By admin 
A sudden $12 million federal funding cut last year forced a UC Davis transportation research center and its partners to halt dozens of projects, disrupt student research and scramble for replacement money — setting off a legal fight that has left the center’s future uncertain more than a year later.
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The National Center for Sustainable Transportation quickly suspended research already underway and delayed projects scheduled to begin.
“Except for the Great Recession we haven’t had anything like this,” said Fraser Shilling, whose project modeling how traffic light and sound affects nearby wildlife was halted. “It was kind of like an administration-imposed recession on academia.”
The center was one of multiple university programs affected when the Trump administration canceled $54 million in previously awarded grants for programs that used “woke” terms in their applications, according to a U.S. Department of Transportation news release.
The cut began a more than yearlong scramble to rearrange projects, seek private donations and fight for the funding in federal court as part of Thakur v. Trump, said center director Susan Handy.
Although a judge ordered the funding restored late last year, the center’s work and employees have remained in flux as the lawsuit continues and the possibility remains that the money could disappear again.
Trump administration targets ‘woke’ grants
Handy and others at the center found out about the federal funding cut through a news release.
“The previous administration turned the Department of Transportation into the Department of Woke,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in the release. “It’s time to inject a dose of reality back into our higher education system, and that starts with ending these wasteful and divisive grants.”
The canceled grants had been awarded under former President Joe Biden’s administration, which had placed importance on climate issues and equity. As a result, the grant applications — including UC Davis’ — contained references to those issues, Handy said.
Because President Donald Trump’s administration had shown opposition to those issues and was making widespread funding cuts in early 2025, Handy had expected cuts to specific research.
“Obviously they went farther than that and canceled the whole thing,” she said, adding that all institutions partnering with the center were also affected.
“It is unprecedented,” said Handy, who has been director of the transportation center since its founding in 2013.
Across the region’s University Transportation Center network, . More than 40 graduate and undergraduate research assistants were moved around to other projects, while many employees took pay cuts, according to court documents. Handy lost about 10% of her annual compensation.
Three UC Davis projects supported by the federal grants were halted, including studies of the impacts of remote work on transportation patterns, changes in travel behavior after the COVID-19 pandemic and Shilling’s project, which examined whether and how wildlife could use human-made crossings.
Seven projects that were slated to begin were delayed until the center could secure additional funding.
“None of these are explicitly about equity or climate,” Handy said. “They’re really about understanding our transportation system so that we can do a better job of planning it and managing it and making it work better for everyone.”
Researchers scramble after funding disappears
The past year for the National Center for Sustainable Transportation was defined by efforts to adapt to the loss of federal funding.
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The center benefited from being under the umbrella of the Institute of Transportation Studies, which also received state funding, Handy said. Because of that, no staff members were laid off.
However, workers had to reduce their hours and take pay cuts. Some graduate and undergraduate students had to switch to other projects.
That happened to one of the students on Shilling’s modeling project. She not only had to change her thesis, but also saw the trajectory of her academic career shift.
“She also became a masters student and was no longer a PhD student,” Shilling said. “You can’t maintain graduate students on no funding because then you’re expecting them to just pay for everything themselves… So it changed her career track and basically changed her future.”
Handy said the center also relied on a $25,000 private donation to fund its summer undergraduate fellows program.
The center also joined other UC researchers in a lawsuit filed last spring against the Trump administration seeking to permanently restore the grant funding. U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin repeatedly sided with the UC professors and issued several preliminary injunctions requiring federal agencies to restore the grants while she considered the case.
In September 2025, Lin ordered the funding restored for UC Davis, and the money was approved about six months later, Handy said.
Shilling said his research resumed after the injunction, and the project wrapped up in December. It was an improvement, but researchers still faced a rush to finish the work.
“You have the reverse messiness going back the other direction and trying to fit everybody back into their places and get the work done,” he said. “I’m glad we finished it, but it was a different kind of disruption to our process.”
Lawsuit leaves UC Davis funding uncertain
Though funding was restored under the injunction, the federal court case remained unresolved, leaving the center uncertain whether it would ultimately keep the money.
Last week, the Trump administration acknowledged in signed stipulations that the Department of Transportation had used key phrases such as “environmental justice” and “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility” to search for and cancel grants that did not align with the Trump administration’s goals.
Attorneys for the UC researchers argued the admission showed that the grants were illegally terminated and asked Lin to rule without a trial that the Trump administration violated the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment. A hearing on the request was scheduled for Oct. 20.
If Lin ultimately ruled that the administration acted lawfully, the center could lose the funding again.
That uncertainty continued to affect the National Center for Sustainable Transportation and could have lasting consequences, Shilling said.
Because funding is not guaranteed, the center faces a difficult choice: fund additional students despite the risk of another major grant loss, or limit recruitment or funding and risk weakening the program by bringing in fewer masters and doctoral students. Last year, the program had more masters students and fewer doctoral students, because the center needs to provide funding for the latter but doesn’t promise it to the former, Handy said.
“Recovery is going to be slow,” he said. “For two or three years there’ll be a loss of scientists… You’ll have this dip in scientific productivity because of it.”
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