I have been absent from this blog for quite a while, and although I normally eschew excuses, I will say that at least this time I’ve got a decent one. On March 5, NIH announced that they were placing $300M of recovery act money into an ongoing program supporting the acquisition of “small” shared instruments. You may be surprised to learn that $100K-$500K qualifies as small—$600K–$8M is “large” and is part of a separate program. (Am I the only one who wonders what happens when a piece of equipment costs $550K)?
In any event, a number of my colleagues and I have been talking about acquiring an advanced microscope system for doing cell counts, brain mapping, and high-resolution imaging. So we figured it might be a good idea to use this opportunity to apply for these funds. That was on March 6, with the grant due on March 23. Not too onerous a deadline, unless one figures in that the proposal needed to be submitted to Research Administration in my institution one week before the NIH deadline.
Suffice it to say, I was able to put together a proposal in the time allotted, just in time for me to hop on the Limoliner to New York. As I sit here in my comfy leather chair taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi, I am enjoying the downtime to think about things other than proposals and driving my chairman crazy.
Tops on my list are the positive changes in the atmosphere for science that has occurred in the past couple of weeks, First, the dramatic short term change in funding for NIH. Obviously, I wouldn’t have written this proposal without the extra funding, and successful applicants will certainly help to keep equipment vendors afloat. Interestingly, this program has, if anything, somewhat of a negative impact on the finances of the scientists themselves because this type of grant (unlike most) doesn’t pay any overhead costs to the institution. Moreover, this institution is expected to kick in some money to help manage the machine. So even though we’d be really happy to be fortunate enough to acquire this piece of equipment, the institution’s attitude can best be summed up as “meh.”
To be sure, there is a good deal of stimulus money going toward investigator-initiated research, and many are working toward tailoring their proposals to fit the needs of the different institutes at NIH. Those of us with grants currently under review are hopeful that extra money in the coffers of NIH will increase the number of proposals that are funded.
Another good thing, of course, is the administration removing the restrictions on stem cell research. There are enormous potential benefits of this type of research, and I know that scientists are ecstatic that they will no longer have to set up walls between their NIH-funded and private foundation stem cell work.
There are two good takes on this. The first is a piece by Frank Rich in the New York Times. The second can be seen below.
