Seeking to grab a greater share of declining federal research budgets, Virginia is following an example set by Texas 10 years ago and establishing a state academy of science. As in Texas, the instigator is a US senator; this time it’s Democrat Mark Warner.

More than a dozen states have some type of science academy, but most are primarily advisory bodies to the legislature or to executive-branch agencies. Many—including the Washington State Academy of Sciences; the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering; the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas (TAMEST); and now the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (VASEM)—borrow figuratively and literally from the National Academies: Membership in the state academies is automatically conferred on all National Academies members who are state residents or who work at state institutions.

What sets Texas’s and Virginia’s academies apart from the others is the explicit goal of attracting more federal research dollars to their states. NSF figures show that Virginia’s universities received $551 million in federal R&D funding in 2010 (the latest year for which statistics are available). Texas, the second most populous state, garnered $1.6 billion for university R&D that year, roughly the same amount taken in by Maryland’s universities despite that state’s far smaller population. Even so, TAMEST officials claim that in recent years Texas has moved from sixth place to third or fourth (depending on the year) among the states in the amount of federal academic research funding.

Though it’s not possible to quantify exactly how much of that increase is directly attributable to TAMEST, former Republican senator Kay Bailey Hutchison says that the Texas academy has drawn more research grants to the state by stimulating interdisciplinary collaborations among its more than 250 individual and 17 institutional members. The institutional members are the universities that host National Academies members, and they are assessed dues based on the number of individual members they host. TAMEST also has a $12 million endowment, and corporate donations offset the cost of its annual conferences. In 2012 its revenues totaled $1.4 million, and expenses were $1.1 million.

Hutchison, together with Texan Nobel laureates Michael Brown and the late Richard Smalley, pushed for TAMEST’s creation. “Our academic leaders saw what the [federal research] priorities were and matched their expertise and their centers of excellence to collaborate with others to put forward grant requests in those areas,” she explains. Texas universities are “fiercely competitive,” she says, and Neal Lane, former presidential science adviser and provost at Rice University, told her at the time that Rice and other universities didn’t know what was happening in research at other Texas institutions.

Virginia’s academy “is in many ways modeled after the Texas academy, [whose] goal is to increase the amount of research dollars flowing into Texas, create more cross-collaboration, increase membership in the [state] academy, and elevate science in the state,” says Warner. “What the TAMEST people told me is that it’s basically cross-pollination,” says University of Virginia engineering professor Joe Campbell, VASEM’s inaugural president. “Does that sound a little fuzzy? Yeah,” he says. “We [scientists] tend to put on our blinders and work deeper and deeper into whatever problem we’re working on. And it’s good if something stimulates us to look beyond and talk to people in other areas.”

“Collaborations happen organically; we aren’t forcing them to happen,” agrees Mary Beth Maddox, TAMEST’s executive director. “We are just providing a venue for those researchers to interact. People interact in conferences around disciplines. But this is unique in that it brings all the science, engineering, and medicine [fields] together.” One TAMEST conference, for example, led to a collaboration between the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the University of Texas at Dallas to create a joint graduate program in biomedical engineering. Each year TAMEST holds a meeting focusing on a particular topic. Recent ones have dealt with energy, water, and the research mission of universities.

As with TAMEST, the Virginia academy hopes to attract its membership to annual meetings and other topical conferences. Nearly four dozen of VASEM’s 125 or so members attended an inaugural meeting held on 15 November at the National Academies building in Washington, DC. Twenty others said they would have attended had they not been of the age where they no longer travel, Warner says.

Campbell says he and other VASEM organizers told Warner that the nascent academy can’t operate without a budget: “He said, ‘I will help you contact the right people to try and raise money.’ We said, ‘If we can’t get some relevancy and introduce ourselves to the Virginia General Assembly, we don’t have a chance.’ He said, ‘I will get together a group in the assembly and let you talk to them.’ ” (Most state academies—though not Texas’s—receive a small annual appropriation from their state’s legislature.) Warner, who spent the entire day at the November gathering, is enthusiastic about VASEM, though he cautions that it’s up to the members to decide exactly what direction the new academy should take. In particular, academy members need to settle on a niche area of expertise. “We’ve got to be willing to define where we think Virginia’s strengths in science are and what we ought to pursue,” he says.

“At the end of the day, I can be a helper and supporter and advocate, but the scientists have to decide whether they want this,” says Warner. “The last thing anybody needs is another organization that doesn’t have a useful purpose.”

Ironically, none of the prominent scientists who spoke at the meeting at Warner’s invitation were Virginians. They included National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins, former NSF director Rita Colwell, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory director Paul Alivisatos, MIT professor Mildred Dresselhaus, and former Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy director Arun Majumdar. “We wanted to have a meeting that would knock people’s socks off,” explains Campbell. “We wanted attendees to come back again. As we move forward, we will probably go more with people from Virginia.”

Other states’ academies have more modest aims. “Most of our work effort involves conducting studies or projects on behalf of state agencies or the general assembly,” says Richard Strauss, executive director of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. The legislature provides the academy with enough funding to conduct about one study each year, he says. One previous topic was indoor air quality in schools. The academy also reviews grant applications for the state’s own biomedical research and stem-cell programs.

In addition to its National Academies members, the Washington State Academy of Sciences elects members by nomination and evaluation, says executive director Robert Bates. The 120-member academy originally hoped to emulate the National Academies model of conducting studies commissioned by the state government, but it soon found that agencies had little money available. Instead, it receives enough money from the legislature to support about one study each year. The academy is just finishing up an assessment on the causes of root rot that is decimating Douglas fir trees.

The Vermont Academy of Science and Engineering’s attempt to follow the National Academies’ advisory model “has been only modestly successful,” says Christopher Allen, its past president. Although the academy has had major input to legislative discussions of climate change, it has otherwise been in little demand from the state government for its advice. As a result, the academy recently refocused its work to support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. It offers awards to STEM teachers and grants so they can buy small equipment to develop projects outside the classroom.