President and 1968 Wharton graduate Donald Trump's administration paused $175 million in Penn's United States Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services funding on March 19, citing the University’s failure to bar transgender athletes from women's sports.
Penn has 21 active contracts and 596 active grants that receive funding through the two agencies — totaling hundreds of millions of dollars — according to U.S. Department of the Treasury fiscal year 2025 data. While it remains unclear exactly which specific programs will be impacted by the funding freeze, The Daily Pennsylvanian compiled a list of the largest grants and contracts both agencies have with Penn.
The White House did not respond to multiple requests for clarification. A University spokesperson told the DP that Penn has yet to receive official communication or additional details about the funding freeze.
The largest HHS grant awarded to Penn in fiscal year 2025 is a $54.1 million grant to the Center For AIDS Research at the Perelman School of Medicine. While over $14 million of the grant was already disbursed, the remaining balance has been promised to the center. The award is designated as a noncompeting continuation, meaning that it provides ongoing support for a previously funded project.
The largest contract that Penn receives from the two federal agencies is also from HHS. A nearly $50 million contract for fiscal year 2025 was awarded to "support the [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response." Ninety-five percent of this award is granted by NIAD, while 4% stems from the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund.
The largest DOD funding award is a $43 million grant to the School of Engineering and Applied Science's project on Autonomous Resilient Cognitive Heterogeneous Swarms. This award stems from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory’s Distributed and Collaborative Intelligent Systems and Technology Collaborative Research Alliance. Penn is one of 14 institutions in collaboration on the project.
DCIST CRA works to create "Autonomous, Resilient, Cognitive, Heterogeneous Swarms" that "enable humans to participate in a wide range of missions in dynamically changing, harsh, and contested environments." These include hostage search and rescues, information gathering after terrorist attacks or natural disasters, and humanitarian missions.
Other awards include a $28 million HHS grant designated to better understand "human health effects of exposure to environmental agents … including in areas of environmental justice and health disparities,” and a $6.4 million DOD grant to study "robust concept learning and lifelong adaptation against adversarial attacks" at the Engineering School's PRECISE Center for Safe AI.
In a previous statement to the DP, a senior White House official wrote that the funding freeze was not a result of an ongoing Title IX investigation into Penn but rather “[an] immediate proactive action to review discretionary funding streams to … universities.”
The official said that the decision to cut funding was made because Penn “infamously permitted a male to compete on its women’s swimming team.”
A Penn spokesperson wrote in a statement to the DP that while the University is “aware of media reports suggesting a suspension of $175 million in federal funding,” the federal government has yet to share “any official notification or any details” about the recent action.
The statement added that Penn has “always followed NCAA and Ivy League policies” and does not have its own policy “regarding student participation on athletic teams.” It also highlighted that “NCAA policies have evolved over the years” and pointed to policy revisions made by the NCAA and Ivy League in response to Trump’s February executive order.
“Indeed, we have been in the past, and remain today, in full compliance with all the regulations that apply not only to Penn, but all of our NCAA and Ivy League peer institutions,” the spokesperson wrote.
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