With the fate of government funding for research currently in the hands of the 108th U.S. Congress, Medical Center officials are rethinking the way they apply for grants and "sell" their research.
Fears surround a potential drain of the Medical Center's current $203 million annual funding budget from the National Institutes of Health, the primary source of grant funding for medical research and the number one source for medical center funding in general.
"Because of a variety of fiscal constraints, the NIH budget is not going to grow nearly as much as it has been growing," said Dr. Ross McKinney, assistant professor and vice dean of research at the School of Medicine. "This means that a number of grants available will be fewer or not as easily available."
The stagnating appropriations is causing competition for grants awarded from agencies such as NIH and the National Science Foundation to become increasingly fierce.
"You're competing with the sharks for funding," McKinney added.
Also, recent data indicates that the percentage of NIH funding awarded to young investigators below age 35 has experienced a nearly six-fold decline in the past two decades, decreasing from 22.6 percent to 3.8 percent in 2001.
"Receiving grant funding is a competitive process. People who are older have an advantage," said Professor of Medicine Dr. John Hamilton. "I would be astounded if most of the funds didn't go to established people."
With more experienced researchers receiving the bulk of grant funding, an impending NIH crunch for research funding implies that junior faculty researchers in particular will be bearing the brunt of the funding constraints.
"Junior researchers are the ones that need the funding," said Phillip Grosshans, a funding opportunities specialist in the Office of Research Support. "Once you get rolling with your career, of course it's easier to get the funding."
As a result, the Medical Center has begun to develop further how it helps its younger researchers improve their chances of obtaining these increasingly competitive grants.
"We invest in the junior faculty," said Dr. Joseph Corless, vice dean of faculty and academic affairs at the School of Medicine. "It costs us anywhere from $300,000 to $400,000 to hire new faculty and provide them with the resources and laboratory space necessary to do research. When you bring someone on board, you want them to succeed."
One such new support mechanism for the younger faculty is the development of a mentoring workshop, sponsored largely by the Mentored Clinical Research Scholar Program, which is designed to help junior faculty learn which grants to apply for and how to structure their daily activities to succeed in obtaining funding.
"It's a very competitive process, and you have to be prepared for the application that you submit," said Hamilton, director of the MCRSP. "There are subtleties to those instructions, which can be learned with some experience. It is more likely to be successful if a more junior person can complete the application with the advice of someone who already knows."
Another important component to the Medical Center's efforts to increase funding is emphasizing different grant and foundation resources.
"Because of the NIH situation, researchers will have to rely increasingly on private funding," said Noah Bartolucci, funding opportunities specialist and director of faculty development. "There are thousands of funding opportunities available--it's about knowing where to look."
In addition to a recently updated funding opportunities website, replete with a user-friendly, web-interface database, the Medical Center has begun to increasingly emphasize foundation award opportunities, such as the Pew Charitable Trust and similar awards funded by Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Researchers at Duke have been growing increasingly worried about the likely funding scramble, though the effects of budget woes have yet to surface. In particular, junior faculty on the tenure track or those who are just starting their careers are feeling a little nervous about their ability to secure enough funding in the near future, said Dr. William Scott, associate professor of cardiology.
"There is a sense of uncertainty around here--we keep on hearing rumors about how few grants will be funded," said Scott. "Has it impacted my work yet? No. Although it may very well affect me in the coming years."
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