BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
6
AUGUST
2014
Public Affairs
Congressional Appropriations
Process Stalled
What was supposed to be a somewhat smooth ap-
propriations process compared to recent years has
stalled over disagreements on policy issues rather
than top line spending levels. The House and Sen-
ate agreed on a top line budget number as part of a
two year deal in December 2014, putting a budget
resolution in place before the 2014 appropriations
process even started. Even with that done, the two
parties are having trouble finding common ground
on the spending bills.
A package of three FY 2015 appropriations bills
that had been approved by the House stalled in the
Senate after Senate Democrats and Republicans
were unable to reach an agreement on the amend-
ment process. The package included funding for
NSF, and amendments were expected to decrease
funding for the social sciences and/or geophysical
research, to defund specific grants, and to challenge
the peer review process. To help fend off those ef-
forts, the Society called upon its members to write
to their Senators and oppose any such amend-
ments. In the two days before the bill was pulled
from the floor, BPS members sent 291 letters. The
Coalition for National Science Funding, of which
the Biophysical Society is a member, also sent a let-
ter opposing the potential amendments. After the
bill was pulled from consideration, it was unclear
when it would return to the Senate floor for con-
sideration again. In light of the disagreement over
the amendment process, the Senate Appropriations
Committee also postponed consideration of the
FY15 Energy and Water bill.
The FY 2015 fiscal year begins on October 1,
2014. If the appropriations bills are not approved
by Congress by the end of September, Congress
must pass a continuing resolution funding the gov-
ernment temporarily in order to prevent a govern-
ment shutdown.
New NIH/NSF Program Strives
to Move Biomedical Innova-
tions to the Marketplace
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the
National Science Foundation (NSF) are collaborat-
ing on an initiative, NIH Innovation Corps Team
Training Pilot Program (I-Corps at NIH), to train
NIH-funded researchers on how to evaluate their
scientific discoveries for commercial potential, with
the aim of accelerating biomedical innovations into
applied health technologies.
Researchers with Small Business Innovation
Research and Small Business Technology Transfer
(SBIR/STTR) Phase I awards from participating
NIH institutes are eligible to apply to participate
in the training but must assemble a team that
includes a corporate officer and an industry expert.
The NIH institutes that will participate in the
pilot program are the National Cancer Institute,
the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and
Stroke, and the National Center for Advancing
Translational Sciences.
Teams selected for I-Corps at NIH will participate
in a nine-week boot camp in which experienced
business-savvy instructors with biomedical business
experience work closely with teams of researchers
to help them explore potential markets for their
federally funded innovations.
According to a press release issued by NIH and
NSF,
Michael Weingarten
, director of the NCI
SBIR Development Center, and his colleagues
initially reached out to NSF about offering the
program through NIH because they witnessed
the difference I-Corps made for the graduates.
To date, more than 300 three-person teams have
completed the NSF I-Corps training.
“I-Corps will help teach NIH-funded start-ups
how to build scalable business models around new
technologies they’re developing for the detection
and treatment of disease. The program sheds new
light on how companies can deal with important
business risks such as protecting intellectual prop-
