Does anyone have any thoughts about NIH and NSF funding with the Republicans in charge? [View all]
We aren't buying much this year and you can blame the Republicans for it. Since the anti science contingent won the Senate we are terrified my husband's NIH grant will not be renewed and his biomedical research will come to a screeching halt. It has been said that only research that is applicable to homeland security or the military will get funded, we hope that is a rumor, but it makes sense with the neocons in control. Without it, we do not have any summer salary, it will cost us a quarter of our income. We have heard all kinds of rumors, his NIH and NSF both are up for renewal in 2015.
The graduate students who work in his lab will not have a salary either. Not enough summer teaching next summer to make up for it. We are terrified, only spending what we have to. He is looking at some corporate and private support just in case, but it is like living on thin ice. He has written 4 grants in the last 6 months to various agencies, he works so hard, he worries about his students as much as worrying about us, I've never been so frightened.
I don't know why anyone would be an academic in a hard science these days. He loves teaching and he loves his research, he does lots of outreach to high schools but it is a challenge to pay the student loans and keep moving.