Top mathematicians like Tao Zhexuan can no longer receive summer salaries.
This is something that Tao Zhexuan himself said in an interview with The Washington Post:
The funding for the research institute is still unable to be disbursed, and even the summer salary cannot be received.
The reason for this is that on July 25th of this year, the United States suddenly suspended funding for * * UCLA * from institutions such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), amounting to $500 million * *.
Even though the situation improved later and the federal court decided to restore partial funding on August 12th, the funds were still not in place until early September.
Compared to Tao Zhexuan’s own salary, he himself expressed greater concern for his students
I’m okay, I can handle it. But the main purpose of these grants is to support my graduate students.
This funding can support these young people to attend academic conferences, which is very important for their career development.
Nowadays, even Tao Zhexuan has to shift his focus from scientific research to fundraising activities.
##Tao Zhexuan wrote an article lamenting
Tao Zhexuan is actually not the first time he has spoken out about the interruption of scientific research funding.
As early as last month, he personally wrote a long article lamenting this situation:
(To fully express the content, the following text will be presented in the first person by Tao Zhexuan.)
In just six months, the scientific infrastructure in the United States suffered a comprehensive impact, with research projects being cancelled halfway through and scholarships for cultivating the next generation of researchers being significantly reduced. These decisions have eroded the independence of our research ecosystem.
I say these words not as an observer, but as someone whose entire career has benefited from this ecosystem.
I grew up in Australia, but have been deeply influenced by American science and culture since childhood: Sesame Street taught me how to count; Carl Sagan’s’ The Universe ‘sparked my interest in the natural world; The books of the American Mathematical Society have deepened my love for mathematics.
My life journey ultimately began with undergraduate studies in Australia, followed by a Fulbright scholarship to Princeton for graduate studies. Later, I worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where I have been teaching, guiding students, and conducting research for over 25 years.
During this period, I witnessed firsthand how sustained investments from institutions such as NSF have driven collaboration between universities, laboratories, and industry.
At UCLA’s Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), where I currently serve as the Director of Special Projects, these collaborations have laid the foundation for theoretical breakthroughs and practical technologies. For example, my research at IPAM helped develop algorithms that can now shorten MRI scan times by up to 10 times.
Not every scientific experiment can lead to successful discoveries, not every model prediction matches reality perfectly, and not every theoretical research path can bring practical applications.
But the risk of failure (or at least negative outcomes) is an inherent part of the scientific process, and identifying the positive and negative results of technology in laboratories, computer simulations, and even pen and paper is much better than deploying it catastrophically in the real world.
In just six months, the United States deliberately attacked and weakened almost all the pillars of this ecosystem, which is shocking and devastating; Federal funding has been cancelled or suspended at an unprecedented scale and speed, and billions of dollars in ongoing research projects and experiments have been interrupted.
UCLA has been hit hard by the cumulative impact of these actions, with NSF significantly cutting many key scholarships and grants aimed at training and inspiring the next generation of leading scientists, depriving many students and postdoctoral fellows of valuable early career opportunities that were available to previous generations.
My personal research funding has also been suspended in the recent action against UCLA. This funding is used to support my graduate students’ research and business trips, as well as to fund my own one month research during the summer semester.
I have managed to prioritize summer funding for my own graduate students to protect them from direct impact, but I am still waiting for the salary for the research I have already conducted.
More important than that is the threat to the survival of IPAM, which recently received initial approval for a five-year extension grant from NSF to continue operating planned projects and workshops for the upcoming academic year, but was suddenly cut off from all funding sources (including unused funds carried over from the previous grant).
Through emergency fundraising by the director and staff of the research institute in the past few weeks, as well as some generous donations from individuals, we can at least avoid the current predicament and possibly sustain it until the end of the year, but this is not the way to operate a world-class scientific institution.
……
At the end of the article, Tao Zhexuan called for a purer academic approach with 5 to 6 paragraphs. **
##Netizen: Insufficient funding, students’ psychology is collapsing first
The issue of Tao Zhexuan not receiving a salary and being forced to raise money has quickly become a hot topic of discussion.
Zhihu netizen “Yilu Wenmo” left a comment on the relevant topic, expressing his feelings:
It looks a bit magical, I thought only little green peppers like me would worry about funding.
Regarding the topic of research funding and graduate education, “Yilu Wenmo” believes that:
It supports the operation of the research institute, advances the professor’s research projects, and more directly, sustains the lives of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Many students’ scholarships, RA positions, and opportunities to attend international conferences are all linked to funding. Once funding is cut, the first to be affected are not the already famous professors, but the growing young people.
Tao Zhexuan also mentioned that NSF funding allows graduate students to pause their teaching work for one semester and focus on scientific research; They can also afford to attend conferences and establish academic connections. Once funding is cut off, these most basic scientific research nutrients will disappear.
Yilu Wenmo also recalled some of the difficulties expressed by students with overseas experience whom he had once taught.
For example, when the paper is at a critical moment, due to unstable funding, one has to find part-time jobs to sustain their livelihood; The original research plan had to be repeatedly postponed.
This is a very fatal problem: once the environment is full of uncertainty, students’ psychology will first collapse. It’s hard to expect someone who is worried about tuition fees and life to focus solely on exploring the most profound mathematical problems.
As Tao Zhexuan described the room as “hot and cold”, even if the temperature returns to normal later, people will still have lingering fears and be worried about the next sudden change. What scientific research requires is focused attention without distractions, rather than anxiety about whether funding will be cut off at any time.
One More Thing
In an interview with The Washington Post, Tao Zhexuan was asked if he would leave the United States, and this time his answer seemed to have become somewhat shaken——
A year ago, my answer was negative, but now I am no longer certain
Reference link:
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/09/07/science-math-trump-federal-cuts-grants/
[2] https://newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-an-award-winning-mathematician
[3] https://www.zhihu.com/question/1948668633254425128