Collins on Funding

NIH Director Francis Collins tells the Chronicle of Higher Education that universities should not be so reliant on federal grants and should direct more of their funds to young researchers. At some schools, faculty members may derive all their income from NIH funds as they run multiple research projects and “that turns that investigator into a grant-writing machine perhaps more than a doing-of-science machine," Collins says. For getting funds to young investigators, Collins is focusing on universities and says NIH is encouraging institutes to implement fellowship programs. As for 2011 funding, Collins says: "I don't think anybody right now imagines an outcome where the annual expenditures on biomedical research in FY11 will be as good as they were in FY10."