Bidisha Dasgupta (right), a fifth-year graduate student in immunology at Cornell University's Weill Medical College, was “definitely disappointed” when she heard from her mentor William Muller last Friday that their lab had had its grant request turned down. The $1.9-million National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant would have funded her and six other trainees over the next five years.

Dasgupta, who studies blood-cell transmigration, has been supported by a training grant for the past two years. Now, Muller will have to find another way to fund her $25,000 annual stipend.

“It underlines how much harder it is to get funding right now,” says Dasgupta. “This was one of the more standard grants in our institution. And if this has been cut, I am sure other grants will be even more competitive.”

Dasgupta says that an NIH training grant is a valuable addition to a CV. A 2001 report written for the NIH by Georgine Pion of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, found that the 8–10% of young scientists receiving these grants were subsequently more likely to obtain tenure-track academic positions, find jobs at top-tier universities, obtain full research grants on their own and publish well-cited papers. These grants “are an incredibly effective way to train people”, says Walter Schaffer, acting director of the NIH's Office of Extramural Programs.

For Dasgupta, the training grant's separate travel budget meant she could attend scientific conferences. She thinks the loss will also adversely affect Cornell, which “used the training grants as a recruiting tool”.