The clock strikes noon as Kelly Cycon takes a quick swig of Aquafina water to wash down the chewy mouthful of whatever energy bar she grabbed that morning before work. Although her stomach longs for a real lunch, a sandwich and apple perhaps, she’s grateful for the momentary break to nourish herself during the ten hour-plus workday. As a Ph.D. candidate studying diseases and immunology, she bears the 90-minute commute, unresponsive supervisors, and limited time at home with her three-year-old daughter with a grin. She’s just happy to have a research job at all.
Less than a decade ago, federal funding for scientific research and development was on a sky-high track, allowing the U.S. government to award countless grants and endowments for laboratories across the nation. Since then, however, the strained economy has forced the growth rate of this financial support to reach a standstill, so much so that federal funding has actually decreased, in some instances in actual dollar amounts, and in others as a percentage when adjusted for inflation. The resulting cutthroat competition is hitting the ones at the bottom the hardest. Many of this generation’s most talented students and young researchers are leaving their jobs and study paths for more profitable and rewarding careers.
In the 1990s, an explosive five-year doubling plan for scientific research and development for the National Institute of Health (NIH) set in place by former President Clinton and Congress, took federal funding to an all-time high. The NIH is a division of the Department of Health and Human Services responsible for the allocation of federal research funding to the fields of medical and biological sciences. As a result of this large responsibility, it represents the largest portion of federal scientific funding.
The plan laid out a nearly 20 percent increase in funding every year from 1998 until 2003, causing a jump in funding for research development to the NIH from $15 billion to $30 billion. This plan not only called for doubling funds in real terms, but also provided for the effects of inflation.
A similar plan was enacted by Congress and then signed into law in late 2002. This plan would set many of the same standards for the second largest federally funded science endowment, the National Science Foundation (NSF). It called for a 15 percent increase in the following five years, resulting in a budget increase from $4.8 billion in 2003 to $9.8 billion in 2007.
Unlike the doubling plan for the NIH, the NSF plan never came to fruition, as the administration had other matters to which to attend. What would result is a NSF funding mark that would fall abhorrently short of its amount allotted by law. Even with an increase of 7.9 percent for 2007, the NSF funding mark is still just at $6.0 billion, well below the $9.8 billion mark where the funding should be at this point.
The NIH isn’t doing so well, either. The years since the success of the doubling plan have seen a much different trend. According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2006 was the first year since 1970 that the federal government cut research and development money in the NIH budget. Last year, funding decreased by 0.1 percent to roughly 28.6 billion dollars. The annual proposed budget for 2007 resulted in nearly the same funding as in 2006, as this flat funding kept the current level at 28.6 billion.
This doesn’t seem to be just a short-term problem. Projected budget plans for the upcoming 2008 fiscal year plan for even deeper cuts at the NIH, as another $329 million may be scrapped. When taking into account biomedical science inflation, which rises more sharply than general economy-wide inflation, the NIH budget will have fallen nearly 12 percent from 2004 to 2008.
When it comes to researchers and their jobs, these flat, if not declining budget trends mean that many will continue to lose opportunities and job placements. The NIH projects it will fund a decreased number of research grant proposals this year. With the number of proposals submitted for grant approval rising, the total number of accepted grants will continue to slide as will the inflation-adjusted amount of money that the researchers will receive in an average grant.
Jorge José, Vice President for Research at the University at Buffalo, noted that the boom in funding in the late 1990s resulted in the number of proposals also skyrocketing, creating an ideal environment for young, Ph.D.-aspiring scientists. He thinks that this atmosphere has shifted slightly since the halt of government funds.
“When something is growing, it leads to a large production, and in this case that production consisted of Ph.D. students and professors,” said José. “Now, instead of growing at a fast pace, funding has been stabilized, and many more people are applying for funding. People still get funded, but it’s harder to get money,” he said.
