Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on The College Fix on April 10, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission.
A University of Cincinnati professor has more money from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create a transgender voice training app. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, which is part of the NIH, granted Professor Domen “Vesna” Novak $214,998 for the fiscal year 2025 to improve “the accessibility of transgender voice training with visual-acoustic feedback.” The engineering professor previously received $213,878 in taxpayer funds for the same project, as reported by the College Fix.
The project aims to develop “smartphone—or computer-based software that delivers information about voice, suggests exercises, and provides feedback on exercise performance” to help transgender individuals sound like the sex they are presenting themselves as. In other words, it would help a male who declares himself female have a more feminine voice. Novak himself is transgender, previously going by the name “Domen.”
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Novak and New York University co-researcher, Tara McAllister, have not responded to multiple requests for comment on the study and its accomplishments so far. There have been two academic papers published on the research so far, according to the grant page. The Fix also asked how they respond to critics who might argue that taxpayer dollars shouldn’t fund gender identity research.
The NIH awarded the grant in Nov. 2024, but since then, the Trump administration has sought to freeze or claw back research funding that focuses on LGBT issues, DEI, or has other ideological aims.
Neither responded to inquiries sent in the past several weeks. The Fix also attempted to reach Novak through Professor Marc Cahay, the chair of the electrical engineering and computer science department. However, Cahay could not get a response from Novakin the past few weeks.
The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders spokeswoman Joanne Karimbakas did not respond to an emailed request in the past month for comment on the grant and if similar grants would be reviewed for compliance with the Trump administration’s priorities. However, a conservative group that fights against LGBT ideology and has previously criticized the NIH for becoming politicized criticized ideological research in comments provided to the Fix.
The American Principles Project referred the Fix to past research, including a video by the pro-family group “highlighting some of the most egregious examples” of other funding for LGBT related research.
The video, posted on X, showed a clip of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who stated that the “Biden Administration spent over $174 million tax dollars promoting gender ideology and trans indoctrination,” much of which was sent to other countries.
APP President Terry Schilling stated in the video that he and his team put together a database, finding that “over $174 million in tax dollars was being used in grants and contracts that promoted woke gender ideology,” which has preyed on “thousands of children” and “vulnerable adults” internationally. The Fix previously covered the database.
“When Americans pay their taxes every year, they expect that money to go towards projects that help them: strengthening our national defense, building and upgrading infrastructure, protecting our natural resources, etc,” Schilling stated. “However, in recent years, Democrats have been using public funds to instead push their radical gender agenda here at home and around the world.” The NIH has awarded nearly $3 million in transgender studies just since Trump took office, as Fix’s original report found.
Image: “McMicken Hall, University of Cincinnati” by Matt Shiffler Photography on Flickr
$214,998 for the fiscal year 2025 …previously received $213,878.
While the University of Cincinnati does not have its current indirect cost rate posted, it does have a document citing its 2010 rate posted — 58%.
That means that the University of Cincinnati received $248,748.08 in indirect costs for these two grants. Not that this would have had anything to do with the university’s support for “research” of this nature.
And I’m presuming that UofC hasn’t raised its rate over the past 15 years — I don’t know of any institution that’s lowered it…