Campuses warn of cuts in research
MIT, others cite shift, slowdown in US funds
http://tinyurl.com/9js39
By Robert Weisman
CAMBRIDGE -- Years of increases in federal research spending are coming
to a halt, and top universities like MIT fear they will have to make
cutbacks in cherished projects.
The cuts will be felt most sharply by schools where the research
emphasis is on the physical sciences as opposed to medicine. The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is among those schools,
projects that its federal funding will be flat or down in the coming
year. An MIT nuclear fusion reaction experiment funded by the Department
of Energy is one project expected to take an immediate hit: It would run
for 12 weeks next year, down from 17 weeks this year.
''That whole ability to have a good idea and get funding for it and
pursue it is in our DNA," said Alice Gast, vice president for research
and associate provost at MIT. Gast said she worries that the flattening
budget and other changes in the research environment could stymie
technology innovation at leading academic centers.
MIT is only one among many prestigious schools to see key research
initiatives threatened. Other cuts by the energy department would
mothball a separate fusion energy research experiment at the Princeton
Plasma Physics Laboratory, and scale back operations of a heavy ion
collider for nuclear physics research at the Brookhaven National
Laboratory, operated by Stony Brook University. And the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration budget for the current year already
has forced Stanford University to delay one space science project and
recast another.
The new funding constraints -- federal research spending is expected to
rise only 0.1 percent next fiscal year -- add to already deepening
anxieties among campus researchers. Federal agencies in recent years
have been steering university labs away from long-term basic research
and toward shorter-term applied research. The agencies also are
funneling more funds toward areas driven by national security
priorities, such as developing battlefield robots and combating
bioterrorist threats, leaving non-defense fields feeling shortchanged.
The continuing war in Iraq and federal budget pressures have exacerbated
the pressures.
Bush Administration officials seek to place the research trends in a
larger context. ''The president is trying to reduce the budget deficit,"
said John H. Marburger 3d, science advisor to President Bush and
director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
''The budget reflects the priorities of winning the war against
terrorism, strengthening homeland security, and assuring our future
competitiveness."
Apart from the tighter budget, changes in policy at the federal agencies
that fund research also have universities worried. In some cases,
schools are being forced to choose between refusing contracts or
accepting restrictions on publication of their results and participation
by foreign students.
They also are facing limits on the number of grant applications they can
submit for certain research programs. Earlier this year, MIT's Gast took
part in a painful culling exercise, huddling with a group of colleagues
to review 17 faculty proposals for a National Science Foundation grant.
The group had to designate just one as ''lead proposal" to be MIT's
grant application.
Faculty members in the past sent their plans directly to the foundation,
and there often were multiple MIT submissions, which would be
scrutinized by a peer-review panel assembled by the agency. But
institutions are now being limited to a single submission for some
grants. And school administrators have to play traffic cops.
''I had to send e-mail to 16 people telling them, 'Sorry, we couldn't
choose your proposals,' " Gast said. ''It's created gridlock."
Bill Noxon, spokesman for the National Science Foundation, said the
limits on submissions are an effort by some of the agency's program
managers to cope with a 25 percent increase in research proposals in
recent years.
Still, the MIT grant experience is an example of the concern spreading
in the academic research community, historically a strong economic
engine. US researchers, accustomed to ever-expanding government largesse
unmatched by other countries, are watching with alarm as efforts to rein
in federal spending cast a shadow over research.
Funding for research would inch up 0.1 percent to $132.3 billion in the
fiscal 2006 budget proposed by the Bush administration. By contrast,
federal research outlays climbed 4.6 percent in fiscal 2005, 6.9 percent
in fiscal 2004, and 14.5 percent in fiscal 2003. Funding for basic
research, which has longer time horizons and fewer immediate
applications, would dip 1.1 percent to $26.5 billion under the 2006
spending plan. And when adjusted for inflation, overall research funding
would fall 1.9 percent to $129.7 billion in the proposed new budget.
''We're selling ourselves short," said Arthur Bienenstock, vice provost
and dean of research and graduate policy at Stanford, who noted that
university research trains students who are future leaders in science.
''I see us cutting back on basic research at the same time I see
industry putting their research labs in India and China, partly because
they say they can't find enough qualified people in this country."
The pressure on open-ended research programs has been accelerating in
recent years. Bienenstock said space science initiatives at Stanford
have fallen victim to a NASA shift away from basic research to the
Moon-Mars Program championed by Bush. Similar shifts are underway at
other agencies, ranging from the energy department to the Pentagon to
the National Institutes for Health.
''The fundamental change is that investments are going to much more
applied research," said Tobin L. Smith, senior federal relations officer
with the Association of American Universities in Washington, which
represents 60 leading research universities. ''Very little money is
going to the knowledge creation that is the underpinnings of innovation."
While insisting that the administration recognizes the federal role in
backing long-term basic research, Marburger said certain agencies, such
as the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency,
intentionally have been funding shorter-term research. They also have
been pressing contractors, at universities and defense companies, to
adhere to stricter deadlines and submit progress reports. ''People have
to keep in mind that we're in a state of war, and there is a need to
deliver technology to the front, to the war fighters," he said. ''It's
not surprising that this would be a priority in this period."
Even agencies where funding has increased the most in recent years, such
as the NIH, are funneling more money to security projects, such as
combating bioterrorist threats. Marburger said basic research funding is
still growing in areas seen as key to the nation's economic future, from
nanotechnology to the hydrogen economy.
One of the nation's largest research universities, MIT has an annual
research budget of more than $1 billion, divided equally between
civilian research done on its campus and military research done at its
Lincoln Laboratory in Bedford. For the institute's 1,000 faculty, the
budget amounts to roughly $500,000 per faculty member.
''Obviously, a flat budget is a concern," Gast said, ''but we're also
concerned about the distribution. If you're trying to explore new
possibilities that could be game changers, the so-called disruptive
technologies, you're not going to get that done in 12 to 18 months."
One initiative that could help change the energy game is the nuclear
fusion experiment known as Alcator C-Mod project. At that project, part
of MIT's Plasma Science & Fusion Center, researchers are making and
heating plasma in a doughnut-shaped magnetic bottle to produce nuclear
fusion reactions.
''We're worried along with everyone else, because we think science is
important to the future of the country," said Earl S. Marmar, senior
research scientist in MIT's physics department and leader of the Alcator
project, who said he's still hopeful Congress might restore funds for
his project. ''What we're trying to do is understand the physics and the
technology that can get us from where we are today to an actual reactor
in the future. If we have fewer weeks of operations, we'll have less
time to devote to that and we'll have to make tradeoffs."
--
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- William H. Beveridge, 1944
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