In Light of Sequester Cuts, SEAS to Look Elsewhere for Funding

The National Science Foundation is expected to reduce the number of grants for university research from 11,000 to 10,000 per year after this spring’s federal sequester. How this downsizing will affect Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences—which receives 80 percent of its federal monies from NSF, according to school administrators—is still unclear, causing the school to anticipate cuts and to look to finding alternative funding sources.

The cuts, which went into effect in March after lawmakers failed to agree on a plan to reduce the federal budget, will be implemented over the next nine years, with $85 billion of budget reductions expected in this fiscal year alone.

Universities have been particularly affected by the cuts. The federal government provides roughly $30 billion a year to universities for research, an amount that is expected to drop by at least $1 billion per year.

Calling the situation “frightening,” SEAS Dean Cherry A. Murray said that the school is expecting less federal research funds in the near future.

Yet despite the large share of funding coming from the federal government, professors and administrators remain cautiously optimistic about the future.

Currently, SEAS receives approximately 75 percent of its research funding from the federal government, 20 percent from industry partnerships, and 5 percent from various foundations, according to Brunelli, although she said this balance fluctuates from day to day.

“I’m not predicting that SEAS is going to have to make dramatic changes in how it operates,” said Associate Dean for Research Administration at SEAS Carleen A. Brunelli, who also provided the 80 percent figure.

The sequester is not expected to impact all areas of research equally, Brunelli said, and the nature of SEAS research potentially puts the school in a better position than other schools at Harvard.

“You can see in the not too distant future what the application of [SEAS] research is and that’s one of the things that will be less apt to get the big cuts going forward,” Brunelli said. “Politicians want to know what are we going to get out of this, where is it going to go, and how is it going to impact the economy and our other industries.”

Brunelli also spoke of plans to increase SEAS research funding fromindustry sources. She said that the school has been working in the last few months to facilitate the process of matching SEAS researchers with industries who would be willing to support them.

One successful industry partnership has been with German chemical company BASF. Brunelli said that this partnership is an example of an umbrella agreement, with the company providing a set amount of research funding per year and working in collaboration with SEAS faculty members on projects of mutual interest.

David A. Weitz, faculty director of the BASF Advanced Research Initiative at Harvard University, said that he views increasing industry partnerships as a viable way forward for SEAS, because they provide sources of both funding and intellectual inspiration. Industry partners approach the researchers with a problem—a recent example was the difficulty of dissolving some types of drugs in water, Weitz said—and researchers work to find a practical solution.

“There are opportunities for researchers at Harvard to engage with corporate research to actually make a difference to the companies and do very good science,” Weitz said.

—Staff writer Christine Y. Cahill can be reached at christine.cahill@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @cycahill16.