The faces behind these statistics are a telling indicator of the nationwide urgency for funding. Cycon and another Roswell Park Cancer Institute researcher who wishes to remain anonymous, due to fear of losing his job (a deathblow for Ph.D. candidates), paint a vivid picture of how legislative policy has turned their fervent, eager-eyed passion for research into a routine so mundane and convoluted that they are left with no choice but to leave.
Cycon says that when she was entering graduate school, labs were eager to recruit students and supervisors would present various research endeavors for them to choose to their liking. Now, it’s different.
“As funding gets tighter, there are fewer admissions available, which makes it harder for students to have a better choice of what they want to do,” she said.
She explains that even when students graduate, it can still be difficult to find labs with enough backing to pay a worker’s wages, even if that worker has an advanced degree. One of Cycon’s former colleagues, “Jason,” found this out first-hand when he was looking for a job in the biomedical sciences.
“He had a handful of labs that he was going through, but everyone he contacted had no money to accept him into their lab. He had to settle for one guy, and when he got there, this [supervisor] picked up and moved to Singapore.”
The anonymous Roswell Park Cancer Institute staff member described how the researchers fortunate enough to be employed in a lab are then subjected to an atmosphere of “publish or perish.” He has learned through his years at Roswell Park that researchers who don’t get published are highly unlikely to receive grant money from the federal government, and as a result, researchers are forced to spend a lot of their time and energy on publishing efforts rather than pressing research needs.
“If you haven’t been published, your chance of getting a grant is severely limited. You need to get published and get results out of your lab, to be seen as productive. It’s a big pressure because you need to be publishing all the time and it’s not that easy,” he said.
An August article in The Chronicle of Higher Education echoes the Roswell employee’s remark that the NIH only finances eight percent of biomedical research proposal applications. Since grants can only be submitted once, except in rare specialized cases, there is a huge burden placed on the entire lab, especially the Ph.D. candidates, to write an ideal grant proposal.
Cycon resents this pressure. “You see what these researchers go through, writing grants that take an enormous amount of time and energy. To work on something for two months, send it in, wait four months, and hear that the proposal’s not good enough or they don’t have enough money…Oh my God, I could not survive doing that,” said Cycon.
She doesn’t have to survive it much longer. Cycon currently plans on setting out into the pharmaceutical industry, and the anonymous employee is completely certain of his intent to work in pharmaceuticals. This field of science is thought to offer more stability, support, and opportunities than government-funded biomedical departments. And the tripled salary doesn’t hurt, either.
“I guess the big thing with being in graduate school is the choice between academic setting or industry. There’s always been a long tie with people in the industry being ‘sell outs,’ but that seems to be changing a bit as the financial situation in academia is so dire,” said Cycon.
“I’m going to go to a pharmaceutical company,” said the anonymous researcher. “They value you and give encouragement, you’re part of a team.”
The summation of these factors is not only driving gifted young Americans to other careers, but to other countries as well. Many researchers are finding that labs in Europe and Asia give out not only funding, but also the leeway to take on risky, creative experiments without fear of losing grant approval.
“The problem is that traditionally many students migrated from Europe to the United States because they had more freedom and more money,” said the anonymous researcher who hails from a Western European country. “When I came to the states, they were the best at the time for this, but things have changed. They’re still the best, but other countries are catching up.”
One foundation is trying to ensure that the United States remains at the forefront of scientific research, and is doing so through financial support to labs from the bottom up, as opposed to the government who funds supervisors and principal researchers at the top. Research Corporation was founded in 1912 by Frederick Gardner Cottrell, the inventor of the precipitator. Dr. Cottrell had studied in the U.S. and abroad, and understood the aggravation of young scientists being restrained by lack of money. He used the profits from his patents to create the foundation with the intent of funding scientific ventures.
“We are the second oldest foundation in the United States, the only one older is the Carnegie Corporation. But we are the longest-running foundation exclusively dedicated to funding science. That’s our history,” explains Jim Gentile, acting president of Research Corporation. “We were funding science when no one else was.”
