Originally reported in Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, by Alex Philippidis
NIH dodged a bullet last month when Congress approved a 1% increase to its funding compared to fiscal year 2011. NIH will have a $30.6 billion budget for FY 2012, while in FY ’11 the agency saw its funding cut by nearly 1% from the previous federal fiscal year.
The FY ’11 spending cut did not significantly affect the top five grant recipients of the previous year in terms of knocking them off the top five list. NIH’s reduced budget did not necessarily mean an organization ended up with lower grant award totals; even though three of the top five universities did win less money from NIH, one of them actually won more awards, and in fact, the top two universities won more NIH money than in FY ’10.
As for FY ’12, which began October 1, 2011, NIH (like all federal institutions) subsisted the first part of the year on continuing resolutions that cut 1.5% compared to FY 2011 spending. Once Congress approved the Labor-HHS-Education portion of the budget, NIH got that roughly 1% boost. Hence for fiscal 2012, the top five grant recipients are not likely to see dramatic changes in either direction to their NIH funding.
Largest Awards Doled Out
In FY 2011, as in the previous fiscal year, Johns Hopkins University (JHU) was awarded the largest amount of NIH funding: $637.552 million. That is 4% more than the $610.467 million it won in FY 2010. The number of grant awards also rose during the period to 1,258 from 1,223.
Coming in second in FY ’11 was the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) with $527.611 million. It showed the largest gain among the top-five universities, jumping nearly 11% from $475.4 million. UCSF’s number of grant awards rose year-over-year to 1,052 from 1,020.