After years of flat government funding for medical and scientific research, officials at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore have been working overtime recently, putting in hundreds of grant requests in hopes of grabbing some of the $13 billion in stimulus money set aside for the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
Researchers nationwide are scrambling to create proposals that, under normal circumstances, would take many months, but instead are being done in a matter of weeks. So many submissions have come to the NIH that it has had to search the globe to find qualified people to review them quickly. And the competition for the dollars, part of President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus package, will be fierce, with 20,000 applications alone for so-called NIH challenge grants worth a total of $200 million, just a fraction of what will be spent.
"It's just going to be a big shot in the arm for science in general," said Dr. Sally Rockey, acting deputy director for extramural research at the Bethesda-based NIH.
In the end, the money for projects from drug research to lab expansions could mean hundreds of jobs and many millions of dollars to Baltimore, because of the scientific research powerhouses that are Hopkins and Maryland.
"There are a lot of really good ideas that were dying on the vine because they weren't getting funded," said James Hughes, vice president for research and development at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. But with the stimulus money, Hughes estimates that his medical, pharmacy, dental and nursing schools could see as much as an additional $100 million over the next two years - money that will not only further research, but create hundreds of good jobs.
Even without funding in place, Hopkins held a job fair this month so it can be ready once the federal dollars are allocated.
Maryland, Hughes said, has already submitted 500 to 600 grants for money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. In April, Johns Hopkins put in 729 grant applications for a total of $404 million - a threefold increase in applications over a normal month. Some are for new research projects; others would extend research already under way. All projects are required to spend the stimulus grants over the next two years to help get the economy going.
Long-term benefits
