Indiana University officials say the partial government shutdown will only marginally affect federally-funded research efforts.
IU Spokesperson Chuck Carney says most agencies funding the projects already have their budgets in place.
“The impact on IU to this point has been fairly negligible and the reason for that is that we have the distributed moneys that would have come from the grants from these agencies,” he says.
The National Institutes of Health is the university’s largest granting agency. It’s open, despite the shutdown. The NIH operates on a separate budget agreement and most funds were already allocated and distributed.
Carney says other small impacts might occur on an individual faculty basis. University researchers may not receive funding approval from agencies until they reopen.
For students, federal funds like the Pell grant will remain active during the shutdown period through the U.S. Department of Education.
Carney says if the shutdown is prolonged, the university could see a more long-term impact.
"We wouldn’t be able to fund new projects or continuations that relied on a next phase of funding that had to be approved,” he says.
Other agencies like The National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts will not allocate new funding during the shutdown.