Science Funds Uncertain

As the U.S. economy continues to struggle through its worst crisis in decades, Harvard researchers dependent on private funds are feeling the pinch.

Last month, a private disease foundation told Adrian J. Ivinson, director of the NeuroDiscovery Center at Harvard Medical School, that it could no longer fund his grant through its current funding plan—asking to break up the payments into four or five installments, instead of two.

Ivinson, who conducts research on neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s and Parkinson’s, says his center draws 60 percent of its funding from private donors—causing unease about support for future projects.

Several foundations have told Ivinson that they will no longer accept grant applications. And some donors who have supported him repeatedly say they cannot afford to fund in the future.

“We have good and honest conversations about their plans for the coming months,” he says.

Such grim financial projections abound at Harvard Medical School and its affiliated hospitals where much of its faculty work. Mass. General, Dana-Farber, and Beth Israel Deaconess have all announced plans for layoffs. And the Medical School recently said it would cut its budget by 10 percent for the next fiscal year due to a projected 30 percent decline in Harvard’s endowment for the year ending this June 30.

Amid this unease, some see the recently passed federal stimulus package as a much-needed silver lining, promising to pump billions of dollars into scientific research.

And others worry that this temporary federal windfall may be unable to alleviate the crunch, leaving the fate of their long-term funding in limbo.

UNCERTAIN TERMS

The dicey financial climate has led many researchers at the Medical School and its affiliates to scramble for new funding options.

Joan S. Brugge, chair of the Department of Cell Biology, said she knows of four people in her department who had grants from private foundations that have gone under.

“All funding was cut off immediately,” she said, and next year’s funding remains unclear.

But even the $10 billion increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health in President Obama’s one-time stimulus package could do little to change this uncertainty over the long-run, researchers said.

Though Brugge said the stimulus package has been a huge morale boost for researchers, she added that there is confusion about certain stipulations in the bill, specifically why the NIH funding requires projects to be completed within two years.

“Will we just reengage people and put off the bad news for the cessation in funding?” she asked.

Isaac S. Kohane, the director of the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program, agreeD that though the increase in funding is very much appreciated, it does not solve a structural revenue problem. He said that the overhead from this funding would at best serve as a band-aid for the next two years.

“It is not something the Medical School and University can build its future on,” Kohane said.

ANTE UP

Brugge said that even though the stimulus means more funding, its temporary nature complicates allocation.

“We don’t want to create a worse situation in two years when the funding is up,” she said.

Brugge said she was also concerned about junior members who have the least job protection, and that stimulus funding should be directed toward vulnerable postdocs.

“Many of the lab directors are not anticipating funding [the postdocs] after next summer because they won’t have jobs,” she said. “Those are the ones we are most worried about.”

Kohane agreed that the additional funding should go to young researchers, whose positions are the most vulnerable.

“It we do short-term hiring, we will face a really problematic gap in the pipeline of young faculty rising up the ranks. I would like to see the monies if possible focused on that group more than any other,” Kohane said.

Other administrators are focusing more on what projects to fund rather than who will get the money.

Ivinson said that he has held meetings with his investigators to come up with a strategy to apply for the new funding. He said that he and his colleagues have worked to identify “shovel-ready projects” that could be started immediately.

He pointed to a new mouse behavior lab facility at the Center as an example of a project that can be completed in two years—according to Ivinson, 75 percent of the funding is already in place.

A GROWING URGENCY

Ivinson said that part of his fundraising pitch is to say that despite the economic downturn, he needs donors’ help now more than ever.

“If not you, then who?” he asks, adding that as donors contemplate cutting back, his Center cannot just agree to slow down its research over the next few months and years.

“This is a challenge, and we can respond to the challenge by being upbeat,” Ivinson said. “We know it will be tough, but any day that we don’t make progress in the disease we are treating, the urgency grows. We are not going to back off.”

But even Director of the Center for Genomic Medicine Scott T. Weiss—who said he has been continuously funded by the NIH for 30 years and works in a field often prioritized for funding—said that grant money is always uncertain.

“Everyone applies for a lot of grants and you keep applying and hope that one or another of these will get funded,” he said.

—Staff writer Laura G. Mirviss can reached at lmirviss@fas.harvard.edu.

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