StudiesEuropean Funding and Budget Plans for 2011  In the past two years, global economic uncertainties have presented very challenging times for economies looking to continue their long-standing investments in the life sciences and healthcare research areas. In particular, many countries in the European Union have either enacted or are considering implementing austerity measures intended to reduce the amount of money governments invest in programs. In order to understand the funding challenges faced by European researchers, The Science Advisory Board conducted a study to learn how EU scientists plan on allocating their spending in the year 2011. Although a vast majority of the labs we surveyed, rely primarily on funds from within their own country, we were specifically interested in the labs that receive at least a portion of their funds directly from the European Union (EU) or other pan-European funding bodies. The primary source of funding from the European Union currently comes from the Framework Programme (FP) for Research and Technological Development implemented by the EU to promote transnational and collaborative research within Europe.  The current programme, FP7, which began in 2007 and is set to last through 2013, is the primary source of research funding from the EU. We found that 72% of researchers using EU sources of funding were supported by FP7 funds. Interestingly, 43% of the researchers indicated that they still use FP6 funding which was replaced in 2006. The number of labs using FP6 funding will most likely taper in the coming years.  Additionally, 49 researchers indicated receiving support from other European funding bodies, the most popular of which was the Marie Curie Fellowship Association (MFCA), followed by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) among other European councils and associations. Collectively, this patchwork of organizations represents an important source of funding for European scientists.  Scientists generally spend funds in primarily 3 areas: lab overhead, lab instrumentation and lab consumables. Since lab overhead costs are relatively fixed from year to year, our study focused on lab instrumentation and consumables. With respect to consumables, most labs indicated that they expect to spend on laboratory plasticware, glassware, disposables and laboratory chemicals. Molecular biology products and genomic analysis kits and reagents represented the second largest categories budgeted for in over 60% of the labs. Interestingly, about one-fourth of the labs specified that they would procure RNAi products in the coming year.  With respect to budgeting for lab instrumentation, most labs indicated that they planned to acquire “general lab equipment”. About 40% of labs indicated that they plan to invest in Microscope-based cell biology instrumentation, protein analysis and purification instruments or instrumentats for genomic analysis. What instruments are you planning on purchasing in 2011? Has the economic downturn affected your expected purchases? We invite you to join the discussion in the Community Forum. [ View Current & Future Studies ] [ View Past Studies ] |
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