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发帖数: 71 | 1 Senate committee approves funding increase for NIH in FY 2014
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill Wednesday that would
provide $30.95 billion in funds for the National Institutes of Health for
fiscal year 2014--an increase of $307 million from the agency's current
budget.
The bill offers a glimmer of hope to scientists who will inevitably feel the
effects of sequestration, which cut NIH's budget by 5%--or $1.55 billion--
across all of the agency's programs, projects and activities. In 2012, NIH's
total funding was about $30.86 billion. Under sequestration, that number
will be slashed to $29.15 billion this year.
The sequester cuts will result in NIH cutting 703 competitive research
project grants--to a total of 34,904 grants in the current fiscal year.
Funding levels for National Research Service Awards, highly selective and
prestigious stipends for doctoral and postdoctoral students pursuing
behavioral and health science research, also will not increase for
recipients this year.
"The Senate funding level for NIH replaces the funding lost due to
sequestration and is a critical step in the right direction," said Dr.
Margaret K. Offermann, president of the Federation of American Societies for
Experimental Biology, in an official statement issued Wednesday.
Of course, the full Senate and House will have to approve the bill first,
and then President Barack Obama will have to sign off on the budget for the
funding changes to go into place.
The proposed budget increase is only a meager bump considering NIH's 2012
funding level. Scientists and medical research advocates say a decade of
flat budgets, in addition to the sequestration cuts, are slowing progress
and creating job uncertainty for the next generation of researchers.
The Senate Appropriations Committee bill would also allow NIH to allocate $
40 million for the new Brain Research through Advancing Innovative
Neurotechnologies, or BRAIN Initiative, rolled out by President Obama in
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