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BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
8
JULY
2016
Public Affairs
New Overtime Rules to
Impact Postdoctoral Pay
In May, the White House issued new rules for
overtime pay that will impact both researchers
employing postdocs and postdocs alike. The rul-
ing makes, with some exceptions, everyone who
earns under $47,476 per year eligible for overtime
pay regardless of their duties. This includes most
postdoctoral researchers (rules may be different
for those who primarily teach—less common in
biomedical research than in other disciplines). On
the same day, National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Director
Francis Collins
and Department of Labor
Secretary
Thomas Perez
discussed the impact of this
ruling on postdoctoral fellows in a Huffington
Post Blog. In that post, Collins announced that
the NIH will be raising postdoctoral National Re-
search Service Award recipients’ salaries to above
that threshold, and encouraged Principal Inves-
tigators (PIs) to follow suit. The post explains
why it would be very difficult to pay postdoctoral
fellows hourly, thus the decision for the pay raise.
While this is good news for the postdoctoral
community, it will require PIs to re-examine their
budgets if they are currently paying postdocs less
than the new threshold amount. PIs in the middle
of a multi-year grant period will have to shift
funds. The new rule takes effect December 1, giv-
ing the research community six months to work
out the details.
Biophysical Society Opposes
Increase in SBIR Set Aside
The Biophysical Society joined 77 other profes-
sional societies and research institutions in sharing
its opposition to increasing the set-aside for the
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Pro-
gram and the Small Business Technology Transfer
(STTR) program, as proposed in bill HR 4783,
to Congress. The societies undersigned a letter
sent to the House Science, Space and Technol-
ogy Committee, as well as the House and Senate
Armed Services Committee, which were consider-
ing legislation that the SBIR/STTR bill might be
attached to.
The SBIR program is a competitive program that
encourages domestic small businesses to engage in
federal research and development (R&D) that has
the potential for commercialization. Each federal
agency that has an extramural research and devel-
opment budget over $100 million is required to
allocate 2.8% of its budget to this program. NIH
(as part of the Department of Health and Human
Services), National Science Foundation (NSF),
NASA, and the Department of Energy (DOE) all
qualify and have a SBIR program. The reauthori-
zation bill would increase the SBIR set-aside from
3.2% in 2018 to 6% in 2016.
The STTR program is a competitive program that
funds collaborations between small businesses and
research institutions in Phase I or Phase II, with
the goal of spurring innovation, and encouraging
the commercialization of innovations arising from
federally funded research. Agencies with federal
R&D budgets in excess of $1 billion participate
in the program. This includes the NIH, NSF,
NASA, and DOE. The bill would increase the
STTR set-aside from 0.45% to 1.0% over six
years.
The letter sent to Congress noted that while the
signing organizations agree that small businesses
are a vital piece of the scientific research commu-
nity in the United States, increasing the manda-
tory set aside for these programs will decrease the
research opportunities available to investigators at
colleges and universities, nonprofit research insti-
tutes, and other research organizations, especially
at a time when future funding levels for research
are very uncertain. The letter also suggested that
the best way to examine the SBIR program is
through the regular authorization process. The
SBIR program is currently authorized through
September 2017.
White House Launches Na-
tional Microbiome Initiative
The White House Office of Science and Tech-
nology Policy (OSTP), in collaboration with
federal agencies and private-sector stakeholders,
announced May 13 a new National Microbiome