Cross-Linked Research: Federal Funding Prospects in 1994
T
his is a trickier year t h a n most for p r e d i c t i n g t h e f o r t u n e s of analytical chemistry research funding at the federal agency level. The Clinton administration submitted its fiscal year 1994 (FY '94) proposed budget to Congress in April, almost two months late by the usual yearly schedule. In the proposed budget allocations for federal science agencies, the administration called for broad initiatives to develop "critical technologies" to improve environmental remediation and testing, process d e s i g n t h a t i n c l u d e s w a s t e stream reduction as a primary goal, biotechnology, and a "national data highway" that will connect the agencies and outside sources for greater computer access to d a t a b a s e information. Much of t h e funding for science agencies is likely to be earmarked by the P r e s i d e n t and by Congress for specific research areas. Aside from a proposed 39% h i k e in funding for high-technology projects at the Nat i o n a l I n s t i t u t e of S t a n d a r d s a n d Technology (NIST), overall increases for the agencies are likely to be modest in 1994. Many observers have expressed concern that the targeted in-
itiatives for high-technology projects will erode federal support of "curiosity-driven" or untargeted fundament a l r e s e a r c h . N e v e r t h e l e s s , some agency program directors say t h a t t h e i m p l i c i t n e e d for a n a l y t i c a l c h e m i s t r y in the h i g h - p r i o r i t y projects may compensate for reductions in untargeted research funding. They also say the shift to cooperative r e s e a r c h in " p r e d e v e l o p m e n t " or "precompetitive" technologies may open t h e l i n e s of c o m m u n i c a t i o n
FOCUS among academic, government, and i n d u s t r y a n a l y t i c a l c h e m i s t s for more innovative research. Although many of the stated goals of the "high-tech" plan will require a n a l y t i c a l c h e m i s t r y r e s e a r c h for their development, chemistry is neit h e r allocated any significant specific increases under the administration plan nor acknowledged explicitly as a high-technology discipline. One staff member for the Senate approp r i a t i o n s s u b c o m m i t t e e on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
explained, "We address initiatives in t e r m s of t h e c r i t i c a l technologies r a t h e r t h a n n a m i n g either specific methods or the u n d e r l y i n g science t h a t goes i n t o t h e m . A n a l y t i c a l c h e m i s t r y is c e r t a i n l y c e n t r a l to many of these technologies—continuous flow monitoring, for instance. It's fair to say that in the manufacturing technology [proposals] we haven't spent as much t i m e on continuous flow and other chemical detection technologies as on robotics for manufacturing, but that's partly because the chemistry industry's technology is a l r e a d y successful. Some of t h e other manufacturing a r e a s haven't been developed as much." Part of the Clinton plan is to foster widespread cooperation for its initiatives between agencies such as NIST and the National Science Foundation (NSF); increased collaboration among t h e agencies, academic r e searchers, and private industry; and technology transfer to civilian industries from agencies t h a t have traditionally developed classified projects for military use. The Department of Defense will have to restructure its R&D efforts by developing " d u a l use" technology t h a t can serve civil-
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FOCUS ian and military purposes, and the National Aeronautics and Space Ad ministration is already spinning off m a n y of its computer p r o g r a m s to general users through the University of Georgia at Athens. Meanwhile, the Department of En ergy (DOE) is slated to decrease ad vanced nuclear fuels and weapons development and will begin to shift its focus to renewable energy, health physics r e s e a r c h , a n d n e w m e t h ods—including biotechnology m e t h ods—for r e m e d i a t i n g n u c l e a r a n d other h a z a r d o u s wastes a t defense plants. These new areas will require DOE to c o l l a b o r a t e w i t h t h e N a tional I n s t i t u t e s of Health and the E n v i r o n m e n t a l Protection Agency. "You're going to see all of these agen cies working together in an unprece dented way," the Senate appropria tions committee staffer said. This kind of collaboration may be reflected in the way research is done a t u n i v e r s i t i e s , b o t h in a c a d e m i c p a r t n e r s h i p s with i n d u s t r y a n d in t r a i n i n g chemistry s t u d e n t s to ad dress research problems broadly. Henry Blount, program director for Analytical and Surface Chemistry in the Chemistry Division at NSF, said t h a t when the N a t i o n a l Science Board Commission on the F u t u r e of NSF was gathering input from the research community in late 1992, the issue of technology transfer between academia and industry was dis cussed. "The leaders from industry said, 'The best technology transfer is well-trained people who come from labs where innovative thinking is the watchword and who come to us will ing to challenge what we are already doing'," Blount recalled. Blount said t h a t because of infla tion and modest budget growth, the
