Many at Penn praise Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) for his instrumental work to increase the National Institutes of Health's budget by 34 percent in the stimulus package President Barack Obama signed Feb 17. Yet the unclear time frame for and method of distributing stimulus funding has caused much anticipation.
In the next three weeks, however, many at Penn will respond to funding agencies' Requests for Awards with proposals, removing some of the uncertainty.
According to Penn President Amy Gutmann, "$7.4 billion of extra money going to the NIH is going to go out proportionally to people who run NIH centers and hold NIH grants." Since Penn will receive about 1.7 percent of NIH funding, "we stand to gain a lot from the stimulus package, and our faculty are geared up to submit proposals," she said.
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Deputy Dean George Pappas said Penn, due to good relationships with NIH agencies, stands to benefit significantly from the package.
The School of Medicine is the single-largest recipient of NIH grants at Penn, Gutmann explained, but Engineering, the School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Nursing, the School of Veterinary Medicine, the School of Dental Medicine and the Annenberg School for Communication all get NIH funding, as, most likely, will faculty in other schools, "so this is going to have a very broad and important effect on Penn."
The Medical School's Executive Vice Dean and Chief Scientific Officer Glen Gaulton explained that about 72 percent of funding for the school's research comes from the National Institutes of Health grants.
Most schools have "shovel-ready" research and construction projects that will apply for funding, said Pappas.
Challenge grants, which pay $1 million over a two-year period, will be awarded to what the NIH deems high-priority research, SAS associate Dean Richard Schultz explained.
The Nursing School will request funding for research of models to prevent chronic diseases like diabetes and informatics and computerization of patient records.
Vet School associate Dean of research Phillip Scott identified various projects in cancer research, infectious diseases, regenerative medicine and neuroscience that will benefit from the stimulus.
SAS will also request funding for imaging equipment for the Physics and Biology departments, according to Schultz.
Dental Dean Thomas Sollecito wrote in an e-mail that increased funding of the National Health Service Corps will provide additional scholarship opportunities for Dental students.
Under the stimulus package, the NIH's National Center for Research Resources will also help fund renovations to existing and construction of new research facilities.
Proposed construction projects include the Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology, a collaborative project between Engineering and SAS, and SAS' Neuroscience Behavior Building, both of which are at the schematic design stage.
"Renovation of Goddard Laboratories and the vivarium in Lynch building are planned, and we are exploring options for renovation of Biology, Earth and Environmental Sciences labs as well," said SAS Vice Dean Ramin Sedehi.
But the federal government said schools must use some of the funding for a combination of retaining old personnel and hiring new staff.
Gaulton said he appreciates Congress' recognition that the "real strength of our economy is jobs created around education excellence."
Many of Penn's deans expressed hope that their schools' new hires and employees will be unaffected by a recent amendment to the stimulus bill prohibiting banks or any employer accepting Troubled Assets Relief Program funds from hiring workers on H-1B visas unless the employers can meet stringent conditions.
But Gaulton wrote in an e-mail that though the law diminishes the hiring pool, he believes "The pool of domestic candidates is large enough to meet our need given [recent] layoffs in the local pharmaceutical and bio-tech industry, and the reduced funding to NIH over the past five years."
