NIH Simulus update

From Scienceinsider:

The National Institutes of Health will dedicate most of its $8.2 billion for research from the economic stimulus bill to funding grant applications it has already received and to supplementing existing grants. A smaller amount, on the order of $100 million to $200 million, will go to new grant applications it receives in the coming months.

Also mentioned are a new set of targetted challenge grants which will be for as much as $500K for two years.

It suggests to me that NIH is managing the new dollars in anticipation that it’s overall base budget will not change so much going forward.

Jim

Touching base after a short break

I’ve been pretty occupied with the budget over the past week, hence fewer posts than I would have liked. But I’ve been at it far to long to give up my blog! So I’ll take this time to point you to Olivia Judson’s blog at the NYTimes.com–she’s got a guest this time, he’s a bioengineering professor at Stanford and he’s advocating for a recalibration in how we fund science.

Jim

Running an Institute during an Economic Downturn

While the current Recession isn’t the first downturn I’ve lead the Institute through, it’s by far the worst. The combination of cascading negative external factors combined with the uncertainties have created a unique set of challenges. On the other hand, this time around, the Institute is well situated in terms of a scientific critical mass, an excellent sponsored research portfolio and the massive (and still growing) infrastructure of George Mason, Virginia’s public Carnegie Research university in the National Capital Area.

Given the times, and the fact that I’ve been director long enough to have seen downturns before, I thought that it might be useful to put down some of the principles that I am using to get us through the current difficult conditions:

1) Budgeting–prioritize to protect the core scientific/academic mission, realizing that with those two intact, all else can be quickly regenerated.

2) Transparency–keep all stakeholders up to date on exactly what is happening, what the current plan is, and where the uncertainties lie. Do this continuously in multiple contexts throughout the crisis. The result is to strengthen morale and to mitigate distracting what-if scenarios that can damage the scientific/academic programs.

3) Maintain a position that will allow for rapid transformation back into growth. While recessions are macro-economic events that affect scientific institutions, the nature of science funding is such that a massive downturn might happen in tandem with significant increases in federal science investment. It’s important to keep that in mind so that the institution is prepared to opportunistically emerge from hunkering down to compete and win new awards.

4) Protect support staff–those who have invested years to support the science of the institution may not be the feed grain, but they are surely the farmers, who through their experience, can both see us through the difficult times and make possible the conditions for scientific success in the future.

5) Fundraising–realize that the continued engagement with those who have given personally to the institution in the past, but may not be able to under the current circumstances, is central to the building of long-term loyalty so central to leadership level gift opportunities.

Jim

Aron Moscona passes

Aron Moscona was one of the reasons that I became a biologist (and all neuroscientists really are biologists). I was at the MBL in Woods Hole in the late 1970’s and was taking an invertebrate zoology course through the Boston University Marine Program. The professor, the late Arthur Humes, led us through a combined field and laboratory intellectual exploration of the field that was like nothing I had experienced at college during my undergraduate years. At the end of the course, we had to devise our own experiment and mine was based on a basic finding of Moscona’s: namely that closely related cells of different species (in my case two different species of the sponge Microciona) when disassociated through cheese cloth, would somehow find their own kind to re-aggregate with. The basis for this self-self interaction turned out to be Moscona’s major discovery: cathedrins. This basic self-self cellular recognition turns out to be crucial throughout biology and Moscona’s early work during the 1950’s and 1960’s turned cell biology into a molecular-based science. We’ll miss him.

Jim 

Decade of the Mind IV, V and beyond


We returned to Washington on the red-eye from Long Beach Airport and arrived on Monday morning, in time for the festivities–although we didn’t brave the crowds on the Mall. I note that President Obama clearly mentioned science in his inaugural address–that and his high quality appointments make me very optimistic about this administration.

The money quote:

The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.

The Decade of the Mind IV meeting went better than I could have ever expected–just a superb set of presentations, Q&A sessions and off-line discussions. The picture is of the New York Times’ science reporter George Johnson and Director of the National Museum of Health and Medicine Adrianne Noe. Dr. Noe is also the current chair of the Krasnow Advisory Board. I’m in the middle. The river in the background is the Rio Grande with the Sandia Mountains as the backdrop.

Decade of the Mind V, will be held in Berlin Germany on September 10-12 of this year. I’ll have more information soon, so stay tuned. And in the meantime, we’re working on future plans to keep the momentum moving into Asia.

Jim

All is well at the NSF

Just got back from an NSF review panel–although getting back is really the wrong word–the National Science Foundation is located in Arlington Virginia, about a mile down Glebe Road from my house. What’s becoming ever more clear to me is that while there are indeed many parts of the US government that seem to be broken, the Foundation is one agency that works well. Every time that I return from panel or just a visit, I’m impressed with the institutional shared vision: funding the very best science with transparency and rigor.

Monday I’m off to New Mexico for the Fourth Decade of the Mind Conference. I’ll be blogging from the road if I can manage a decent internet connection. Then off to California for a quick visit to my Mom and the house I grew up in, about a block from Caltech in Pasadena.

Jim

Regulating Sugar and Memory

From today’s NY Times….

In the study, researchers used high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging to map brain regions in 240 elderly subjects. They found a correlation between elevated blood glucose levels and reduced cerebral blood volume, or blood flow, in the dentate gyrus, an indication of reduced metabolic activity and function in that region of the brain.

And by the way: Happy New Year!

Jim