Samuel Washington: Yeah, thanks for having me. Happy to be a part.
Daniel Joyce: We wanted you to come on because you recently, at our annual SUO conference, gave a very enlightening talk on how grant funding for research is changing under the current administration. A lot to unpack there. A lot of changes, obviously changing day by day, and probably have changed since you gave that talk. But I want to start by just, if you can, give us a 30,000-foot view of how things ... or maybe we could even say, look, how was research funding allocated by the NIH before the current administration, and what does it look like now compared to that?
Samuel Washington: Yeah. If we think historically ... well, I guess everything's almost historic now ... paradigms have shifted so much that compared to prior years, there was an approximately $18 billion cut, which represents about a 44% cut, for 2026 fiscal year funding lines compared to 2025, and this was part of the president's larger budget in terms of total program-level changes for the NIH. Now, even these numbers continue to change, and hopefully we're moving towards a smaller cut, a smaller impact, but it seems as though the base budget will have some cut associated with that, and the question is, overall, what will this do to federal research-and-development budgets? And it seems like overall, if we think big-picture for 2026, this may represent a cut of about 6% or roughly about $11 billion compared to last year alone.
Daniel Joyce: Wow. So obviously a lot tougher for us researchers moving forward, given these cuts. One question I always ask myself when I don't like what's happening is, is there logic to this? Let me put the shoe on the other foot. Was there a need for these cuts? We can talk about whether the current administration believes in research or not. I don't want to go down that road, but what I do want to go down is, did they have justification for these cuts? Was there some footing that makes sense of why these cuts are coming?
Samuel Washington: I think conceptually, all of us understand how, when we get a grant, some component of that funding goes to the institution, some of that funding goes to the researcher and other different avenues where the funding's dispersed. And I think some of that, conceptually, many people agree, needed some reexamination, some reinvestigation, to streamline that process. Collectively, we know that for every $1 of federal investment in research and development, you gain $11.50 of added GDP benefit over the following 30 years. So we know that there is a future benefit to federal investment of research, but optimization is something I think all of us could debate. Execution of that is, I think, something that we need to debate further. But collectively, we know with those conceptual agreements, what we're seeing in terms of execution now is a decrease in pay line, decrease in total budgets, that will have implications long-term moving forward.
Daniel Joyce: So, yeah, really interesting. If we look at the way funding was allocated, the decision makers, previous to the way they are now, how did it used to go? Who is making those decisions? For those who don't do research and don't understand how this process works, can you just walk us through how research was being evaluated and chosen for funding prior to all these changes?
Samuel Washington: Yeah. If we say broadly, the traditional approach that has been pursued for grant funding was going through a program officer, finding some announcement of funding, proposals made and submitted, and then a study section of experts, people in the field that are familiar with that content and context, then review these grants and identify and rank these grants based on their importance, impact, significance, and other criteria. And from that, a percentage is generated of the percent impact or collective overall ranking. And from that, we used to say, okay, those in the top, say 10%, that would be our pay line, or those above that threshold would be funded or most likely funded, and below that pay line, less likely funded. And what we've seen is collectively, not only has that pay line changed from roughly 10% to 4%, but also the importance of that study section. That opinion and assessment by peers and experts in the field has now also been diminished. Now there are two other levels in this paradigm of ranking and evaluation of grants, of which study section is now the bottom.
Daniel Joyce: Okay. So I just wrote an R01. I submitted it during the government shutdown. It of course got delayed, and then finally got a study section meeting in March. Can you walk me through what I can expect here? What's happening to my grant? What happens now at that study section that may or may not be different than before, and then what happens after that?
Samuel Washington: Yeah. So I think a key programmatic or structural change that happened is really the implementation of a unified NIH funding strategy to guide consistent and clear award decisions. And this was something that came into effect really end of December or January of this year, actually, and what that did was functionally restructure this entire process of reviewing grants. The study section or scientific review groups that we discussed before will still overall assess the impact of your proposed project. Those experts will have an opportunity to assess and weigh in on the proposed work, but now that assessment is given to an advisory council, and they are the ones who conduct a special council review which assesses applications, assesses the investigators to see how much prior funding they've gotten from the NIH, and then advises the institute or center director who's above them regarding funding decisions. Ultimately, this institute or center director is the person who makes the final funding decisions, based on staff, advisory council, or board advice.
Daniel Joyce: So does prior funding by the investigator mean they might be more likely or less likely to get funded for that grant?
Samuel Washington: Going through the documentation of this unified funding strategy, it looks as though there's an approach for what they call, "Promote broad distribution and geographic balance of funding, considering the total amount and type of NIH funding already available to each investigator." So it seems as though those who have already gotten considerable funds from the NIH may not have an advantage for applying for more current funding. The funding dollar amount that was mentioned in the documentation was really those receiving a million dollars or more in direct costs from NIH funding. There will be a separate consideration of prior funding at that limit or above, in terms of assessing potential grants being funded in the future moving forward.
Daniel Joyce: So that's fascinating. I mean, typically you'd think people who have funding are people who are doing important research and are good at getting funding, and now it looks like things might get harder for those people to get funding despite them being good at it. We also have fears that just that cutting from 10% to 4%, that 6% reduction, discourages young investigators who don't have the funding to submit those grants in the first place, so we could theoretically see a real loss of both senior investigators and junior investigators because of these policies. Am I seeing that correctly?
