U. could lose $7 million from Defense Dept.

Bill pending in Congress The University stands to lose about $7 million in Department of Defense research grants by the beginning of October, if $900 million in cuts proposed by the House of Representatives are adopted by the Senate, Assistant Vice President for Policy and Planning David Morse said this week. The University currently receives about $13 million in DOD money, Morse said. "No one knows really how they would be applied, but everyone knows a cut of this magnitude would be devastating, if it happened," he added. "Would any programs [that receive DOD funds] be kept in tact, that would be hard to say." And although the cuts have already passed in the House of Representatives, it appears there is still hope the funds will not be eliminated, Vice Provost for Research Barry Cooperman said. "There's an effort from universities that receive [DOD] money to have that money restored, or have an appropriations bill that would not include those cuts," he said. "Right now there's an effort nationally to not have those cuts put into the final appropriations bill, because right now it's in the House." Morse said the DOD money primarily funds research in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, but also in the physics and chemistry departments of the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine. Some of the grants fund technological research, while others fund projects as diverse as detection and identification of breast cancer tumors, he said. Assistant Director of Research Administration Stuart Watson said that although the DOD grants are important to specific research, the cuts would not effect research throughout the University. The University currently spends about $273 Million in private and public grants annually, "so percentage-wise, it wouldn't hurt the University too much, but certain programs would be more hurt than others," Watson said. "Certainly the Engineering School would feel the effect more than the School of Medicine," he added. But if the cuts are enacted, the areas will be affected by the beginning of fiscal year 1995, which is the beginning of October, Morse said. He added that in reality, the University cannot estimate exactly how much funding it will lose because it doesn't know if the DOD will cut its budget unilaterally, or prioritize projects. Currently, all DOD grants are awarded competitively through the DOD, Morse said. "If the moneys are cut in any way, the programs the money support would suffer," Cooperman said. "But it's too early to know where the cuts would be made." It also appears that the funding cuts would not effect the Institute for Advanced Science and Technology project, Cooperman added.