buying power of grants has fallen in the past five years. "There is a criti cal need within the research commu nity for us to increase t h e average grant award because the cost of do ing research has gone up." The Na tional Science Board has mandated increasing the average grant size, he said, b u t if allocations to N S F r e main essentially constant, this will mean awarding fewer grants. Blount said he sees industry con tact as beneficial to student training, and envisions g r a d u a t e students in chemistry having industry research ers on their graduate advisory com mittees, as engineering students of ten do. "I t h i n k it can improve t h e underlying research," he said. "What we're expanding is the intellectual base and experience of the student, because researchers in the industrial e n v i r o n m e n t a r e doing very h i g h end chemistry." The federal science agencies, be c a u s e t h e y s u p p o r t so m u c h a c a demic a n d i n s t i t u t i o n a l r e s e a r c h , serve as monitors of the leading edge of research in analytical chemistry and of c u r r e n t t r e n d s . Blount said that at NSF, initiatives are used not to lead research efforts in precon ceived directions but rather to char acterize current leading trends in re search and to convey t h i s focus to Congress via t h e a d m i n i s t r a t i o n ' s budget request. "An initiative is a formal statement of the intellectual activity t h a t is ongoing and antici pated in t h e community," he says. "The community is pushing the fron tiers of knowledge in these areas." Some initiatives are first proposed within the agency. Blount rejects the argument that the initiatives deplete funds for fundamental or curio sitydriven research. "[These initiatives]
R&D funding for selected science agencies, FY 1992-94. Source: National Institutes of Health.
600 A · ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 65, NO. 13, JULY 1, 1993
are basic research. We respond to the grant proposals that come in," he ex plains. "We don't have a menu t h a t says we're going to put χ percent or χ dollars into separations or molecular spectroscopy. We aggregate requests under broad umbrellas, and usually these initiatives are multidisciplinary activities." Blount identified some of the "hot" areas of analytical chemistry based on the number of original proposals received a t N S F . These include the a n a l y t i c a l c h e m i s t r y of m a t e r i a l s , chemical sensor design and applica tions, supramolecular chemistry, and studies in self-assembling monolay ers. In surface chemistry, leading ar eas of research include studies in dy namics and structure as they pertain to electrochemistry; catalysis; biolog ical processes; and protein surface i n t e r a c t i o n s , which h a v e implica t i o n s for i m p r o v e m e n t s in p r o t e i n chromatography. B a r r y Diamondstone, deputy di rector of t h e Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory at NIST, said t h a t his agency's Advanced Technol ogy Program (ATP) may become big enough by 1997 that opportunities in analytical chemistry become signifi cant. His laboratory has had trouble attracting the chemistry industry— which relies on and develops lead ing-edge analytical methods—to a p ply for ATP grants, he said, because t h e t o t a l A T P b u d g e t for i t s first year (in 1990) was only $16 million. "The chemistry industry didn't think it w a s w o r t h t h e i r t i m e , " h e com mented. Diamondstone said the chemistry industry sees ATP largely as a pro gram for engineering, computation, and advanced physics and is missing a n opportunity for both funding r e search and promoting the image of a n a l y t i c a l c h e m i s t r y as a hightechnology field. "We're t r y i n g to make them aware of it, as far as an alytical chemistry is concerned. We w a n t to m a k e s u r e people realize there are high-technology opportuni ties t h a t involve chemistry," he r e m a r k e d . He s a i d t h a t t h e FY '94 budget proposal requests $199 mil lion for ATP and, by FY '97, projec tions lead to $750 million—a signifi cant opportunity even if cooperative research projects in analytical chem istry take advantage of only a small part of the program. Some of the NIST chemical science and technology projects for 1994 in clude development of FT-IR spectro scopic, fiber-optic, and ultrathin film sensors for on-line process monitor ing; a d a p t a t i o n of GC a n d MS as
