Biophysical Newsletter - April 2014

8

BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

2014

APRIL

Public Affairs

outcomes research to combat public-health chal- lenges such as antibiotic resistance and neurode- generative diseases. His proposed budget includes a doubling in funding for the BRAIN Initiative to approximately $200 million for 2015 across NIH, NSF, and DARPA. Holdren summarized the President’s baseline 2015 R&D proposal with the following words: “These average increases are plainly modest,” adding that “this budget required a lot of tough choices. All of us would have preferred more.” The President also proposed to asking Congress to lift spending caps to provide another $56 billion for an “Opportunities, Growth, and Security Ini- tiative” to promote innovation and job creation, including basic and applied research, high-tech manufacturing hubs, incentives for states support- ing energy efficiency, and other science-based pri- orities that he described in his State of the Union address. Those $56 billion would not increase the national debt but would be offset by cuts in other areas that would need to be agreed upon by Congress. According to an AAAS analysis, the additional $56 billion request would include $5.3 billion in R&D support, including an extra $2.1 billion for Department of Defense R&D, $1 billion for a Climate Resilience Fund, $970 mil- lion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), $886 million for NASA, and $552 million for the National Science Foundation (NSF). Córdova Appointed NSF Director On March 12, France Córdova , former Purdue President, was approved as director of the Nation-

President’s 2015 Budget: Only Modest Increase in Federal Research On March 4, President Obama released his pro- posed FY 2015 budget, which included $135.4 billion in total federal research and development funding (see chart below). The amount remains within the spending caps established by the Budget Control Act and the December budget agreement. It is a 1.2% increase over 2014 levels, which, when inflation is taken into account, results in a 0.5% decrease to $5.1 million. His baseline budget provides $30.2 billion for NIH, and $7.3 billion for NSF, which is 1% over 2014 but the amount dedicated to research actu- ally lower by .03% from 2014. The DOE Office of Science saw an increase of less than 1%. At the March 4 Office of Science and Technology Policy Budget Briefing, John P. Holdren , Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director, OSTP, described the “biggest win- ners” under Obama’s baseline proposal as being the Department of Interior, which would receive $925 million in environmental and energy-related research; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which would see $688 million toward support of Earth-observing satellites and other research; the National Institute of Standards and Technology, slated to get $690 million for R&D; and research related to patient-centered

Science Agencies Funding (in billions)

President's Propsed FY 2015

Agency

FY 2012

FY 2013 with sequester cuts

FY 2014

NIH

30.046

28.604

29.63

30.3

NSF

5.614

6.884

7.172

7.3

DOE Office of Science

4.463

4.621

5.07

5.11