Skip to main content

Impact of the Sequester on NIH Funding

This post was written as an article for the Postdoc Informer, the UT Southwestern postdoctoral community's bimonthly newsletter. It is featured as the June-July 2013 issue's lead article.  -IH

In light of the Budget Control Act of 2011, a.k.a. "the sequester," the NIH is operating this year at a program level of $29.15 billion, a decrease of $1.71 billion (approximately 5.5%) from 2012. First, the good news. Because of uncertainty surrounding the effects of the sequester in the beginning of the year, non-competing continuation awards made in the early months of 2013 were generally funded at a 10% reduction from the originally committed amount. With the uncertainty now gone, these reductions will be partially restored to more closely reflect the 5.5% reduction of the total NIH budget (e.g., 2013 noncompeting grants at NIGMS will be reduced by 3.5%, and NCI will trim ongoing grants by ~6%). The bad news? While the NIH intends to keep the average size of competing awards constant at 2012 levels, it expects to fund 703 fewer competing research grants this year, a 7.8% drop (8283 in 2013, compared to 8986 in 2012). As a result, lower success rates for grant applications will be expected in most institutes this year. A full breakdown of changes in the number of competing research grants (and their dollar amounts) for each institute within the NIH is shown in the table below. The differences between 2012 and 2013 reflect a combination of the effects of sequestration, shifting budgeting priorities within the NIH, and differing budgeting strategies utilized by each institute. 


President Barack Obama's proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 R&D budget, unveiled on April 10, should ease much of the pain caused by the sequester. It proposes to increase non-defense R&D support by 9.2 percent for a total of $69.6 billion. The allocation for NIH is set at $31.3 billion, an increase of $471 million (approx. 1.5%) compared with 2012. In addition, the proposed NIH budget would raise the entry-level stipend for the National Research Service Awards (NRSA) to $42,000, representing a 7% increase over the current entry-level stipend of $39,364. The budget proposes a 4% increase for subsequent levels of experience as well. As NRSA stipend levels are used as the benchmark for postdoctoral salaries at academic institutions nationwide, this clause will have a direct positive impact on the salaries of UT Southwestern postdocs. 

Obama's proposed budget it is likely to undergo significant changes once submitted to congress. In light of this, the UT Southwestern Postdoctoral Association encourages postdocs to write to members of the Senate and the House of Representatives to express support for President Obama's budget for non-defense research and development. Detailed information on contacting representatives and composing letters of support can be found on the National Postdoctoral Association's website at:  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Comics About Patents (A Work In Progress)

Back in January and February of 2018, I spent some time creating two four-panel comics about the process of 1) obtaining patent protection, and 2) monetizing those patent rights by licensing them. I drew the comics to serve as an illustration of concepts that I often find myself explaining to others in the course of my work. I've already shared these comics through  Twitter  and  Facebook  (click on either of link to see more of the creative process!). However, I thought I'd share them with my blog's readership as well. Please enjoy! I'm really hoping to reignite this project at some point in the future and create more episodes. (Click on the images below to enlarge) Episode 1: Episode 2: - Isamu Hartman
Post a Comment
Read more

Corporate Venture Capital at the Top 10 Pharma/Biotech Companies

Today I'm taking a step outside of Texas and looking at the world. Many large pharmaceutical and biotech firms maintain venture capital operations through which they invest in early-stage biomedical companies. I wanted to get a sense of what these biopharma corporate venture capital (CVC) funds are up to. Which companies have CVC funds? How active are they? What are their goals? What are they investing in? Background: general and sector-specific trends in venture capital In 2014 venture capital funding in the U.S. hit its highest annual mark since 2001, as investors participated in $47.3 billion across 3,617 deals . Within this trend Life Sciences was the second largest sector (behind only the Media and Entertainment sector) for 2014 in dollar terms with $8.6 billion invested in 789 deals, the highest level since 2007 . Corporate venture funding has followed similar trends:  2014 marked the strongest year for CVC activity since 2000 with $5.4 billion invested in U.S.-based co
Post a Comment
Read more

The Big Fish: Texas-Based Biomedical Companies listed on NYSE and NASDAQ

[Monday, 22 April 2013:  I added Hanger Inc. (HGR, NYSE), an Austin-based prosthetics and orthotics company I had originally missed, to the list] [Thursday, 02 May 2013:  fixed the location of Hanger Inc. (HGR, NYSE) - changed from Dallas to Austin] I have another few posts coming up on Texas-based awardees of the SBIR program. But first, a quick digression. +Levi Shapiro  asked me the following question during a phone conversation we had earlier today:  who are the "Big Players" in the Texas biomedical industry that are listed in the major stock exchanges? I knew about Luminex (LMNX, NASDAQ) off the top of my head. Other than that, though, I really had no idea. Following the advice of +Lauren Nise  , I used LexisNexis (courtesy of the UT Dallas Eugene McDermott Library ) to generate a list of publicly traded biomedical companies headquartered in Texas that are listed in either NYSE or NASDAQ. Here are the companies I found: (Open spreadsheet as a separate page  h
Post a Comment
Read more