Clinton to Urge Major Boost in Science Funding

President Clinton today will propose a nearly $3-billion increase in spending on science and technology for fiscal year 2001, White House officials said Thursday.

The announcement, to be made in a speech at Caltech, is expected to have a major impact throughout the state, one of the foremost recipients of federal research dollars.

“It’s fantastic; it sends the right signal,” said Richard C. Atkinson, president of the University of California and former director of the National Science Foundation. “It means . . . more ideas that will transfer into the private sector and launch things like Silicon Valley.”

The proposed boost, which must be approved by Congress, would be divided between two high-tech initiatives and two federal research agencies--the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation--which channel funds to universities through research grants.

The National Science Foundation would see the largest budget increase in its 56-year history: a jump of 17%, or $675 million over the current budget of $3.9 billion. Under the proposal, the National Institutes of Health would have $1 billion added to their nearly $18-billion budget.

In addition, nearly $1 billion would be poured into two of today’s most cutting-edge research fields: information technology, which includes supercomputing, and nanotechnology, an attempt to make machines and computers as small as molecules that could revolutionize many fields, including space travel and medicine.

“It’s basically a brand new field,” said Meyya Meyyappan, who heads a nanotechnology group at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and advised the White House on the new initiative. “With this funding, we can speed research by decades.”

More details on how the money would be spent were expected from Clinton’s speech today.

Major Shift in Research Spending

Still, the broad outline of the proposal represents a major shift in how research dollars have been divvied up in recent years. Biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health has seen spectacular increases since the mid-1990s, while funding of basic sciences has remained more static.

Medical funding is politically popular in Congress, because it promises highly visible cures; battles for such funding have often been accompanied by emotional pleas from sick children.

But basic research into chemistry, physics and computing, with a much lower profile, has been far less fortunate. The imbalance prompted wide concerns that future innovation, medical and otherwise, would lag without a strong foundation of basic research.

“Everybody loves the biomedical sciences and those increases are valuable, but . . . biomedical research doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” said Al Teich, director of science policy at the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science in Washington.

“Unless we adequately support chemistry, engineering, physics and math, we won’t have the technologies to support biomedical progress,” said White House science advisor Neal Lane, who lists magnetic resonance imaging, lasers used in eye surgery and precision drugs as examples of medical breakthroughs built on other fields.

Most university officials agreed that the two areas highlighted for more funding, information technology and nanotechnology, were good choices. But UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale said he thought it better for competition and free enterprise to dictate research direction. “Do you really want the government to pick technologies?” he asked.

Nevertheless, basic research funding is seen as a boon to the national economy. One-third of the spectacular economic growth the nation has enjoyed recently is attributed to information technologies like the Internet, White House officials said. Many high-tech areas, including Silicon Valley, are experiencing a shortage of workers educated enough for new jobs.

Some of the new funds will help alleviate that problem by enhancing science education, which in turn will help create the high-tech work force for the future, said Rita R. Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation.

“This really is one of the best things that has happened in a long time for science,” she said.

Nowhere is the potential economic payoff larger than in California, which has just 12% of the nation’s population, but receives 20% of federal research dollars.

“For California, this is a real windfall,” said Bruce Darling, a University of California vice president.

Clinton’s proposal dovetails with a plan unveiled last month by Gov. Gray Davis to spend $75 million next year on three new institutes for science and innovation on UC campuses, and with the numerous partnerships between universities and industry, said Wyatt R. Hume, executive vice chancellor of UCLA.

“It’s a phenomenally exciting time,” he said.

Caltech President David Baltimore said that increases in science funding might support a construction boomlet at universities, many of which struggle to keep labs large and updated enough for scientists to use funding efficiently.

Clinton decided to make the announcement in California, White House officials said, because it serves as a model for scientific innovation and the resulting economic progress. The field of nanotechnology was first proposed on the Caltech campus in a speech by physicist Richard P. Feynman.

“California, as far as I can tell,” said Lane, a native Oklahoman, “plays a special role in everything.”

Times staff writers Kenneth R. Weiss in San Francisco and Ricardo Alonzo-Zaldivar in Washington contributed to this story.