MADISON- According to University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank, cuts proposed by the Trump administration would severely disrupt research at the state’s flagship university. The President has proposed a cut to federal funding of indirect research costs. Such indirect costs include personnel who keep labs running, hazardous waste disposal, utility costs, and much more.
Karen Herzog at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:
If federal funding for indirect costs tied to research were cut by Congress, as proposed by President Donald Trump, the University of Wisconsin-Madison could lose tens of millions of dollars annually and be forced to narrow the breadth of its research enterprise, Chancellor Rebecca Blank warned in a blog post Tuesday.
“We would not have the resources to cover these costs for all of the research projects we currently conduct with federal support,” Blank wrote in her blog, Blank’s Slate. “As our faculty know, UW-Madison’s strong reputation for innovation in research is due to its broad research strength across many areas. Like many other public universities, we could not continue to conduct the same breadth and quality of research with lower cost recovery rates.”
News of potential hits to the research enterprise from federal budget cuts comes as the university has been lobbying aggressively for state funding to attract more of the high-caliber faculty who drive the nation’s greatest research institutions.
Read more at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.