All council members received an e-mail from the president's office on Friday with information that their employment in this body was terminated with “immediate effect.”
The NSF was established in 1950. It usually has up to 25 members appointed by the president and drawn from academia or industry, specializing in fields such as aerospace engineering or astronomy. The NSF's mission is to advise the president and Congress on science-related matters and to allocate funds for research projects and training.
American scientists warn that the president's decision will waste the scientific talents of an entire generation, the Guardian emphasized.
The board members were fired just before a special report on the state of American science was finalized, said Yolanda Gil of the University of Southern California's Computer Science Institute, who was part of the team.
The British daily recalled that last year the Trump administration tried to limit the $9 billion budget. the NSF budget by more than half, but Congress did not authorize it; now, however, the White House is planning to cut funding for the Foundation again.
Keivan Stassun of Vanderbilt University, also a recently fired NSF board member, stressed in an interview with the Guardian that the administration's plans are aimed at “gutting investments in fundamental research and training the next generation of scientists and engineers.”
