The University of Pittsburgh receives nearly $700 million in National Institutes of Health funding, and fears about whether the university will keep getting that money are growing across the campus.

The potential impact for Pitt's researchers and potentially lifesaving medical breakthroughs was front and center at the United Steelworkers headquarters on Monday, where union members met with local Democratic lawmakers to discuss how the cuts could impact jobs, progress on critical medical research and the local economy.

The threat of NIH funding cuts is already having a ripple effect at the University of Pittsburgh.

"The feel on my floor at the university is very somber and uncertain," said Nicole Hays, a research operations manager at Pitt.

Democratic Reps. Chris Deluzio (PA-17) and Summer Lee (PA-12) held the roundtable with United Steelworkers union members. USW represents more than 10,000 faculty, staff, and grad students at Pitt.

"Changes to caps and indirect funds alone stand to cost the university more than $163 million," said Bernie Hall, United Steelworkers District 10 director.

"These cuts will directly impact USW members doing a wide variety of work across the university," Hall added.

Hays said the NIH indirect funds pay for salaries of researchers and support staff, specialty equipment, overhead costs, and more.

"In my home department of transplant, we have our grant funding being curtailed, we had study sections canceled and not rescheduled so we can't even begin that research....It's very difficult to even begin new projects when we cannot finish our old ones because we're using other funds from other endowments to cover work we can't finish," Hays said.

Tyler Bickford, unit president of the Pitt Faculty Union said major research projects on women's health and Alzheimer's that were supposed to have noncompetitive renewals last week are in limbo.

"As of this morning, those have not been renewed....And nobody knows what we're supposed to do, are we supposed to shut this down, are we supposed to float this for a little while," Bickford said.

Alisa Omelchenko is a graduate researcher in the CMU-Pitt joint computational biology program. She said her work involves understanding chronic and infectious diseases, and that the work done by her and her colleagues generates medical advances that keep people healthier.

"I rely on NIH funds for both my training and for more research and these limits on NIH funding really impact how I and my colleagues can do our jobs," Omelchenko said. "This funding uncertainty really makes graduate students like me worried."

She said the immediate consequences of the indirect funding cuts will be felt by the entire community.

"We can't just start and stop science on a whim....It will cause lasting damage to lifesaving research on subjects from Alzheimer's to diabetes to cancer and many, many more," said Omelchenko 

Reps. Deluzio and Lee discussed how the cuts could impact the region's economy.

"The eds and meds of part of our economy is huge, it is a major driver of jobs in this region, of keeping people in their homes," Deluzio said.

"We're talking about 21,000 jobs that NIH funding supports in Pennsylvania," Lee said.

Union leaders and members are hoping more researchers and students will share their stories.

"One person, my voice is just a whisper, but if we join together as a union and our elected officials and the community at large, we can be heard. And we can use that voice to make a difference and try to stop this funding cut," Hays said.

KDKA-TV reached out to the White House for comment on the concerns raised by Pitt researchers and union leaders, but have not heard back.

Last month, the NIH said it would lower its grant funding cap for indirect costs to 15 percent.

Pitt and CMU are among the universities and hospitals suing the Trump administration to block the cuts.