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in this issue...
 Scientific Research Funding Gets Significant Boost in Economic Stimulus Legislation
NIH Strategic Management Review Board to Discuss Potential Institute Mergers
Science GRO Monitors National Academy Committee on Human-Systems Integration
Institutes Debate How to Spend Stimulus Funds
RWJF Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research – Call for Application
NSF Announces Search for New Assistant Director for Biological Sciences
Scientific Research Funding Gets Significant Boost in Economic Stimulus Legislation
Congress has delivered to President Barack Obama a hard-fought legislative package including tax cuts and targeted spending designed to boost the flagging economy. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (H.R. 1) weighs in at $787.2 billion. Spending on scientific research is an important feature of the legislation. An intense lobbying effort by Nobel laureates, health and scientific organizations, including APA, helped make the case that research provisions would provide short-term and long-term economic benefits.
National Institutes of Health (NIH): The conference agreement provides $10 billion for NIH. Of this amount, $8.2 billion is directed to the Office of the Director, with $7.4 billion to be transferred to the Institutes, Centers, and Common Fund, and $800 million retained for the Office of the Director. Most NIH institutes and centers (ICs) would enjoy record-breaking budgets in FY 2009.
The conference agreement provides $1.3 billion for the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), with $1 billion for "competitive awards for the construction and renovation of extramural research facilities" and $300 million for "shared instrumentation and other capital equipment." The conference agreement also provides $500 million for the Buildings and Facilities account to be used for construction and renovation of NIH intramural buildings.
To read the bill’s provisions about NIH, see pages 153-156 of the Conference Report - Division A.
National Science Foundation (NSF) – H.R. 1 includes $3 billion for NSF (compare to the FY 2008 budget of $6.1 billion). $2 billion will go to research grants distributed through NSF’s regular peer review process. The bill also provides $300 million to the Major Research Instrumentation program, competitively awarded instrumentation grants for university researchers, and $200 million to restart the Academic Research Infrastructure program, for competitively awarded laboratory construction grants.
$100 million will go to the Education and Human Resources Directorate, including $60 million to the Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, $25 million to the Math and Science Partnerships program, and $15 million to a new Professional Masters Science Program authorized in the America COMPETES Act. Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) spending of $400 million would accelerate the construction of major research facilities with unique capabilities at the cutting edge of science.
H.R. 1 also includes funding for research at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ($1 billion); Department of Energy ($1.6 billion to the Office of Science); Department of Defense ($200 million for energy-related research); and other scientific agencies.
A detailed breakdown of stimulus appropriations with comparisons to earlier year budgets appears here on the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
The AAAS also provides a good analysis of the tensions within scientific agencies about how best to spend this unprecedented infusion of new funds: “The final stimulus bill challenges the major R&D funding agencies to spend these large stimulus appropriations quickly, while at the same time spending them well. The final stimulus bill does not contain provisions in earlier versions of the bill requiring nearly all of the funding to be awarded within 120 days of when the President signs the bill into law, but the intent remains to spend the money as quickly as possible to provide immediate economic stimulus. Nearly all of the money is designated as FY 2009 money, and most agencies are now allowed to obligate funds until the end of September 2010, and spend out the money even after that if necessary.”
Agencies are certainly under pressure to spend the money quickly, but accountability measures are being established to keep track of how the money is spent and how many jobs are created. Watch for a recovery.gov site to provide real-time public disclosure.
Acting NIH Director Raynard Kington, MD, PhD, explained in an interview for National Public Radio why scientific research was a good candidate for stimulus spending, with so many peer reviewed projects approved but unfunded.
In response to action alerts from APA, members spoke out on the research provisions in H.R. 1. Some made phone calls to their Senators in support of the Specter amendment, ultimately approved, to provide $10 billion total to NIH. Others phoned to maintain funds for the National Science Foundation in the bill. Although NSF funds were dropped out of the Senate version of the bill, the conference report added the funds back.
Check out future issues of SPIN as APA Science Government Relations staff help track the expenditure of research funds in the stimulus legislation, and share news about any changes in research management that may accompany the passage of H.R. 1.
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NIH Strategic Management Review Board to Discuss Potential Institute Mergers
On February 4, at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Advisory Council meeting (and the next day at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Advisory Council), the NIH Acting Deputy Director, Lawrence Tabak, DDS, PhD, discussed the agenda for the upcoming NIH Strategic Management Review Board (SMRB) meeting scheduled for April 27-28. Part of that meeting will be used to discuss whether or not to consider a possible merger of NIDA and NIAAA. Whoever is Deputy Director of NIH at the time of the meeting will provide the SMRB with a neutral (agnostic) overview of the proposal to merge the two institutes, and then Dr. Ken Warren (Acting Director, NIAAA) and Dr. Nora Volkow (Director, NIDA) will provide their own institute perspectives. At that point, the Board will decide if it is an issue worthy of further study and, if so, that will trigger a series of meetings (a minimum of 5) that would involve all stakeholders at various levels (including the scientific community, the patient community, and the individual advisory councils). The SMRB would then provide some summary recommendation to DHHS and the NIH Director. APA CEO, Dr. Norman Anderson, sent a letter to Norman Augustine, Chair of the SMRB, requesting an opportunity to present an APA statement about the proposed merger at the first meeting.
