168 employees fired at National Science Foundation

Personnel terminations occurred Tuesday at the National Science Foundation, with 168 employees told they would be fired, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

NSF is the nation’s leading agency that funds scientific and engineering research, education and training. It works with collaborative research centers around the world, and has poured troves of resources into emerging tech fields like quantum computing and artificial intelligence. It also supports a cybersecurity scholarship program that gives recipients opportunities to work in the cybersecurity missions of federal, state, local or tribal governments.

In response to the terminations, NSF staffers based at its headquarters in Alexandria, Va., organized at 1 p.m. in the lobby of the building to show support for their colleagues, one person said. 

“Last week the President issued Executive Order, Implementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Workforce Optimization Initiative [whitehouse.gov] (“Workforce Optimization E.O.”),” an NSF spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW in an email. “To ensure compliance with this E.O. the National Science Foundation has released 168 employees from Federal service effective today. We thank these employees for their service to NSF and their contributions to advance the agency mission.”

Some of the 168 people impacted by Tuesday’s terminations worked within physics-centric scientific directorates, including both probationary period staff as well as “expert” employee appointments with specialized research backgrounds hired on part-time bases. 

“I don’t know how they made the decision for who to notify, but my guess is that it’s pretty blunt … which is not as strategic as it could have been, or not as thoughtful,” another person familiar with the layoffs told Nextgov/FCW. “Morale has certainly been higher in the past.”

The Trump administration last week began firing thousands of federal employees who are in their probationary periods, typically those hired within the past one to two years depending on their hiring mechanism. Such workers have weaker civil service job protections. The Trump administration has, in some cases, included longtime government employees that were recently hired or promoted into new positions, though the legal rationale for quickly dismissing those workers is less clear. 

“Panch has been conveniently absent throughout this whole time,” said an internal email an NSF worker sent to staffers obtained by Nextgov/FCW. It referred to Sethuraman Panchanathan, NSF’s director. “Some of these colleagues will face extreme economic hardship because of this action. Some have changed their careers and upended their lives to come answer the call to service. Our management has failed! If NSFs top leadership has any dignity, they should resign immediately!”

The Office of Personnel Management on Trump’s first day in office asked agencies to compile lists of their probationary employees and, in some cases, federal offices warned such individuals they could be imminently fired. Probationers can still appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board if they allege the firings took place for partisan political reasons.

Based on OPM data as of May 2024, more than 200,000 federal employees have been hired within the last year. Some agencies, however, are exempting large swaths of their workforces from the firings. 

Click here to see a full roundup of the agencies — and number of workers — impacted by the firings.