Samuel Washington: Yeah, and that was my interpretation. Obviously, there are many interpretations that will be presented, but when you cut that pay line from 10% to 4%, you're really only seeing specific groups that are capable of presenting work or creating work that may reach that pay line. But at the same time, if you are decreasing a score based on prior funding, you're almost hitting everyone from all sides and creating a situation where it may not be feasible for the same groups or even new groups to reach the goalpost, but also those who've reached it in the past may not be able to hit it again.
Daniel Joyce: So this new tiered system of approving grants, it sounds to me like the underlying goal was to have more effective, efficient allocation of resources. However, what you just described to me seems like we're incorporating more people in the administrative process to review these things that obviously require money to pay. Is that true? Do you think we're increasing the cost of reviewing a grant in this process? Is that worth it? Or is this just a reallocation of resources that we already have within the system?
Samuel Washington: It definitely appears, at least on the documentation provided thus far, that there are new staff, new faculty, new layers added to this, and new added layers of administrative burden, potentially bureaucratic burden, in this process, on the hopes of promoting a concept and an idea of broadening disbursement of funds and broadening access of ideas and researchers to NIH funding. It's an interesting push and pull, that it's not clear based on this documentation or other communications of what that looks like boots on the ground, process-wise, moving forward for us.
Daniel Joyce: Really interesting. All right. So we talked about what's going to happen to my grant. What if you got a new investigator out there who's used to writing the grants the old way, and now under these new changes is looking to write the next grant? How has it changed? How does that grant writing look different now than it did before?
Samuel Washington: I think when it comes to the idea of the standard paradigm of you get the K Award, you get the R01, you apply for the R01, NIH funding is that pinnacle, that brass ring that we want to go for. It seems as though resilience is really taking on a new name in terms of research in your career and your program, where NIH funding may not be the sole source of funding that is consistent and reliable moving forward, and this really speaks to us being able to diversify our funding portfolios. Thankfully, during SUO there are many talks about how one may do that, whether it be from foundation funding, philanthropic funds, industry partnerships, things that we've all seen speckled throughout, but now are gaining increased importance where the funding landscape has changed in terms of NIH and federal funding.
Daniel Joyce: I love that idea, and I loved it when I heard you say it at SUO, is that we gotta think about our research funding just like we think about our personal retirement account. We gotta diversify. Having different sources of income for that research is going to be even more important. I want to ask first, in your pursuance of those funding resources, have you seen an increase in non-governmental funding resources, or has it been about the same in your experience?
Samuel Washington: Yeah. Personally, I've been aware of an increased interest and drive to support research coming from many different sectors. This is from philanthropic support, this is from industry support and foundation support. And I think what has come from this, the silver lining, is it's really shown people that if it's important to them, they can take a more active role in supporting that research. And I think that does present new opportunities for researchers to still look at the questions they want to, but potentially from a different angle or from a different funder or from a different team-based approach than maybe the traditional approach was five, ten years ago, or even three years ago at this point.
Daniel Joyce: Yeah. I find the whole searching for funding opportunities process really hard and overwhelming, honestly. There's a lot out there. I often find things and then find out from somebody else that there's something here, and it's word of mouth on some things. I do my own searches, I find things, but it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of effort, and I never really feel like I've really gotten all the information I need to get. You've been incredibly successful at all of this, so I want to hear. Your next grant, how do you go about looking for the funding resources? And do you have any tips for those of us who find it awful?
Samuel Washington: I think all of us find it awful. It's that thing that gets our heart rates up outside of the OR, outside of clinic, because I think there was always some uncertainty of if we're going to get that next grant, and what we see now is that the purse is tightening. The goals are changing, not only in terms of just science and how we conduct it, but also how it's communicated. And with all of this change, there's not a consistent thing that we can use anymore to identify funding. What we have seen is, collectively, a large number of these public benefit organizations, international affairs, directed gifts that are now increasing opportunities for funding. And that includes, again, industry funding, philanthropic foundation funding, and really we have to broaden our search beyond just our federal organizations or the commonly seen or commonly known national organizations, to really seek out partnerships that maybe we didn't think about before. I wish there was one clean, consistent site to look for this, but many of them may vary not only in their priority or funding sources, but also geographic focus. And that is really where working with your institution's research infrastructure, working with mentors at other institutions, can help identify some of these potential funding sources that maybe weren't on our radar before.
Daniel Joyce: Well, Sam, I really am grateful there are people like you out there who are not discouraged, and who are pushing through and doing amazing research despite these changes. I hope that people who watch this are inspired by what you're doing, and certainly I think we're all better informed based on your expertise and knowledge of this. There's a lot coming down the pipeline. A lot more is going to change, but I do think, as you say, there is a pathway forward, it's just going to look a little bit different. I'm going to get you out of here on this. Do you think ... let's say the next administration is a different one than what we currently have. Does any of this change, or is this where we're at from here on out?
Samuel Washington: I think next administration, in the future, five, ten years, things will still be different because of the changes, not only in terms of just process and infrastructure, but also institutional knowledge has dramatically changed in a very short amount of time, and that's not something where we can flip a switch and get it back. I think the question now is how do we use that to move us forward towards better science, better collaborative efforts, better knowledge, better patient care. I think that's the part that we all have to figure out as we keep working through this together.
Daniel Joyce: Really well said. Hey, thank you so much for taking the time to explain this to us. I really, really appreciate it.
Samuel Washington: Happy to be a part. Happy to do it. Thanks again.