For a change, I am going to start my macro-level observations by looking at the National Science Foundation. As indicated in the chart above the agency has only been able to spend about $382 million – or less than 14% – of its Recovery Act money. No particular insights on my part, other than there must not be much that the NSF particularly feels proud about in regard to doing its part to help the science community weather the economic storms: The last update NSF provides on their official Recovery Act web page is dated Oct. 6, 2009! (Understand -  I am referring to NSF’s institutional pride, not that of individuals. I personally know many people in the NSF who are trying to figure out how to get this money spent.)

Now, on to the DOE.

Just a reminder to Secretary Steven Chu: To fulfill your promise*, your staff now has less than six months to cut $16 billion in checks. That works out to about $2.66 billion a month or $91 million dollars per day. If it weren’t for the fact that all of this money has already been promised, I would seriously suggest the DOE write a check for $100 million to the top 160 universities in the nation and ask them to send in a five-page report in a year.

Anyway, the DOE’s chart, sad to say, speaks for itself:

* In Feb. 2009 Secretary Chu announced that 70 percent of Recovery act “investments” will be disbursed by the end of 2010.

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U.S. Department of Energy

I finally got someone in the DOE press office to field some of my questions about why Recovery Act checks aren’t being sent! Ahem, that only took about 8 months. Unfortunately, I am still waiting on my answers (the press officer actually has been very nice, but struggling with this issue, too.)

The party line within DOE about the why less than 13% of the Recovery Act money has been paid out is two-fold:

1) Some of the monies have been awarded to state and local governments as well as some governmental-type entities. The DOE claims the entities getting these “community” awards only need to know that they will be receiving the award, and that they can begin hiring immediately. The DOE sends checks when these entities ask for reimbursement.

Now, this isn’t an area I know much about, but it doesn’t ring true given that nearly every state and local government budgets are in dire financial straits and seems to me that they would want their money ASAP.

2) For funds targeted or private businesses, academic institution, federal labs and nonprofit research groups, DOE says, “The process for disbursing the funds is longer because applicants must be given time to submit applications, and then the Department needs time to review the [competitive] applications to make final selections.”

That was true over a year ago, but this argument is bunk now. Earlier this month, DOE’s Matt Rogers issued a report stating that 99% of the Recovery Act awards and grants have been made. According to my conservative estimate, at least $12.5 billion has been awarded since March 2009 to private businesses, academic institution, federal labs and nonprofit research groups.

I reminded my friendly DOE press officer Secretary Chu announced in Feb. 2009 that 70 percent of Recovery act “investments” will be disbursed by the end of 2010. I think he was sincere in that statement, but shaking up the funding bureaucracy is very, very hard. Chu assigned Rogers to shake things up, and I am sure Rogers is trying. And maybe the problem isn’t within the DOE. Maybe someone needs to send a message to the award recipients to start speeding up the spending the money

Either way, the money isn’t flowing, and Chu will be lucky if he can report that half of his goal (35%) of Recovery Act disbursements are made by the end of the year. Hopefully, the DOE will prove me wrong.

Ditto for the National Science Foundation.

National Science Foundation

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NIST just announced that it is accepting proposals for its 2010 Technology Innovation Program that will provide $25 million in first-year cost-shared funding for innovative research on “Manufacturing and Biomanufacturing: Materials Advances and Critical Processes.” TIP is NIST’s version of DARPA and ARPA-E, i.e., it seeks to fund high-risk, high-reward research.

The competition is open to U.S. businesses, national labs, schools and nonprofit research institutions.

Generally speaking TIP is going after tech proposals in an area that needs “government attention because the magnitude of the problem is large and society challenges are not being sufficiently addressed.”

According to a NIST press release, the TIP in 2010 is seeking proposals in three specific areas:

Process scale-up, integration and design for materials advances – addressing how new materials are moved from the laboratory to full production.

Predictive modeling for materials advances and materials processing – using the power of modern analysis, modeling and computation to streamline the design and production scale-up of new materials by more accurately predicting their performance; and

Critical process advances – novel production technologies that dramatically improve the processing of new materials or resolve important bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the production of existing materials.

The TIP release says that it expects to pick 25 new projects. Just to clear up some possible confusion, that doesn’t mean the average award is $1 million. The $25 million refers to the first year of funding that is available for multi-year proposals. NIST/TIP expects that projects will continue to be funding in the $1.5 million to $9 million range.

Proposal are due by midnight,  July 15, 2010.

In the past, TIP has set forth eight criteria it uses to weigh proposals:

• Novel Purpose: address societal challenges not being addressed in areas of critical national need with benefits that extend significantly beyond proposers.
• Societal Challenges: concentrate on those challenges that justify government attention.
• Scientific & Technical Merit: support innovative high-risk, high-reward research.
• Transformational Results: focus on ideas with a strong potential for advancing state-of-the-art
  and contributing to U.S. science and technology base.
• Rich Teaming: fund small and medium sized businesses, academia, national labs, nonprofit
  research institutions and other organizations.
• Clear Government Need: justifies government attention because the magnitude of the problem
  is large and no other sources of funding are reasonably available.
• Funding Limits: Single company projects up to $3M over a maximum of three years.
  Joint Venture projects up to $9M over a maximum of five years. (TIP funds direct project costs only.)
• Cost Sharing: At least 50% of the yearly total project costs – direct plus indirect – and may be
  composed of both cash and in-kind.

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We are all Bill Murray because DOE and NSF still seem to be suffering from the fierce urgency of tomorrow:

DOE report 4/16/2010. Source: recovery.gov

NSF report 4/16/2010. Source: recovery.gov

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The fierce urgency of now tomorrow at the DOE:

FYI, the average for all federal agencies is 30%.

Still glue in the gears at the NSF, too:

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