help support biomedical research breakthroughs across the funding gap between lab bench and commercialization, also known as the “valley of death,” where many innovations die. The program, called Biomedical Research, Development, and Growth to Spur the Acceleration of New Technologies—or BRDG-SPAN—helps provide critical funding needed to carry out later stage research activities and to pursue the next appropriate milestone(s) necessary to move a product/technology along a promising commercialization pathway.
—Federal funding for biomedical research is something that President Obama strongly supports. The president has proposed increasing the current NIH budget of nearly $31 billion by another $1 billion for fiscal 2011, Collins says, “even at a time of difficult economic stress because of the president’s absolute confidence that an investment in science and technology is critical to the future of our nation.”
—Collins says the NIH will announce seven new funding programs this week that are intended to create “highly innovative and cross-disciplinary” centers. “Even though my budget is $31 billion, I could easily spend twice as much without wasting money,” Collins says. “The average person who sends a grant request to NIH has about one chance in five of getting funded.”
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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