Northwestern biology professor Richard Morimoto is grateful for the research grants that the university science departments have received this year.
“Scientists love to spend money. We’re really good at it,” he said.
Morimoto is one of the professors at Northwestern doing research with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This year, Northwestern has received 179 awards totaling $91.9 million under the new federal stimulus program. The university says they will use the money to hire more scientists and further research. The funding is part of a national $787 billion initiative intended to jump-start the economy by investing in science, infrastructure and education, creating and saving jobs in the process.
The ARRA grants for Northwestern come from four federal agencies: the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health. Of the 179 awards, Northwestern received eight NIH Challenge Grants and two NIH Go Grants. Challenge grants are two-year grants that are intended to kick start research projects, while Go Grants fund projects that will not need further NIH funding after two years.
As soon as the Recovery Act was enacted, the Northwestern faculty “responded en masse,” said Susan Ross, Evanston director of the Office for Sponsored Research (OSR).
According to an OSR press release, the research proposal volume in April 2009 was nearly quadruple the number of proposals in April 2008, jumping from 149 to 592. Last year Northwestern received a total of $476.9 million in grant money.
The ARRA stimulus grants differ from other research grants because they fund projects that can get underway quickly and have fast impact, Ross said. With the money, scientists whose funding would otherwise have been terminated have been able to continue their research. It also funded new researchers and allowed for the purchase of new equipment.
According to Morimoto, successful proposals had to be very specific.
“We have to have a plan for how we’ll spend the money. That’s how you get the grant. Then you do what you said you’d do,” Morimoto said. Morimoto received over $1 million in an ARRA grant to study Protein-Misfolding Disorders, the causes of a number of diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s.