Congress Poised to Avert Government Shutdown
BU IN DC
Kevin Gallagher of the Global Development Policy Center participated in a Center for Strategic & International Studies panel on COVID-19’s impact on Latin America on September 23.
Roscoe Giles of the College of Engineering gave a presentation to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee on September 24.
Rena Conti of the Questrom School of Business spoke at a webinar sponsored by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the U.S. Department of Justice on “Promoting Innovation in the Life Science Sector and Supporting Pro-Competitive Collaboration: the Role of Intellectual Property” on September 23.
CONGRESS POISED TO AVERT GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN
On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution (H.R. 8337) to keep federal programs operating at their current funding levels through December 11. The U.S. Senate is expected to pass the measure next week, with the President planning to sign it before the current fiscal year expires on September 30. The bill will allow the National Institutes of Health to provide no-cost extensions to grantees with expiring multiyear grants whose research was interrupted by COVID-19. However, the legislation does not include any additional funding to address the research impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Investigators should expect that federal agencies operating under a continuing resolution will reduce existing grant awards until a final budget deal has been reached.
BUZZ BITS…
- The National Institutes of Health has selected Dr. Lindsey Criswell to be the next director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS). Dr. Criswell is a rheumatologist who currently serves as the vice chancellor of research at the University of California, San Francisco. She will join NIAMS in 2021.
- The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) published its final endowment excise tax regulations on September 18. The rules ease the impact of the 1.4% tax on certain private university endowments, which was enacted by Congress in 2017, but the higher education community continues to oppose the tax.
- On Tuesday, the President issued an executive order that directs federal agencies to consider prohibiting the use of grant funds for training that promotes “race and sex stereotyping.” The impact on grantees of the worrisome provisions is unclear: agencies have 60 days to review their programs, the order contains no instructions for implementing regulations, and the order is likely to be challenged in court.
EVENTS NEWS YOU CAN USE
Join the Office of Research for a webinar on September 30 at 4 pm to learn about emerging research in cloud computing, secure/private computation, and artificial intelligence at the Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering. Faculty from the Hariri Institute will discuss how they are working to spark convergence and collaboration with investigators inside and outside of BU in order to reshape the landscape around computational and data-driven research.