Professor of Civil Engineering Peter Jaffé began researching industrial cleaning chemicals 20 years ago. In 2016, he decided to focus his research on developing ways to biodegrade perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These chemicals are widely used in everyday consumer and industry products — although we are also exposed to them in our food, water, and air. Dubbed “forever chemicals” for their non-degradability, PFAS can weaken the immune system, increase risk of cancer, and cause other health concerns in humans.
Three years later, the Department of Defense (DOD) took an interest in Jaffé’s work and began funding his research. According to the Environmental Working Group, an American activist group focused on agricultural industry research and advocacy, there are over 723 military sites in the U.S. and U.S. territories that are contaminated by PFAS.
After six years of federal funding, Jaffé says that he and his team have found a way to biodegrade these chemicals. An almost $2 million grant for a field demonstration was the next step. However, this funding was lost on April 1, when several dozen grants awarded to University researchers from NASA, the DOD, and the Department of Energy (DOE) were suspended, reportedly worth at least $210 million.
“We have done a lot of work showing that we can biodegrade these PFAS,” Jaffé told The Daily Princetonian in an interview. “The University has a series of patents out on it, and we need that field demonstration to get people to believe that it works and invest in them [and then] apply it.”
Now, Jaffé is unable to conduct that field demonstration. In the blink of an eye, the work Jaffé had been working on for 20 years has vanished — unless something changes soon, he remarked.
Jaffé is not the only professor who is affected by the freeze. In the wake of the grant suspensions, many professors have been thrown into disarray, worried about how they will be able to pay their researchers and continue their research — research that is changing the world, they say.
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Elie Bou-Zeid, who lost a DOE grant, wrote to the ‘Prince’ that he believes professors across the country are being directly attacked.
“This is a deliberate attack to weaken and even permanently harm universities like Princeton,” Bou-Zeid said. “As academics, we should have no illusion that this is a misunderstanding or an accident. We are not ‘bystander victims.’ We are the target.”
Several professors said that the University had stepped in to cover expenses for professors and graduate students.
Chemistry professor Roberto Car had a DOE grant supporting the Computational Chemical Science Center (CCSC) suspended. The grant had partly or fully supported five graduate students and five postdocs.
“In the end, the University will come as a helper of last resort — they will essentially guarantee that the postdocs can stay until the end of their current term, and for the PhD students, they will stay until completion of their thesis,” Car said.
“The University is saying, for the moment, ‘let’s use what resources we do have to support people, and in particular, people more at the junior level, which means often graduate students, whose stipends are coming from these grants, and postdoctoral researchers and junior faculty members,’” Michael Strauss, the Chair of the Department of Astrophysical Sciences, said.
Students, Jaffé summarized, “will be able to get through.”
Physics professor William Jones wrote in a statement to the ‘Prince’ that his group is currently developing a polarimeter — a device that measures the re-orientation of light waves — named Taurus that will “measure fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.” This project is directly funded by NASA and would fly on a NASA stratospheric super-pressure balloon.
The grants Jones and his student team were receiving helped the group develop highly sensitive detectors known as quantum limited superconducting transition edge sensors, which are integral to Taurus’ functions.
The award was apparently suspended with no explanation by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Jones said.
“Our NASA program officers are not able to provide us any information about the reason or procedure,” Jones wrote.
Jones also explained that should his grant be reinstated, the group might have already missed their best opportunity to launch Taurus. “These launches are only offered every two years, so missing that date would devastate our students and researchers, not to mention our budget,” Jones said.
Strauss also said that there was significant funding lost from the Department of Energy intended for fusion energy development.
"There seemed to be little rhyme or reason other than it was connected to Princeton,” Strauss said.
The suspension of some grants have had a ripple effect in certain research centers.
Chemistry professor Gregory Scholes wrote to the ‘Prince’ that he lost a grant that supported BioLEC, a center whose goal is “to work out ways of producing energy-rich feedstocks that will give America an economic advantage,” according to Scholes.
“There are many impacts on researcher training, potentially losing expertise for complex experiments, or falling behind other countries at the leading edge of a fast-moving field,” Scholes added. “I’m hopeful that the situation will be resolved soon.”
Jaffé expressed his sentiment to the ‘Prince’ that he and his team will continue to fight for their research. “We have some momentum left. We have our cultures. We have done something.”
“It’s not that we abandoned overnight,” he said.
Gabriel Vecchi, a geosciences professor, had climate research impacted by the Department of Commerce’s decision last week to end $4 million in funding to climate research at Princeton.
“Our goal is to minimize any impact on the scholarly progress, education, and career development of … our team,” Vecchi, the Knox Taylor Professor of Geosciences and head of the Vecchi Research Group, wrote to the ‘Prince.’ “I know that our work is valuable to the world and the United States of America.”
While much remains uncertain, professors said they had an urgent need for assistance.
“We’ve managed to develop a full technology,” Jaffé said. “The trouble is, the longer we wait, the more we lose the expertise in the lab … then we lose the know-how.”
“This was 20 years worth of different grants and works and discovery and build-up to get finally out the door, and being this close to end, and it’s being killed. It hurts,” he said.
Luke Grippo is a senior News writer and Features contributor for the ‘Prince.’ He is from South Jersey and usually covers administrative issues, including Undergraduate Student Government, the Council of the Princeton University Community, and institutional legacy.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
Correction: A previous version of this piece incorrectly stated that fusion energy development funding was cut from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. In fact, the funding was cut from Princeton.
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