Congress Postpones Budget Bill Deadline
BU IN DC
Vice President and Associate Provost for Research Gloria Waters attended a Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by the National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer (NCET2) on December 1.
CONGRESS POSTPONES BUDGET BILL DEADLINE
Congress is poised to pass a continuing resolution today keeping the federal government operating through December 16, as legislators scramble to negotiate a final spending bill to fund government agencies for fiscal year 2016. Lawmakers had hoped to reach a spending agreement by today, but remain unable to agree on contentious policy riders on topics unrelated to spending, such as wetlands protections and abortion. If Congress is able to reach a budget agreement, research advocates are anticipating a significant boost in National Institutes of Health funding and modest increases for other research accounts.
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BUZZ BITS…
- States will be permitted to use federal funds to create teacher preparation academies and recognize their graduates as similar to those with advanced university degrees under the Every Student Succeeds Act, an update of the No Child Left Behind Act that was signed into law on Thursday.
- Dr. Kathryn Partin will become the new director of the Office of Research Integrity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the entity which protects against research fraud in federally-funded biomedical science, on December 28.
- The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is requesting feedback on its draft Common Framework for Earth-Observation Data, which is designed to make the data underpinning reports on weather, air and water quality, and agriculture more accessible.
GRANT NEWS YOU CAN USE
The National Science Foundation (NSF) issued a Dear Colleague letter reiterating its call for submissions under the Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE) mechanism. INSPIRE is designed to fund transformative research that spans more than one discipline. Proposers must receive approval from NSF program officers in two distinct divisions or disciplines prior to submission to ensure the project is truly groundbreaking and cross-disciplinary. Awards are chosen based on internal merit review by program officers, rather than the typical external review.