Megan Murray has been in limbo. The Harvard University epidemiologist and infectious diseases doctor has grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to fund ongoing research on tuberculosis. Over decades, her work has produced insights on how TB spreads, how genetic and microbial characteristics interact in the disease and better ways to diagnose TB in people who don’t have symptoms. NIH told Murray in September that she would be getting a large new grant to study long-term lung damage from TB.
Yet between April and October, the agency didn’t give Harvard any money. Many of her colleagues and collaborators have had their grants cut or suspended. “Weirdly, my