Mike's Blog

I’m writing this the week before the new fiscal year is scheduled to begin. The USG has its own unique way of telling time and the fiscal year always begins on October 1^st. In the absence of a full year’s budget which consists of twelve separate appropriation bills, Congress can...

As FY25 comes to a close, most people at NIH are simply hoping to catch their breath before we learn what awaits us in FY26. The budget is (as typical) still pretty murky. The president has submitted a budget request which included an overall 40% reduction in total NIH funding...

Fiscal year 2025 is painfully but thankfully coming to a close in the next couple of months. As I’ve remarked to staff, when bad things happen and someone says, “I’ve seen worse,” hopefully this will be their last new ‘worse’ benchmark. Typically, around this time, we are in mop up...

Advice from the Daily Stoic.

In a past geological era (during my college days), I had the opportunity to drive across the country (multiple times). At the time, there were no ATMs, cell phones, or GPS. I made the trek with only a big wad of cash...

The process of awarding grants, both competing and non-competing, has been challenging in 2025 to say the least. We (NCATS, as well as the rest of the NIH) are way behind where we need to be at this point in the fiscal year. Partly, this has been due to new...