Government Science Budgets 2009
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The government is a key funding source for most academic labs, so it’s not a bad idea to know how much money is actually out there. We’ve looked at the 2009 budgets at four of the major funding institutions, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Energy (DOE), in order to reveal the current budget numbers.
In addition to government funds, there are numerous foundations and companies that also fund basic research, generally with more of a disease-focused mission. As a reference point, the American Cancer Society awarded $125MM in grants in the 2007-8 fiscal year.
The NIH is by far the largest supporter of research with a budget of over $30B (see Figure 1), followed by smaller contributions from the NSF, DOD and DOE. 
The NIH budget is divided among roughly 25 different Institutes within the NIH. Figure 2 shows the breakdown of the 2008 NIH budget by Institute. The top five Institutes, led by the National Cancer Institute, account for more than 50% of the budget while the remainder is split between 20 smaller institutes.
The NIH funded over 38,000 research projects in 2008 and taking into account research centers and other programs, that number jumps to over 46,000 funded grants! That’s a pretty remarkable number. Where it really gets scary is to think that if they funded 46,000, how many were actually written?!
It is important to note that these numbers do not include the Stimulus money. Since this money is not a permanent addition to the budget, it was omitted for the sake of these reference numbers.
Abbreviations: National Cancer Institute, NCI; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIAID; National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, NHLBI; National Institute of General Medical Sciences, NIGMS; National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, NIDDK.
References: Click on Agency link to be taken to specific budgets.
