Dr. Federoff Hosts Town Hall Discussing the ARRA
February 27, 2009
Presentation from the Town Hall (ppt)
Letter to Faculty from Dr. Federoff regarding the Town Hall:
February 26, 2009
Dear GUMC faculty:
During our Town Hall discussion last week, several individuals raised questions regarding our work to identify/further define potential opportunities to secure funding from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act - ARARA (the stimulus bill). As we are aware, the bill allocates approximately $10 billion to the NIH, with the large majority of those funds being disbursed to the agencies within the NIH. The legislation also allocates funding to other components of the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as to the National Science Foundation and more broadly. I'd like to invite you to a meeting to be held on Friday, February 27th at 10:30 a.m. in the LA2 Pre-clinical Science Building for a discussion on GUMC efforts to be as competitive as possible for these funds.
Details regarding ARRA can be found at: www.recovery.gov.
While Georgetown is one of many institutions vying for the new funding available, we will work to put forth our best ideas in order to procure funding for GUMC. I have asked Andy Deubler and Scott Fleming to begin to narrow down the vast array of opportunities at GUMC into discreet categories which will help organize our efforts. These areas include 1) Healthcare information technology, 2) Research infrastructure renewal, shared instrumentation and renovation, and 3) Healthcare education, training and certificate initiatives. While it is expected that NIH, and possibly other agencies, will first proceed to fund previously reviewed funding proposals which were highly rated, but for which funds were not available prior to the ARARA, I would suggest that individuals considering RO1 funding opportunities be prepared to submit these proposals should a new round of review be initiated utilizing stimulus funding. In addition, I would encourage all RO1 PIs to prepare well-justified requests for supplemental funding that can advantage your research programs over the next several years.
Since the Congress and the President have made clear that they want to see these funds put to work as quickly as possible, any information that we can gain about the processes agencies intend to pursue will be good to know. Therefore, while we are seeking out information on an ongoing basis with colleagues around the University, I do have one request of those of you with contacts within the NIH: Should you during your regular course of interaction with these individuals be able to learn anything regarding new programs or initiatives relating to stimulus funding and how NIH might plan to disburse funding, please communicate what you can to Andy Deubler (amd92@georgetown.edu or 7-0720).
Many thanks for your help and please know that we are doing all we can to enable new research funding to come to GUMC. I hope you can join me on Friday the 27th at 10:30 a.m. for this discussion.
Howard
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