NIH Slated for 6 Percent Bump in FY 2025
Under President Biden's budget proposal for fiscal year (FY) 2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would receive a roughly 6 percent boost to $50.1 billion, with most of this increase going to the National Cancer Institute as part of the Cancer Moonshot initiative.
ARPA-H is slated to receive flat funding of $1.5 billion, separate from the $50.1 billion requested for NIH, to fund high-risk, transformative research that drives biomedical innovations.
The request outlines a number of priorities for NIH in FY 2024. This includes continued support for the Cancer Moonshot initiative, which would receive an overall funding of $2.2 billion, including $716 million in discretionary funding and $1.5 billion in new mandatory funding. Other priorities include advancing nutrition science, tackling the opioid epidemic, eradicating HIV in the United States, developing a universal influenza vaccine, expanding mental health research, addressing health disparities and inequities, researching the human health impacts of climate change, and continued support for pandemic preparedness activities.
The budget request would support a total of 43,636 research project grants, an increase of 460 above FY 2023, including a total of 10,273 competing grants.
Most NIH institutes and centers would receive essentially flat finding, with a few receiving significant boosts:
- National Cancer Institute: +8.5 percent (if the $1.5 billion in mandatory funding for the Cancer Moonshot initiative is excluded; and +29 percent if it is included)
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute: +0.4 percent
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: +9 percent
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: +0.3 percent
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences: flat
- National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences: +0.6 percent
- National Institute of Mental Health: +16.5 percent
- National Human Genome Research Institute: flat
- National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering: +0.3 percent
- National Library of Medicine: +6 percent
The proposal would boost the Office of the Director's budget by 17 percent. The buildings and facilities account for NIH would remain flat at $350 million, with priority given to addressing the maintenance and repair backlog at the agency.
The budget includes $40 million (flat*) for NIH to continue research related to the impact of climate change on human health, in collaboration with other federal agencies.
NIH will continue to fund health disparities and inequities research at $95 million (flat*). This includes continued support for the UNITE initiative, an NIH-wide effort launched in FY 2021 to end racial inequities across the biomedical research enterprise.
The budget includes $127 million in funding made available through the 21st Century Cures Act for the All of Us Research Program and the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, a decrease of $742 million*. The request proposes a corresponding increase of $742 million in non-Cures Act discretionary funding to provide an overall flat* funding of $1.2 billion for All of Us and BRAIN.
The request includes $270 million (flat*) for the development of a universal influenza vaccine and $26 million (flat*) for the NIH-sponsored Centers for AIDS Research to continue research on HIV prevention and treatment. With respect to pandemic preparedness, $2.69 billion is requested for NIH to support research and development on vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics, biosafety and biosecurity, and expanding lab infrastructure.
The agency requests level funding of $1.8 billion for opioids, stimulants, and pain research. Within this total, $1.2 billion would support ongoing research across NIH centers, while $636 million (flat*) would be allocated to the Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative, which was launched in April 2018 to combat opioid addiction and perform research on pain and addiction.
The proposal includes an increase of $360 million for the National Institute of Mental Health to support improved diagnostics, treatments, and precision of care for mental health.
(* denotes a comparison to FY 2023 enacted level, where FY 2024 data were unavailable)
Biden Proposes Small Budget Increase for DOE Office of Science
According to the President's budget request, the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science is slated to receive a 4 percent boost in FY 2025 to $8.6 billion. The Office supports both scientific research and design, development, construction, and operation of scientific user facilities. Approximately 29,000 researchers located at over 300 institutions and 16 DOE national laboratories are supported by grants from the Office of Science.
The FY 2025 request proposes increased investments in Administration priorities such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, basic research on climate change and clean energy, including fusion energy, the SC Energy Earthshots initiative, and Microelectronics Science Research Centers.
The request also provides continued support for increasing participation from underrepresented groups in research activities, including for office-wide initiatives of Funding for Accelerated, Inclusive Research (FAIR) and Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW). The FAIR initiative is focused on enhancing research on clean energy, climate, and related topics at Minority Serving Institutions, while RENEW aims to broaden participation and increase retention from underserved communities across research activities.
The Office of Science will continue supporting the Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment initiative, which enables multidisciplinary research collaborations to respond to future pandemics and other biological threats. Another cross-cutting initiative, Energy Earthshots, which supports science at the nexus of clean energy production and climate change, would also receive continued support.
