"At least it’s better than last year" was the assessment of a long-term Senate Appropriations Committee staffer commenting on the state of the federal budget process at the beginning of fiscal year 2004 on October 1. And, indeed, two of the thirteen appropriations bills had actually been passed and signed into law by the statutory date, leaving at least some hope that the remainder can be enacted by the time Congress adjourns in November or early December rather than spilling over to the spring of the next calendar year as was the case in 2002-2003. Meanwhile, the first of what will probably be several "continuing resolutions" is keeping the government operating until October 31.

One of the two federal agencies to receive its full FY2004 funding on time is the Department of Homeland Security. The research and development portfolio for DHS totals $907 million in FY 2004, a 36 percent increase over last fiscal year. But DHS is only one of many agencies included in the overall federal thrust on R&D related to homeland security. According to a new inventory compiled by the Office of Management and Budget, more than a dozen departments fund such R&D, with half of the total coming from the Department of Health and Human Services, mostly for National Institutes of Health research activities aimed at developing biomedical detection and remediation tools against biological agents.

DHS itself is moving to create the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA, modeled after DARPA in the Department of Defesne) as the external funding arm of the new agency. Dr. David Bolka, an engineering acoustics Ph.D. who has worked at the Department of Defense as well as AT&T Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies, has been named HSARPA’s first director. In addition to HSARPA, the Department is creating organizations to implement its university programs, fellowship programs, standards-setting, and rapid prototyping of homeland security products.

Support has been growing both within the Department of Defense and from the outside science and engineering community for setting a goal of 3 percent of the DOD budget for science and technology investment. The FY 2004 appropriations bill raises that to 3.3 percent, in contrast to the Administration’s request for a 2.7 percent ratio. The technical community is concerned, however, that the increase is heavily concentrated in the 6.3 programs of DOD (the "D" part of R&D) at the expense of basic research. Also of concern is the "devolvement" of programs such as the University Research Initiatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to the purview of the three services. Funding for these programs will rise 22 percent to $286 million but much of the increase will go to Congressional "earmarks" for specific projects. DARPA funding, which funds basic research in DOD laboratories and universities, will fall 6 percent to $893 million.

The Director of the National Institutes of Health has released a "roadmap" for medical research in the 21^st century which would significantly reorganize the way the huge agency conducts its research, in part by developing cooperative interdisciplinary projects emphasizing the importance of the physical sciences such as materials to the biomedical portfolio. In addition to refocusing some of its own funding (doubled by Congress over the last five fiscal years), NIH seeks to develop more cooperative programs with other appropriations homes such as the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. NIH envisions awarding 15 planning grants in fiscal year 2004 for interdisciplinary research centers.

The National Science Foundation is soliciting proposals for Major Instrumentation Projects for materials research which cost more than $2 million per instrument. The program is designed to support the development of detailed conceptual and engineering design for new tools for materials preparation or characterization at major national facilities. NSF notes that it "has a key role to play in supporting the education and training of the future researchers who will develop instrumentation for these facilities…Therefore priority will be given to those proposals which involve students in the design and construction of the instruments." Details are available at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2003/nsf03604/nsf03604.htm

NSF has announced the award of $216.3 million in funding for the second year of its Math and Science Partnerships (MSP). Details, including a listing of the awardees and descriptions of their projects, are at http://www.nsf.gov/pubsys/ods/getpub.cfm?pr03112

At the same time, NSF is opening competition for the new round of the MSP focusing on middle and high school partnerships and adding "Institute Partnerships – Teacher Institutes for the 21^st Century" and a focused set of Research, Evaluation and Technical Assistance projects that directly support the work of the Institute Partnerships. Full proposals are due by December 16, 2003. See http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2003/nsf03605/nsf03605.htm

The new NSF solicitation for Centers for Learning and Teaching is available at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2004/nsf04501/nsf04501.htm

The program focuses on the advanced preparation of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educators, as well as the establishment of partnerships among Ph.D.-granting institutions, school systems, and professional societies, business and industry, research laboratories, private foundations, and informal science centers. Preliminary proposals are due December 2, 2003.