States Launch Billion-Dollar Research Funds as NIH Grants Stall
March 9, 2026 · 2 min read
David Almeida
With NIH awarding only 30% as many new research grants as normal this fiscal year, states are stepping into the gap with their own biomedical research funding — a shift that could permanently alter the American research funding landscape.
Massachusetts has proposed a $400 million DRIVE Initiative (Discovery, Research, and Innovation for a Vibrant Economy) championed in part by Nobel laureate Victor Ambros of UMass Chan Medical School. Texas voters approved $3 billion for dementia research. Pennsylvania is advancing a $50 million life sciences proposal. New York has launched the Empire Biomedical Research Institute.
The Scale of the Federal Slowdown
The numbers explain the urgency. A 43-day government shutdown in October and November paused grant-application reviews across NIH. Combined with policy shifts around multiyear funding and new political appointee review requirements, the pipeline has bottlenecked severely.
NSF's situation is worse — the agency has awarded roughly 20% of its normal grant volume for this point in the fiscal year.
At UMass Chan Medical School alone, the damage is concrete: 200 employees furloughed or laid off, the incoming PhD class slashed from 73 to 13 students, and 40 grant proposals totaling $152 million stuck in NIH review with no timeline for resolution. Only $75.4 million of the school's expected $88.6 million in NIH funding has materialized.
A Structural Shift, Not a Stopgap
State and local governments accounted for just 0.7% of U.S. research and development spending in 2023. If even a fraction of these new state programs achieve sustained funding, that share could multiply dramatically.
The implications for grant seekers are immediate. Researchers in Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania, and New York should track their state-level programs as primary funding sources, not supplements. California's proposed SB 607 could add another major state to the list.
How to Position for State Funding
State research programs typically favor in-state institutions and research with direct economic or health impact on local populations. Applicants should emphasize regional relevance — workforce development, local disease burden, economic development potential — rather than the basic-science framing that dominates NIH proposals. For researchers navigating both federal and state pipelines, the Granted blog provides ongoing coverage of emerging funding sources.