Although mentioned on this site in my earlier discussions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the National Science Foundation announced (on its site), that it will receive $3 Billion in Recovery Funds.  The announcement was made by Arden L. Bement, Jr., the Director of NSF.  According to the announcement, the funds will:

go directly into the hands of nation’s best and brightest researchers at the forefront of promising discoveries, to deserving graduate students at the start of their careers, and to developing advanced scientific tools and infrastructure…

Although not mentioned in NSF’s announcement, in earlier documents it has been suggested that $100 Million of the funds will be used to improve science, engineering, and mathematics instruction.

The $3 Billion infusion of funds to NSF is a large sum considering at the annual budget of NSF is $6.06 Billion.   However, it is a small part of the total funding for research and development in the USA.  Total R&D funding in the USA in 2008 was $383 Billion, as reported in a study by Battelle entitled 2009 Global R&D Funding Forcast. Four major sources of funds for R&D are identified in the report, as well as comparisons amongst countries in the world against the GNP, and its population.  For example, the four sources of funds include: Federal Government ($24 Billion), Industry ($277 Billion), Academia ($50 Billion) and Non-Profits ($16 Billion.  If these figures are accurate, then the NSF’s portion of the Federal contribution to R&D is 25%, and 1.5% of the total expended on R&D.

One interesting conclusion in the study was, even with the global economic down-turn, R&D spending is expected to increase by 3.2% in 2009.  Another interesting  aspect of the study a comparison among various countries’ share of R&D funding.  The U.S. R&D budget is about 1/3 of the global budget of R&D spending.

This is an interesting report, and I highly recommend it to you.

Please excuse me for including all of these numbers in my recent posts, but there are billions of galaxies out there!