The instrumentation funding situation is still far from clear but there is some reason to be optimistic. Many groups, including our own, have been active over the last few years in attempting to present the facts on the importance of a sound instrumentation policy. It now seems that it may be starting to bear fruit. What follows is a very brief description of where we think things now stand.
The National Center for Research Resources which runs the NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant program held its strategic planning session on September 28-30, 1993. It was officially entitled "Choices and Challenges: Future Directions for NCRR". It sought input from approximately 50 invited participants, representing a wide range of disciplines and geographic distribution, for the purpose of setting the general direction for future NCRR initiatives. NCRR's mandate is basically to provide biomedical research infrastructure to the scientific community and consists of a wide range of areas from major instrumentation for basic research to the General Clinical Research Centers as well as intramural NIH infrastructure support. As such, the topics discussed were wide-ranging and although major instrumentation funding was discussed it was not the major focus of the proceedings. However, there was very diverse and broad-based support among the participants for increasing the level of the Shared Instrumentation Grant program to its pre-1992 level of approximately $32.5 million. Unfortunately, nothing can be said for sure about what will happen. As of this writing, no budgets have been set, but the best bet seems to be that fiscal 1994 will remain near the $10 million level, which is where it has been for the last two years. This is the relevant figure for those applications that were submitted last March. Fiscal 1995 is anyone's guess at this time since that budget will not be set until late next year. Right now the mood is optimistic. Unless the NCRR chooses not to act on the recommendation of the strategic planning workshop, some increase in the program should result.
There also seems to be some movement in Congress toward increased support for instrumentation and infrastructure. A hefty boost for the 1994 NSF academic infrastructure budget has apparently been approved (Science, 5 November 1993, 262, 836-838). After talking with several people, it appears that a large part of the infrastructure increase at NSF will go for instrumentation funding. One person indicated that the NSF instrumentation program may go from $12.5 million to approximately $55 million as a result. Although we have not yet been able to confirm this with NSF, this is the best news we have had for quite some time and if support in the NIH budget follows suit in the following year, the recent trend toward ignoring the instrumentation infrastructure in this country may actually start to reverse.
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