Among the Office of Science's six research programs, advanced scientific computing research would receive the largest bump (+13.5 percent), with biological and environmental research (BER) receiving a 5 percent increase and fusion energy sciences receiving a 7 percent boost. Smaller increases are proposed for high energy physics (+2.6 percent) and nuclear physics (+3.6 percent), whereas basic energy sciences would see its budget shrink by 1.7 percent.
The $945 million for BER would support enhanced research on climate science with a new initiative focused on a high resolution prediction capability and by expanding the Urban Integrated Field Laboratories and the network of climate centers affiliated with Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions. BER would continue investments in AI for improving Earth and environmental system predictability, expand its Earthshots efforts, and advance biotechnology innovations to support advanced manufacturing.
Within BER, Biological Systems Science would receive $454 million, an 8 percent increase relative to FY 2024, with genomic sciences receiving $316 million (-4 percent*), Biomolecular Characterization and Imaging Science receiving $44 million (-2 percent*); and Biological Systems Facilities & Infrastructure getting $94 million (+4 percent*).
The Genomic Science activity supports basic research in foundational genomics, bioenergy, environmental genomics, and computational bioscience. Foundational genomics includes basic research on discovery and manipulation of genome structural, regulatory, and epigenetic controls to understand genotype to phenotype translations in microbes and plants. The four Bioenergy Research Centers will continue to support multidisciplinary clean energy research.
Small increases are proposed for the three BER scientific user facilities, namely, the Joint Genome Institute (+4 percent*), the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Research Facility (+1.4 percent*), and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (+0.4 percent*).
Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences-which supports the study of terrestrial ecosystems, including the Arctic-would receive a 10 percent boost to $472 million. Most of that increase would go to environmental system science (+28 percent*). Minor funding cuts are slated for its other accounts, including atmospheric systems research (-0.7 percent*), earth and environmental systems modeling (-0.8 percent*), and facilities and infrastructure (-3.3 percent*).
Advanced scientific computing research would receive a total of $1.2 billion. Increases are proposed for its research activities (+15 percent*), while the Exascale Computing Project would shrink by $77 million as it closes out. The proposal includes $16 million in new funds for the construction of high performance data facility.
The budget for basic energy sciences--which supports research in material physics, chemistry, geosciences, and biosciences--would shrink by $44 million to $2.6 billion. Continued support is proposed for fundamental research on clean energy, the Energy Frontier Research Centers, the Energy Earthshot Research Centers, the Energy Innovation Hubs, and the National Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Centers.
The Science Laboratories Infrastructure account is slated to expand by 2.4 percent to $295 million, with the funds directed to 8 ongoing construction projects to improve infrastructure across the national labs.
Workforce development for teachers and scientists would grow by 8 percent to $43 million. The request would continue support for learning and hands-on research experiences at DOE national laboratories and efforts to diversify the STEM pipeline.
(* denotes a comparison to FY 2023 enacted level, where FY 2024 data were unavailable)
Nearly Flat Budget Proposed for Agricultural Research
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is slated to receive a total of $31.6 billion in FY 2025, an increase of $3.7 billion over FY 2023. The research, education, and economics account at USDA is proposed to receive less than a 1 percent increase relative to FY 2024 to $3.8 billion.
Intramural agricultural research in the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) would receive $1.8 billion (-2 percent). In spite of the small overall cut, additional funding would be directed to research on climate science (+$13 million), precision nutrition (+$15 million), smart plants that can self-treat (+$7 million), PFAS contamination in agriculture (+$8 million), and supporting the Cancer Moonshot (+$17 million).
These increases would be offset by $71.4 million in cuts from ongoing research projects, which the Department describes as "necessary to reset priorities." Every division within ARS would experience the elimination of some research projects.
The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility could see an increase of $13 million. This state-of-the-art biocontainment facility will be used to research emerging animal diseases.
New money is also requested for Climate Hubs to support the adoption of climate-smart practices by farmers, ranchers, and foresters. The $14 million additional investment would help these practitioners make region specific climate-informed decisions and provide technical assistance to implement those decisions.
