Update on Federal research funding and Industrial Affiliate Program Review

Dear Chairs and Directors,

This month, I’m sharing brief updates on two topics: interruptions to federal research funding and the campus-wide review of industrial affiliates programs. Please share relevant parts of this letter with your faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students—anyone who may find the information and links helpful.

Ongoing Interruptions to Federally-Sponsored Research

As of July 23:

  • Stanford has received termination notices on 72 federal grants

  • The notices have come from approximately 10 federal agencies, with more than half from NIH

  • For 16 terminations, affected PIs have elected to write appeal letters to the agency, with support from the Office of General Counsel, the Office of Research Administration (ORA), and VPDoR.

  • An additional 18 grants received termination notices that were subsequently withdrawn (i.e., reinstating the awards)

We have been sharing details of these and other interruptions in our Research Town Halls, held monthly since February. The 5th installment in this series was held on June 26th with over 700 attendees. Selected questions and responses from that session are posted here.

A reminder that if your faculty are contacted by a federal government agency about a possible termination, please notify your local research administrator, copying osr_notifications@stanford.edu. For other questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Russell Brewer, Jodi Prochaska, or me directly.

Review of Stanford Industrial Affiliates Program Complete

The general review of Stanford's Industrial Affiliates Programs (IAPs) is complete. Special thanks to professors Bruce Clemens and Maureen McNichols for their outstanding leadership in co-chairing the review, which covered 52 programs across four schools.

The review concluded that IAPs are an important and vibrant component of Stanford’s research enterprise; they bring many benefits to faculty and students. Areas such as faculty leadership of IAPs, engagement of multiple Stanford faculty in IAPs, and faculty control of IAP research priorities appear to be operating successfully and appropriately. Overall, IAPs exhibited reasonable compliance with Stanford's policies, and areas where compliance fell short tended to be relatively minor in nature (e.g., website not sufficiently up-to-date). The full report is accessible here.

The report made several valuable recommendations for improving the governance and operations of IAP programs. Over the coming months, teams from the VPDoR will work with school deans and central support offices to act on those recommendations. Reform priorities include improving the clarity and practicality of the current IAP policy, strengthening adherence to the policy, and streamlining IAP support processes. I will share an update on our progress later this year. In the meantime, if you have any questions about this work, please contact Sandra Holden, senior project manager in the Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Research.

There will be no “Chairs and Directors” letter and no Research Town Hall in August. I hope you will find some time to relax and unwind over the summer months.  

Stay safe and be well,

David
 

David Studdert

Vice Provost and Dean of Research