Gentile recognizes that “fewer and fewer numbers of scientists are able to tap into award systems through the NIH or NFS” and “it’s particularly tough for biomedical sciences.” He says that this is why Research Corporation now limits their services to researchers just starting out their career, so that they might have a fighting chance in the scientific world.
“All of our programs are going to focus on faculty very early in their career. They’re not available for senior faculty anymore,” said Gentile. “I’m not smart enough to predict what kind of research will be important 20 years from now. But if we train young faculty who will be active 20 years from now, they will be able to do it.”
Gentile sees a broader image of what complications lie ahead if the United States keeps neglecting its youngest and brightest research students.
“We’re losing our edge. I’m worried that it will swamp us if we lose the ability to train and engage our young scientists,” he said.
The administration here at the University at Buffalo sees the importance of training young scientists as well. Two individuals who are sympathetic to the pains of grant writing are Hadar Borden and Nigel Marriner, both assistant administrative assistants in the Honors College. In his extensive grant writing experience, Marriner has seen the recent course of events as troubling to students and faculty alike.
“It’s hard because there is now more of a push for these grants, but less federal money out there,” said Marriner.
Borden echoed Marriner’s sentiments, as she has seen first-hand how the lack of federal money has impacted students with her work on NSF grants here at UB.
“Funding has dried up in recent years, and it’s getting harder and harder for UB students to get federal funding,” Borden commented.
Yet the students are not the only ones being affected by this situation. The research universities themselves feel the consequences of funding shortcomings as they still want to try and recruit some of the best and brightest.
Marriner explains that “schools need to do something to offset the differences, they are trying to develop their own programs to combat these problems [in funding].”
Many UB administrators see these problems coming up fast on the horizon, and don’t want to fall victim to a lack of federal research aid. Those in charge of this university want to keep it on track as a growing research institution, despite some of these obstacles. One such individual, Jorge José, sees it as an absolute necessity to keep fighting even though funding is down.
“The government is trying to double money to these federally funded science programs, but it hasn’t been approved or appropriated,” Dr. José said.
Finding funding sources outside of the norm will be key to the future of this and other top research universities, due to a diverted money supply. Dr. José describes how this situation has come about.
“The NIH budget has not increased. However, Homeland Security and defense have gotten more money, so what we need to do now is start searching for other sources of funding,” Dr. José explained.
UB is doing just that. Despite these trends in funding from both the NIH and the NSF, the University at Buffalo has increased research and development expenditures for the past five years. In that time period the university has seen a total increase of 59.7 percent. This past year, expenditures rose more than $30 million, or an 11.5 percent increase, which was the largest since 2001. These steady increases have come despite federal funding making up a decreased part of the funds year by year. Since last year, the portion of research expenditures at UB from federal funds dropped more than five percent.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to stay competitive from year to year, but as Dr. José explains, the University at Buffalo is poised to remain a formidable research university.
“We have a very well-defined strategic growth plan with UB2020.” He adds that their ultimate goal with UB2020 and keeping up with biomedical scientific research is to “fully develop a university where we create knowledge that has a greater social impact.”
In 1952, an American scientist created the vaccine for polio. In 1969, America became the first country to send astronauts walking on the moon. And in 2003, a complete draft detailing the DNA sequence of human beings was published in the Human Genome Project, led by researchers in the United States. Some of the most symbolic advancements of the human race have been the result of scientific progress, and this progress is crucial to continue the betterment of the nation and humanity at large. Although institutions at UB are striving to keep labs funded and young scientists inspired, the federal government needs to step up in order to ensure that this nation’s future researchers are not sidestepped or ignored.
As Jim Gentile states, paraphrasing a sentiment expressed in several commissions on the need for scientific funding, “Outside of the threat of a serious destruction occurring, like what happened with the World Trade Center or some other type of terror campaign, the lack of scientific engagement and educational, sufficient workplaces is the second greatest threat America faces.”
Jill Gregorie is a junior International Studies major and Features Editor for Generation.
Jordan Zyglis is a junior Sociology and History major and a Features writer for Generation.