The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) partners with academic institutions to conduct extramural research, education, and extension activities. NIFA would be funded at $1.7 billion (+3 percent) in FY 2025. Within NIFA, competitively awarded extramural research supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) would increase by 7 percent to $475 million. New investments would be targeted to climate change adaptation and mitigation, clean energy, the Cancer Moonshot, and precision nutrition.
Agriculture education would see $365 million for creation of career development opportunities for the next generation of scholars at Minority-Serving Institutions. The budget also includes $2 million to help address the backlog of research facility needs at land-grant universities.
Biden Administration Finalizes Rollback of Trump ESA Rules
The Biden Administration has finalized rules to strengthen protections for endangered and threatened species. The new regulations revive some of the protections that were curtailed by the Trump Administration, but do not fully restore them.
The finalized rules, following years of study and public input, restore protections for threatened species that prohibit their killing or injuring--the same protections that endangered species have under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Such protections for threatened species were originally established by a 1978 regulation, but the Trump Administration changed to a case-by-case consideration of protections for threatened species instead of blanket protections. The new rules would restore the broader protections while still allowing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to craft individual rules for species, as warranted.
The rules would also remove consideration of economic impacts from listing decisions. The Endangered Species Act states that listing of species is to be made solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial data available. Designation of critical habitat would largely revert to the pre-2019 standards under the new rules.
"These revisions underscore our commitment to using all of the tools available to help halt declines and stabilize populations of the species most at-risk," said USFWS Director Martha Williams. "We will continue to use the best-available science when implementing the ESA -- including when making listing and delisting decisions, designating critical habitat, developing protective regulations for threatened species, and consulting on federal actions."
New Report Offers NSF Guidance on Safeguarding the Research Enterprise
A new report from JASON--an independent scientific advisory group--commissioned by the National Science Foundation (NSF), advises against broad controls on sensitive fundamental research, advocating instead for a project-by-project risk mitigation approach. The report was requested by NSF as it prepares to address research security in response to provisions in the CHIPS and Science Act.
The report emphasizes the value of foreign talent, the negative impact of restricting research access, and the importance of integrity and disclosure. It reiterates a Reagan-era policy that fundamental research should be unrestricted unless classified as sensitive. However, it acknowledges the changing global landscape, particularly concerns about China directing research towards military ends.
The report recommends that NSF adopt a dynamic approach to identify potentially sensitive research topics as they arise, instead of maintaining a comprehensive list of sensitive research areas. It suggests that the agency work with Principal Investigators and institutions to tailor security measures for specific projects before peer review.
Overall, the report provides specific steps for NSF to enhance research security awareness and address sensitive projects, emphasizing flexibility and adaptability within the existing NSF structure. NSF is currently reviewing these recommendations and aims to implement a new security review process by the May 24 deadline established by the CHIPS and Science Act.
AIBS Endorses Community Letters Supporting Boosts for Agricultural Research
The American Institute of Biological Sciences has signed on to letters supporting increased funding for the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the Agricultural and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), as well as the Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority (AgARDA) within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The ARS letter, endorsed by 58 organizations, requests a total of $1.95 billion in funding for USDA's chief intramural research agency in FY 2025. "A robust federal investment in ARS research provides the foundation for a strong, resilient domestic agricultural and food supply chain," the letter argues. "Support food and agricultural research at ARS is an investment in the nation's food security, economic prosperity, environmental resilience, and overall well-being. ARS research ensures that the food and agriculture sector can adapt, innovate, and thrive in the face of evolving challenges and threats."
The second letter, signed by 71 organizations, requests an appropriation of no less than $500 million for the AFRI program, USDA's flagship competitive grants program for fundamental and applied research, extension, and education in support of all topics across the food and agricultural enterprise. "This funding level for the program is needed to invest in crucial areas aimed at addressing our nation's most urgent and pressing food, agriculture, and public health challenges," the groups contend. "AFRI-funded research plays a pivotal role in advancing food and agriculture knowledge, innovation, and technology, which are critical for the economic well-being of our farmers, supporting rural communities, protecting limited natural resources, maintaining the overall health and safety of our food supply, and preserving global competitiveness."
