
Trump in March nominated Jim O’Neill to be NSF director but he has not yet come before Congress for a hearing. O’Neill had served as deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services before stepping down in a recentleadership overhaul.
The shake up on the National Science Board is similar to changes seen on other science-related advisory boards in the federal government since Trump took office for his second term.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. completely dismissed all 17 members of the federal vaccine committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He replaced them with several people who have criticized vaccines. But a federal judge recently said Kennedy’s actions related to the panel were improper and that the government undermined “the importance and value” of involving independent experts in setting the national public health agenda.
Kennedy also recently reshaped a federal autism advisory board appointing some members who have promoted debunked claims linking vaccines to autism and advocating for unproven treatments.
Last year, several members of boards that review the science and research from laboratories at the National Institutes of Health were dismissed. Thirty-eight of 43 experts cut last April were Black or Hispanic, according to an analysis by the chairs of a dozen of the boards.
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