Who gets federal research funding in Colorado? These two charts will show you.

With several major universities and a large academic medical campus, Colorado is a hub for research on science, medicine and technology.

That makes it particularly vulnerable to the turmoil that has shaken the nation’s scientific community to and fro these past couple of weeks as the administration of President Donald Trump has imposed funding freezes, halts to meetings and grant reviews, and communications blackouts.

Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars flows into Colorado to fund research in the state by universities and private companies. There are dozens of agencies that fund this research. But to get a sense of how much money coming into Colorado is at stake — and which institutions could be hardest-hit — The Sun focused on two heavyweights: the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Combined, the two issued around $45 billion worth of grants nationally in the 2024 federal fiscal year, which ended in September.

How much does Colorado get from the National Institutes of Health?

The NIH is a powerhouse biotech funder in the United States, issuing more than $37 billion in grants to more than 2,800 entities in the 2024 federal fiscal year. Of the 47 grant recipients in Colorado, the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus — officially part of the University of Colorado-Denver — received by far the most.

The campus took in nearly $350 million in NIH grants last fiscal year, about 60% of the total NIH funding that came to Colorado. CU-Anschutz ranked 27th nationally for NIH funding — though far behind the roughly $860 million that first-place Johns Hopkins University received.

Other major recipients of NIH funding in Colorado included the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, National Jewish Health, the University of Denver and two private companies: Denver-based software company Palantir Technologies and Crestone Inc., a Boulder-based biopharmaceutical company.

How much does Colorado get from the National Science Foundation?

The NSF is considerably smaller than the NIH — it issued about $8.4 billion in grants nationally in the 2024 fiscal year, but distributed them across more than 10,000 institutions.

While Colorado pulls an amount proportional to its population size from the NIH, it punches above its weight with the NSF. The state’s roughly 5.9 million people amounts to around 1.7% of the U.S. population. But Colorado’s $362 million in NSF awards in 2024 accounted for 4.3% of the agency’s total distribution.

The University of Colorado-Boulder received the most among Colorado universities, with more than $111 million awarded in 2024. But the state’s top recipient was the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, or UCAR, which operates the federal National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

Other major recipients include Colorado State University, the Colorado School of Mines, the University of Colorado-Denver and two other entities — one called Innosphere Ventures and another called Future Earth — that focus on climate resilience and environmental sustainability.

What do grant recipients say about the funding freezes?

Colorado’s universities have so far been circumspect when talking about the impact of the funding freezes — and the potential impact of longer-term funding losses.

During last week’s short-lived federal funding freeze, a spokesman for the University of Colorado system issued a statement saying, “The University of Colorado’s legal team and Office of Federal Government Relations are working to analyze the potential impact on all four of our campuses.”

The Sun reached out previously to a spokesman for CU-Anschutz after the Trump administration imposed a freeze on grant reviews and communication at the NIH as well as at ARPA-H, a separate research funding agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Researchers at CU-Anschutz have also received significant funding from ARPA-H.

The spokesman, David Kelly, wrote in reply: “We are closely monitoring all of these changes, but so far we have not received any information to indicate a change in the ARPA-H funding or other federal funding coming to us.”

The University of Colorado has set up a webpage devoted to providing updates to its federally funded researchers. So, too, has Colorado State University.

“Thank you for the continued dedication and commitment that you and your teams bring to your work and CSU’s research mission during this time of uncertainty,” Cass Moseley, CSU’s vice president for research, wrote in a note to faculty. “We are here to support you.”

At National Jewish Health, a spokesman wrote in an email last week to The Sun that National Jewish officials “anticipate that additional executive orders for the near future may affect at least some components of our operations.”

“We are concerned for the potential effect on our patients, on our key research and on our faculty and staff,” the spokesman, Adam Dormuth, wrote. But he added, “To date, we have not experienced any disruption in research funding, nor have any of our researchers amended ongoing research due to future uncertainty.”