Post by Matthew Buckley / Redsky

Matthew Buckley • Feed

Theory grants are on the smaller end, and lots of it is taken up by fringe (health care and benefits) and overhead (goes to university operations). Is this the only way we could build a system to do science? No, but if you take this away without a new system in place, that's a problem.

What Does a Grant Pay For Specializing to High Energy Theory grants (NSF and DOE) There are small, medium, and large grants. The program officer will fit your grant application into one of these boxes. Our grant combined grant (6+ PIs) pays for PI summer salary, 1-2 grad students and part of a postdoc. Travel + personal computing gets crammed in around the edges. Typical rule-of-thumb is 3 theory PIs gets 1 postdoc on a grant Grants get charged fringe: covering health insurance and benefits. For every $1 spent on salary, we pay $0.38 for federal fringe. For state grants, we pay $0.80 for every $1 of salary. Grants get charged overhead (“F&A”): covers the cost to the university for “incidentals” that aren’t directly charged to the grant. “Incidentals” include: The electricity. The building. The staff. Every $1 of direct spending on a grant has an overhead of ~$0.57 Universities rely on F&A as part of their operating budget. ~$200M for Rutgers

apr 22, 2025, 1:15 am • 0 0

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This slide is already out of date.

What Has Happened So Far? Late January: NIH cancels panels. This threatens all NIH grants for next year, as NIH is on 1-year review Early February: Trump Administration announces F&A rates for all grants will be immediately reduced to 15%. This will hit the Rutgers budget for ~$100M Last I heard this was enjoined by a court. February/March: Many NSF panels for next year have been cancelled. NSF and NIH grants with keywords (climate, mRNA, diversity, bi, trans,…) in title have been cancelled. NIH grant channels for underrepresented groups cancelled (removing those applicants from the pool) Late March/early April: Some NASA grants have been revoked March: Significant number of staff (program officers, etc) have been fired (Reduction In Force -> “RIFed”) in NASA, NIH, NSF,… Several universities have had broad swaths of grants pulled (UMaine, $100M in DOAg, JHU $800M in USAID, Columbia $400M in NIH, Brown $500M, Northwestern, Cornell…) Some of these actions have been ordered reversed/held by courts. Unclear if those actions will be upheld. Would only apply to existing grants. Broad sense that future grants will not be forthcoming.

apr 22, 2025, 1:15 am • 0 0 • view

Undergrad specific impacts: Research Experience for Undergrads. This is how we get people into research. There are fewer opportunities now.RE

REUs Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) grants. NSF program to support undergrads obtaining summer research experience. Pays for personnel (faculty & staff) to manage program, and the costs to pay students. In the grand scheme of things, these aren’t enormous costs (see previous) Standard 3-year cycle with the expectation that the university will reapply and likely be given the new grant (modulo changes in federal budget) My understanding: Rutgers and other universities who were applying for new grants had the grant approval pulled after panel-review stage and at an approval step that in previous years was pro forma As a result, many institutions (I don’t know how many, I’ve heard at least 20%) had to cancel their REU programs.

apr 22, 2025, 1:15 am • 0 0 • view