New Interim Guidance on NIH Subawards

Dear faculty colleagues with NIH grants, 

As announced in recent messages to faculty and the broader Northwestern community, portions of our federal research funding are frozen. In particular, we still have not received reimbursements for any National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants since March. With this in mind, we issued Interim Guidance on Support for Research subject to this federal funding freeze to temporarily support certain affected research activities while not allowing other non-essential expenditures during this period. 

Subawards contribute significantly to our research enterprise and its costs, yet it is not financially viable for Northwestern to sponsor research at other institutions under federal grants when the federal government is not reimbursing us. After careful consideration, Northwestern will no longer support outgoing subaward activity on NIH awards while we are not receiving reimbursements from the NIH. 

PIs with active NIH grants should immediately notify their subawardees that all work under those subawards must be paused beginning June 20, absent an approved exception. When communicating with subaward colleagues, feel free to include a copy of this message. Northwestern’s Sponsored Research office will notify subawardee institutions by June 20. Until further notice, this pause will be in effect until August 31, 2025. After June 20, no additional expenses will be reimbursed while the pause is in place.  

In rare cases, exceptions will be considered when work at Northwestern cannot progress without subcontracted research. Requests for exceptions should be submitted to the associate dean for research in the school managing the award no later than June 13. 

As a reminder, Northwestern previously informed all subawardees listed on projects under a federal stop-work order that their research must pause. Those pauses are still in place and will remain until the stop-work-orders are lifted by the federal agencies.  

We, along with the rest of Northwestern’s leadership team, appreciate the challenges you are facing and sincerely appreciate your ongoing partnership as we navigate these difficult times. We continue to work hard to “unfreeze” our grant funding and will be in touch with updates as we learn more.  

Amanda Distel 
Vice President and Chief Financial Officer 

Eric J. Perreault 
Vice President for Research