2025 Federal Shutdown Information for Researchers 

This webpage is dynamic and updated frequently. Please check back often. 

Page last updated September 30, 2025. 

The Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation (OVPRI), along with the UO's Government and Community Relations team, is also closely monitoring the federal budget discussions in Washington, D.C. Congress will need to pass a budget measure or a stopgap funding bill ahead of the 11:59 p.m. on September 30 deadline to avoid a shutdown. Should the shutdown occur, OVPRI will continue to update this webpage regarding the shutdown.

Federal Shutdown FAQs

This page contains answers to the most frequently asked questions regarding the federal government shutdown's effects on research.

• Please work with your Sponsored Projects Services post-award team if you need sponsor approval for re-budgeting, extensions, effort changes, etc.   
• Principal Investigators (PIs) should respect posted grant deadlines and make submittals (but there may not be any back-end help). In some cases, proposals may not be accepted until the government resumes operation.
• Federal proposal and grant portals may be down.
• We do not anticipate that new awards will be made while most staff are furloughed, and requests for help may go unanswered.
• Applications may not be reviewed.
• Allow extra time for travel as air traffic control could be affected. 

Email Updates

The following message was sent to graduate students, tenure track and research faculty, department grant administrators, OVPRI centers and institutes, core facility staff, Government and Community Relations, Office of General Counsel, OVPRI staff, and Principal Investigators on Tuesday, September 30.

Dear colleagues,

As you may be aware, Congress needs to pass and President Trump needs to sign a continuing resolution or an appropriations bill by 9 p.m. PT tonight, September 30, 2025, to maintain funding for many federal operations. Unfortunately, there is no scenario for such an agreement to be adopted today given the congressional votes calendar, and it seems the federal government is headed for a shutdown. The duration of such a shutdown is unknown. Until an agreement is reached this shutdown will include the NSF, USDA, NASA, NOAA, NEH, NIH, the Department of Education, and other agencies. I wanted to provide you all with initial information about what to expect in the next few days.

OVPRI has created an informational webpage for researchers regarding the shutdown that will be updated frequently. At this time, we are assuming that federal proposal deadlines will be followed. Should we learn otherwise, we will let you know. Even if proposals are submitted, their review is not expected until federal staff return to work.

UO researchers can expect to continue their federally sponsored projects, and most awarded projects will be unaffected unless the work requires the use of a federal facility or guidance from agency staff. Faculty, staff, and students funded on federal grants should plan on working as usual.

We also request that should you receive stop work notices from your sponsors, to please contact Sponsored Projects Services immediately. If the university’s central administration should receive any notices, the departments will be contacted immediately.

This Potential Shutdown is Different 

It’s important to note that this potential shutdown may be fundamentally different from past shutdowns because the Trump Administration, through the Office of Management and Budget, has made it clear that it plans engage in further Reductions in Force (RIF) rather than furlough employees.

Breaking with past practice, the White House has announced that it will not serve as a central resource with the latest guidance from every federal agency guidance. Instead, contingency plans for a given agency during the lapse in appropriations will be hosted on individual agency websites. Federal agencies independently develop approaches to a government shutdown; implementation is likely to be inconsistent across agencies.

Thankfully, COGR has created a “Considerations for a Federal Government Shutdown” resource page that links to agency guidance. We suggest that you bookmark this webpage now as it will be updated with the latest guidance from every federal agency on how they are preparing for and navigating the potential shutdown—when available. As of this writing, some agencies haven’t posted updates. Consider it a best practice to scroll to the bottom of agency guidance pages to where many of them list the last date the page was updated.

Guidance on Current Grants and Contracts and New Proposals 

During the shutdown period, no new funding opportunities will be announced, and no new grants will be awarded by affected agencies. Unless an agency advises otherwise, recipients will be able to continue using funds already awarded, as long as activities are under the already agreed-to award budget and period, as no extensions or supplements will be processed. Program officers will likely be unavailable, and some webpages may be down. Again, we recommend that you assume proposal submission deadlines will remain unchanged unless you hear otherwise about a particular competition.

For now, we advise that you continue work as budgeted and scoped. Payments on existing awards from some or all federal agencies are likely to be delayed. The UO has plans in place to cover costs of sponsored project expenditures in the short term. During the last shutdown, the UO was largely able to continue drawing federal funds. However, if the shutdown extends more than a month, our guidance may change for continued work.

Please keep in close communication with your Sponsored Projects Administrators and reach out to them if you have any questions or concerns about a specific proposal submission or award.

Access to Federally Run Facilities 

If your work necessitates usage of a facility that is managed by an impacted agency, it’s likely you will not be able to access this facility during the shutdown period. This is explicitly true for NASA-run facilities.

International Travel 

At this time, travel into and out of the United States by the UO’s international students, researchers, and scholars should not be impacted by the shutdown. Federal services related to international travel and employment authorization, such as Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection, and Department of State, are either fee-based, already funded or considered essential services. The US government will continue to issue passports and visas as long as there are sufficient funds to support these operations.

The Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation will continue to monitor the situation with our colleagues in Government and Community Relations. We will keep you all updated as we learn more. In the meantime, if you have any other questions, please reach out to me at vpri@uoregon.edu.

Sincerely, 

Anshuman “AR” Razdan 
Vice President for Research and Innovation