Facing a bleak budget picture, US research universities and national laboratories are for the first time forming joint delegations to lobby key lawmakers as they consider funding bills for fiscal year 2013. The teaming strategy emerged from a mid-March meeting between senior research officials from 45 of the 61 members of the Association of American Universities and the directors or deputy directors of four national labs.
“All of us share the concern for federal funding for science, for maintaining this ecosystem for basic research across the mission-driven research of the labs and into partnering with industry,” says Ann Arvin, vice provost and dean of research at Stanford University. Although Stanford has a close relationship with SLAC, which it operates for the Department of Energy, researchers from many institutions experiment at SLAC’s two x-ray sources. The circumstances are similar for the other universities that manage DOE labs, including the University of...