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Science GRO Monitors National Academy Committee on Human-Systems Integration
APA's Science Government Relations staff always look for opportunities to work with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), both to ensure representation of scientific psychologists on NAS committees and to promote the results of NAS studies on Capitol Hill. In mid-February, Science GRO staff sat in on the meeting of the Committee on Human-Systems Integration (formerly known as the Committee on Human Factors) for briefs on cutting-edge research in areas ranging from medical error to augmented cognition and military training. In particular, the expertise and work of the Committee will inform APA's congressional advocacy on behalf of psychological research within the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security for Fiscal Year 2010.
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Institutes Debate How to Spend Stimulus Funds
While NIH leaders have yet to release the details of how it will spend its stimulus dollars, the National Advisory Mental Health Council heard on February 13 from NIMH Director Dr. Tom Insel how the institute might use any additional funds it receives. As NIMH, along with the rest of NIH, needs to use the stimulus funds within two years, some funds will likely go to projects that were determined to be scientifically meritorious during the last round of peer review. NIH has been operating under a Continuing Resolution since last year, and in that time period, the success rate at NIMH has fallen to 11 percent. The infusion of stimulus dollars is expected to increase the success rate to approximately 16 percent, though the funded projects may have to be altered seeing that the funding is limited to two years. Dr. Insel also indicated that NIMH may use the stimulus funds to jumpstart areas that were identified as priorities in the latest strategic plan. In speaking with groups after the stimulus passed, Acting NIH Director Dr. Raynard Kington said that the agency and program staff would be looking at supplements for existing grants, as well as new RFAs that would be released soon.
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RWJF Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research – Call for Application
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) recently released a call for applications for its Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research program, which is designed to support scholars from a range of fields who have innovative projects that can enhance policy to improve health or health care in the U.S. Unlike most NIH or NSF funding opportunities, the program, which provides grants of up to $335,000 for policy-relevant projects of 2-4 years duration, is not intended to support a discrete research project but rather to allow a scholar to devote considerable time to a project of greater scope than the usual RO1 grant. The program also offers an unrivaled opportunity to meet and often collaborate with outstanding scholars in fields including medicine, economics, political science, sociology, psychology, law, epidemiology, history, nursing, public health, and journalism, among others.
The Call for Applications, tips for applicants, and samples of past successful letters of intent are posted on the RWJF website. The deadline for receipt of 4-page letters of intent is March 25, 2009.
RWJF is always on the lookout for highly-qualified behavioral scientists with broad, innovative, policy-relevant projects that promise to contribute to improving health and health care policy. For more information, feel free to contact
Lynn Rogut.
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NSF Announces Search for New Assistant Director for Biological Sciences
On February 18, NSF Director Dr. Arden Bement announced the search for a new Assistant Director (AD) for the Biological Sciences Directorate, a position in which Dr. James Collins has served since October of 2005. Although the Directorate was once very supportive of psychological science, support for that research, particularly in the areas of learning and cognition, has diminished over the past several years, and neither APA nor grassroots efforts by the scientific community have been able to reverse the situation.
Trying to raise the profile of that research was a high priority for APA last spring when Dr. Steve Breckler testified on NSF funding before the House subcommittee overseeing NSF appropriations:
“…In previous testimony, APA has expressed concern about diminishing support for key behavioral research programs within this Directorate, most notably those focused on learning and cognition. NSF recognizes the importance of learning and cognition to many branches of science already, and supports Foundation-wide initiatives and individual research projects that seek to understand the neural or genetic mechanisms by which learning occurs, that use learning as an assay for the effects of environmental change on a biological system, that construct and evaluate artificial learning systems, that conceptualize the role of learning in biodiversity and evolution and that apply learning principles to education and workforce challenges.
However, we hope that NSF’s focus on transformational science will continue to recognize that behavior links everything from molecular biology to ecology because in a sense behavior is the ultimate genetic phenotype. Animals behave to eat, defend and reproduce, so an understanding of how the molecular processes within and beyond the central nervous system lead to behavior and how behavior serves an adaptive function seems essential to integrating biology across levels. Within the field of animal behavior and cognition there are clear demonstrations that this integration is occurring. For example, individual differences in gene expression can now be linked to individual differences in memory, attention, decision making, individual adaptation and fitness. The opportunity for understanding individual differences is unprecedented.”
More recently, a grassroots effort was launched to appeal directly to the National Science Board (NSB), the governing body which oversees the activities of the NSF. On January 25, a “white paper,” endorsed by 57 scientists with expertise on animal learning, cognition, and behavior was delivered to Dr. Steven Beering, the NSB Chair, to help garner additional support for that research. As this issue of SPIN goes to press, the group had not yet received a response. However, APA hopes that the new AD will be sensitive to the ongoing concerns of the psychological science community. Further, we encourage the psychological science community to actively engage in this search and to provide recommendations for candidates who recognize the value of basic research in cognition and learning.
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About SPIN
APA's Science Government Relations Office (GRO) wants you to know about the important policy issues that involve psychological science at the national level. The Science GRO staff advocate for psychological science not only with members of Congress, but also with the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, Education, Justice, and with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and National Science Foundation. To keep you up-to-date regarding science policy within these agencies and on Capitol Hill, Science GRO staff write various articles and publish them monthly in an electronic newsletter called Science Policy Insider News (SPIN).
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Questions?
If you have any questions regarding SPIN or specific science policy issues, please feel free to contact any of APA's Science GRO staff.
Geoff Mumford, PhD
Assistant Executive Director for Science Policy
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Pat Kobor
Senior Science Policy Analyst
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Heather O'Beirne Kelly, PhD
Senior Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer
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Karen Studwell, JD
Senior Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer
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Anne Bettesworth
Science Policy Associate
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Kirk Waldroff
Science Website Manager
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Tammy Barnes
Administrative Coordinator
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