The AgARDA support letter was signed by 64 organizations. It calls for an investment of $50 million in FY 2025 for AgARDA, which was established in the 2018 Farm Bill and modeled after successful advanced research agencies like DARPA and ARPA-E to foster research, development, and technology transfer resulting in significant benefits across the U.S. food and agriculture value chain. "By providing AGARDA with sufficient funding, Congress can demonstrate its commitment to supporting agriculture as a cornerstone of our economy and a fundamental component of global food security," the letter reads.
Read the letters.
Enter the 14th Annual Faces of Biology Photo Contest
Enter the Faces of Biology Photo Contest for a chance to win $250 and to have your photo appear on the cover of the journal BioScience.
The competition showcases, in a personal way, biological research in its many forms and settings. The images help the public and policymakers better understand the value of biological research and education. The competition is sponsored by the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in addition to the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS).
"Photography is an effective tool to help communicate the process of scientific research," said Scott Glisson, CEO of AIBS. "This contest provides a visual forum for expression, inspiration, and technical skill that can have a positive impact on how the public views research and science."
The theme of the contest is "Faces of Biology." Photographs entered into the competition must depict a person, such as a scientist, technician, or student, engaging in biological research. The depicted research may occur outside, in a lab, with a natural history collection, on a computer, in a classroom, or elsewhere.
The winning photos from the 2023 contest will be featured in the April 2024 issue of BioScience.
Submissions must be received by 11:59:59 p.m. Eastern Time on September 30, 2024. For more information or to enter the contest, visit our website.
Action Alert: Ask Your U.S. Representative to Support Investment in NSF
Congress has started debate on funding levels for federal programs for fiscal year (FY) 2025. Please show your support for the National Science Foundation (NSF) by asking your Representative to sign a Dear Colleague Letter in support of $10.2 billion in funding for the agency in 2025, the same level requested by President Biden.
NSF is the primary federal funding source for fundamental biological research at our nation's universities and colleges. The agency provides approximately 66% of extramural federal support for non-medical, fundamental biological and environmental research at academic institutions.
In FY 2024, NSF received a more than 8% cut to its budget compared to FY 2023. This is the first time that funding for NSF has decreased in a decade. The FY 2024 allocation hurts research and undermines the nation's ability to address societal challenges at a time when we're facing critical emerging technology and competitiveness threats. Further, this cut ignores the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which provided an exciting framework for growing federal investments in scientific research. Continued failure to meet the funding levels authorized for NSF in this bipartisan law will lead to billions of dollars in lost opportunities to strengthen our nation's science, technology, innovation, and the STEM workforce.
An effort is now underway in the House of Representatives to build support for increased FY 2025 funding for NSF. Representatives Joe Neguse (D-CO) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) are circulating a Dear Colleague Letter calling on Congress to provide $10.2 billion in funding to NSF in FY 2025.
Please take a few moments to ask your Representative to sign the bipartisan Neguse-Fitzpatrick Dear Colleague Letter. The deadline for Representatives to be added to the letter is COB on Friday, April 19, 2024.
Take Action
Short Takes
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A recent episode of BioScience Talks features DeeAnn Reeder, Professor of Biology at Bucknell University and a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution. The episode covers a number of topics, including bats, disease ecology, and community outreach. Underlying the conversation is an important message about the One Health concept, which will be the subject of a forthcoming special issue of BioScience. Potential contributors to the One Health special issue can find more information here.
- The National Science Foundation (NSF) is soliciting recommendations for membership on its scientific and technical federal advisory committees, including the Advisory Committee for Biological Sciences, the Advisory Committee for STEM Education, and the Advisory Committee for International Science and Engineering. Learn more.
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The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) seeks to fill the Associate Director position for the Core Science Systems Mission Area. The application period for this Senior Executive Service position will be open until Friday, May 3. Learn more.
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The National Science Board, the governing body of NSF, is holding a public webinar on April 11 at 2:00-3:00 PM ET, where they will share findings from the new State of U.S. Science and Engineering report and answer questions such as: Where does the U.S. stand in the global science and engineering enterprise? Where is the U.S. losing ground? Where does it still lead? What countries invest the most in R&D? How are America's students performing in math and science? What does the U.S. STEM workforce look like today, across the country? Register now.
From the Federal Register
The following items appeared in the Federal Register from March 25 to April 5, 2024.
Commerce
Environmental Protection Agency
Health and Human Services
Interior
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Science Foundation
