On May 12, the National Institutes of Health awarded UC San Diego a $5 million grant for scientific research funding. The University applied this grant to reinstatement of the Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation program.
Supported in 2022 through the NIH Common Fund, the FIRST program was among several canceled by the NIH in 2025 due to federal budget limitations. Its reestablishment this month created 12 tenure-track positions available for faculty to teach and conduct research in the life sciences.
The FIRST program currently funds research positions for graduate students at the UCSD School of Medicine and aims to strengthen developmental support for its cohort. This includes providing access to a Health Sciences Grant Writing Course, faculty mentorship, and scientific education. Specifically, the program focuses on research sustainability in four key clusters: cancer, cardiovascular sciences, immunology and infectious diseases, and neuroscience.
President Donald Trump’s federal funding cuts in 2025 targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programming at the NIH and the National Science Foundation led UCSD to a hiring freeze, with additional layoffs and project delays. Since then, researchers have faced uncertain future conditions, including reductions in department lecturers’ hours and an estimated $150 million in funding losses.
In a written statement to The UCSD Guardian, UCSD FIRST Principal Investigator JoAnn Trejo, who has led the program since 2022, explained the legislative process to restore funding.
“The program was relaunched following a formal appeal process and a lawsuit brought by 17 states,” she said. “The success of this appeal is in part due to UC San Diego’s strong existing institutional infrastructure, which allowed us to better navigate the political and legal challenges.”
The disruption in funding caused immediate setbacks for researchers already in the program. According to Trejo, the canceled funding introduced “overall uncertainty about the future of the program” and caused delays in progress for faculty in the FIRST cohort.
Trejo emphasized the importance of diversity in research at higher education institutions such as UCSD.
“UC San Diego is among the most enriched biomedical research environments in the world but lacks faculty diversity and effective programming to enhance inclusive excellence similar to other research-intensive institutions,” she said at the time of the program’s initial introduction in 2022.
On its website, the NIH also articulated its commitment to diversity in science, encouraging research institutions to “diversify their student and faculty populations to enhance the participation of individuals from groups that are underrepresented in the biomedical, clinical, behavioral and social sciences.”
Since Trejo’s launch of UCSD’s FIRST program in 2022, the support it has provided to researchers has yielded $16 million in new grant funding.
The renewed recruitment search maintained the cross-institutional scope of its previous cycles. UCSD Health Sciences conducted searches for researchers, including stakeholders from multiple campus departments in accordance with university, state, and federal policies. Their research spans scientific projects that study the causes, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of disorders like cancer, infectious diseases, and immune dysfunction.
“This was a truly cross-campus search,” Trejo said. “We involved faculty from across the university, including medicine, pharmacy, engineering, biology, physical and social sciences, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. This kind of interdisciplinary collaboration is a hallmark of UC San Diego, and it allowed us to identify and recruit talented faculty who can tackle complex biomedical challenges from multiple angles.”
For faculty in the cohort itself, the program’s impact has been tangible. Melissa Campbell, an assistant professor of neuroscience at the School of Medicine, said the cohort model addresses a common challenge for early-career researchers.
“As a new faculty member, you’re often the most junior person in a department, and it’s easy to feel isolated,” Campbell said. “Because we’re all in the same phase of our careers, it’s very different from being the lone junior hire.”
With the initial NIH grant set to conclude in 2027, Trejo has indicated her commitment to making the restoration of FIRST’s infrastructure a permanent campus feature. She and her team are currently working to institutionalize their mentorship and career development models as a lasting part of UCSD’s future faculty recruitment processes.
“Our vision is to make these programs part of UC San Diego’s long-term identity,” Trejo stated. “FIRST has given us the foundation. Now we’re working to embed these practices into the fabric of UC San Diego so that every new faculty member has the support they need to thrive.”
