Physics of Life (2022)
Chapter: Appendix C: Queries to Funding Agencies
C
Queries to Funding Agencies
In support of Chapter 9, the committee queried representative of the following funding agencies and foundations:
In addition, the committee made direct inquiries to staff at the following user facilities:
The main text of the committee’s request is below. The first two sets of questions on funding and research training and large-scale activities and partnerships were sent to the agencies and foundations listed above, while the section on large-scale user facilities was sent to all of the listed user facilities.
As you may know, once every ten years the National Academy of Sciences is charged with assessing the state of physics research and education in the United States. This year, for the first time, the Decadal Survey includes an assessment of Biological Physics, or the Physics of Living Systems (PoLS). On behalf of the survey committee, I am writing to ask your help in collecting data from your agency/foundation.
As an agency/entity that supports PoLS research, the committee requests that [name of agency or foundation] provide important information that will allow us to address our charge. We kindly ask you to complete the following questionnaire to enable the committee to assess the state of funding in the field.
The committee understands that it is difficult to define the boundaries of our field. We have chosen to take a broad view, with the understanding that there are many subfields where interesting and exciting discoveries are being made. The committee only asks that
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1 Oversees the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF).
you outline the parameters you used when querying databases for funded researchers or project funding opportunities within PoLS.
We would very much appreciate it if you could provide information from your agency/entity to the committee, and we request that you send us this information by July 10, 2020. Please feel free to contact either me or the National Academies staff, by email or telephone if you have any questions. Please also let us know as soon as possible if your schedule constraints will not allow a response by the date above so that we can accommodate your responses in our program.
FUNDING OF RESEARCH AND TRAINING
In order to understand the impact of federal agency and foundation funding on PoLS research, the committee is seeking the answers to the following questions from your organization:
- What are the various funding mechanisms or programs at your agency/foundation related to how the approaches and tools of physics can be used to advance understanding of crucial questions about living systems, or how biology inspires or generates new paradigms in physics?
- What new directions or emerging areas has your agency/foundation identified for the establishment of new programs in PoLS research? What are the major gaps that these funding opportunities address?
- What is the absolute number of dollars spent on PoLS research each year over the past decade at your agency/foundation?
- What is the total number of research grants given to PoLS each year for the past 10 years? Within that total, what fraction is awarded to individual investigators (PIs), co-PIs, or multiple PIs, and what is the average funding per PI?
- What is the distribution of grant size each year for the past 10 years?
- What is the distribution of investigators who receive PoLS grants, with relation to their primary academic/institutional departments. If available, please provide this distribution as percentages.
- Over the past decade, how many awards and what average dollar amount per award go to grantees each year as a function of the grantee’s time past PhD. We can divide this into three time spans: 5 years after PhD, 10 years after PhD, and beyond 10 years.
- Over the past decade, how many awards and what average dollar amount go to grantees each year as a function of gender, race, and ethnicity?
- Over the past decade, how many awards and what average dollar amount go to training grants and fellowships in POLS each year and what fraction goes to PhD students versus postdoctoral fellows?
- Please give examples of how the PoLS projects funded by your organization have impacted biology and biomedicine, as well as subfields of the physical and engineering sciences.
LARGE-SCALE ACTIVITIES AND PARTNERSHIPS
Because PoLS research is inherently cross-disciplinary, the committee is interested in understanding how funding is distributed between large-scale research and single-PI groups. To this end, we pose the following questions to the funding agencies.
- If your agency supports centers or large-group efforts in PoLS science, what is the size of the awards per year for each center relative to the total budget spent on PoLS each year?
- Which areas in PoLS research are part of these large efforts?
- Briefly describe the extent (% of total funding, $ amount) to which your agency supports interdisciplinary large-scale activities and partnerships that include PoLS science.
- If appropriate, please briefly describe the extent of industrial participation (% of total funding, $ amount) in large scale PoLS awards and how this has changed year to year over the past 10 years.
LARGE-SCALE USER FACILITIES
Many of the scientists engaged in PoLS research require use of the instrumentation and resources available at agency- and non-agency-funded large-scale user facilities. Examples include synchrotrons, nanoscience centers, and high-performance computing. In order to better understand the role user facilities play in PoLS research, the committee poses the following questions:
- What types of resources or instrumentation are available to researchers at your user-facility (choose from the answers below, or specify):
- Synchrotron
- Nanoscience center
- High-performance computing
- Electron microscopy
- Light microscopy
- Mass spectrometry
- Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)
- DNA sequencing, synthesis, and/or modification
- Other (please specify)
- For scientists using the instruments and resources, what is the breakdown of their associated fields of study?
- What mechanisms does your facility use to solicit community input for future funding decisions for large-scale user facilities?
- What mechanisms do you have to solicit proposals for access to facilities from scientists representing new areas of research, and how are proposals that represent new areas of research supported through the review process?
- What new technologies or user facility capabilities would be of interest to the PoLS research community?
Is there anything else the committee should consider in terms of the current and future funding landscape of PoLS research?