process methods; modeling of bioseparation processes and large biomolecular structures; development of new methods such as laser ablation ICPMS for metals analysis and slurry sampling for GFAAS; and the use of image plane detection and analysis to make trace compositional mapping quantitative. Diamondstone said flow injection a n a l y s i s applications for clinical c h e m i s t r y a n d c a l i b r a t i o n standards for n e a r - I R spectroscopy are also being developed. Science a g e n c y - i n d u s t r y collaborations and especially the concept of technology transfer inevitably raise questions as to how successful the products will be and whether government can develop a technology policy, other t h a n t h a t of the m i l i t a r y industrial complex, that will actually pick w i n n e r s in t h e c o m m e r c i a l marketplace. Some academic or fundamental research institutions—notably the Scripps Clinic and Research Triangle Institute—have good working relationships with industry, but most of these relationships don't involve the federal agencies. However, the agencies have begun to promote these relationships through federal science centers such as NIST's Cold Neutron Research Facility for surface chemistry. The facility, part of the agency's reactor, came on line a b o u t t h r e e years ago, said Diamondstone, and c o n t a i n s lab space t h a t b o t h academic and industrial researchers can use for their projects. In some cases, a federal agency's p a r t i c i p a t i o n fosters t h e development of critical technologies that private companies might not otherwise attempt on their own. Market pressure for rapid commercialization and
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focus the high cost of launching a company R&D effort make it difficult for companies to invest in t h e basic research needed for viable technologies, b u t competition and antitrust laws make it almost unthinkable for two companies to share equipment, information r e s o u r c e s , or project d e v e l o p m e n t without a joint venture or an acquisition agreement. C o l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h i n d u s t r y for technology development is central to NIST's mandate from Congress, and the rules surrounding its operation are designed to avoid conflicts such as ownership of intellectual property r i g h t s . Technology t r a n s f e r from NIST to p r i v a t e companies is free and, even though NIST is a federal agency, nondisclosure policies can be signed with the companies on a caseby-case basis to protect proprietary information. By contrast, NSF's m a n d a t e is to support f u n d a m e n t a l scientific r e search; collaborations between t h a t agency and industry have to be a p proached cautiously, b u t t h e y can work. I n some cases, said Blount, NSF h a s achieved far-reaching gains in cooperation between academic or
institutional, industry, and governm e n t r e s e a r c h e r s . "A beautiful example is t h e NSF Science and Technology C e n t e r a t t h e U n i v e r s i t y of Rochester in New York. The univers i t y is w o r k i n g on p h o t o i n d u c e d charge transfer in a three-way collaboration with Eastman Kodak and Xerox," B l o u n t said. " H e r e is t h e first time two competing companies are willing to pool efforts, with each other as well as with the University of Rochester, to develop t h e same technology. You often hear about intellectual property rights as a bag of worms—but this is a case where one of the sticking points [of the collaboration] h a s already been worked through." P a r t of the success of t h a t collaboration, Blount said, is t h a t the three partners are working on the technology problem a t a p r e d e v e l o p m e n t level. "This is fundamental research that they can spin off, and each company can use it any way it wants to. B u t u n l e s s t h e knowledge b a s e is t h e r e , n e i t h e r one of t h e m will be able to benefit," he explained. The potential benefit to fundament a l r e s e a r c h from t h e a d m i n i s t r a -
tion's high-technology initiatives and from collaboration with industry does not erase the problem of tight funding and a continuing recession, but such partnerships reflect one strategy for maintaining research support in lean times. Diamondstone acknowledged that NIST must constantly make hard decisions to balance its efforts between developing new standard reference materials (SRMs) and reissuing depleted materials. He said the agency is looking for acceptable ways to farm out SRM development to other programs for quality assurance and to manufact u r e r s of s t a n d a r d s traceable to NIST standards. Blount said, "I'm discouraged by the economic situation we're facing, in a global sense. Industry doesn't invest as much in basic R&D as it did 15 years ago—the times have changed, the economy is different, and it costs more to do business. We're challenged to be more innovative in what we do. I'm not saying to do more with less, because that runs out after a while. We have to learn to do things differently." Deborah Noble
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