Late last month, Governor Jay Inslee signed into law the biennial operating budget for the state of Washington, a budget that addressed many of the University of Washington’s legislative priorities. In what was a complicated, landmark session defined by McCleary-mandated obligations, the legislature had to make tough choices. You can read about the budget in detail in this brief published by the University’s Office of Planning and Budgeting and on the UW’s State Relations blog.
Presidential Blog
Board of Regents Chair Pat Shanahan confirmed as Deputy Defense Secretary
On behalf of the University of Washington, congratulations to Pat Shanahan on his confirmation as Deputy Defense Secretary of the United States. As an alumnus with both deep ties to the University and the Pacific Northwest and a deep ethos of public service, he has been engaged with the University in numerous capacities for many years, most recently as chair and a long-standing member of the Board of Regents. We will miss his leadership and engagement tremendously.
As a senior executive at Boeing, a company whose first gift to the University a century ago was a full scale wind tunnel simulator that transformed generations of research in the aerospace industry and beyond, Pat has a deep understanding of the power of research to transform ideas, advancements, and society. He has seen firsthand how what begins in the laboratories of our nation’s great public universities translates into benefits for both the public and private sector and ultimately for the security and prosperity of our nation. We are proud and gratified that he will bring his leadership, experience and wisdom to this vital post in the federal government and look forward to his continued service on behalf of our nation and its people.
Visit to Beijing and Tsinghua University in pictures
What an incredible journey. My thanks to our gracious hosts and fantastic partners at Tsinghua University, China CDC and CHSI. And it was wonderful to meet some China Huskies!
Deepening our population health partnerships
The University of Washington is a truly global university, with partners and projects in 129 nations around the world. One of the units that has built a worldwide network of collaborators is the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which seeks to use data to support decision-making on a range of issues related to health and health care. Two of its partners are China CDC and the Center for Health Statistics & Information (CHSI), both of which I had the pleasure of visiting today.
Seeding a healthier world
Today I had the opportunity to once again meet with our Global Innovation Exchange partners during a visit to Tsinghua University. It’s a lush, beautiful campus, made even more vibrant by the fact that it was graduation season. There were countless graduates in caps and gowns all over the campus, posing for photos as they prepared to launch off into the world. It reminded me of our own commencement ceremonies just a couple weeks ago, and like then, I was inspired by the graduates’ optimism and how they have so much ahead of them.
Supporting our international scholars and students (updated)
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision allowing the travel ban imposed by Executive Order to go into partial effect. Under this partial implementation, individuals from the six countries listed in the Order who have a bona fide, documented relationship with the University (such as admitted students, faculty and staff members, and invited lecturers) are generally not subject to the ban imposed by the Order
Counting the true cost of cuts to research funding
Funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has supported countless discoveries that have saved or improved millions of lives, from Dr. Mary-Claire King’s discovery of the BRCA1 breast cancer gene to new, more accurate diagnostic tools for Alzheimer’s disease. As I’ve written before, the President’s budget proposal would dramatically cut NIH’s research funding, slowing progress in understanding and curing diseases that ultimately affect nearly every single American in some form.
This week, I reached out to the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and the Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney to share our concerns about the very real ways in which those funding cuts could not merely impede but actually dismantle our nation’s biomedical research and discovery ecosystem, now the envy of the world.
Among the changes proposed in the budget are significant cuts to Facilities and Administration or F&A reimbursements (also known as indirect research costs). While direct costs like researcher pay and lab equipment are the expenses the public most associates with research, F&A costs are real and necessary expenses that are just as integral to research. Like the plumbing and wiring that make a building inhabitable, F&A covers essential infrastructure that a university’s labs and researchers all rely on, like secure computing systems, high-speed data processing and storage, radiation and chemical safety precautions, and personnel costs associated with meeting federal and state regulations related to the safety of human subjects, to name a few. Just as four walls and a roof are not enough to make a house livable, without the infrastructure covered by F&A, universities cannot conduct the kinds of cutting-edge research that results in cures and treatments that save lives.
Even under current law, F&A reimbursements do not cover the full cost of conducting research. The UW is able to make up the difference, effectively subsidizing federal research spending. But if these drastic cuts take effect, it would be impossible to provide the level of support that currently keeps our research efforts moving forward.
The UW and the many people who benefit from our biomedical research would suffer from this budget, and across the country, research universities, especially public institutions, would suffer as well. It would devastate the national biomedical research community and the economy built on research discoveries, leading to a decline in the number of biomedical start-ups based in the U.S. At a minimum, discovery would be slowed, but worse, the loss in momentum nationally to our research breakthroughs would cost many lives that could have been saved.
There is a clear and compelling case for the national interest we all share in federal investment in biomedical research and discovery. I invite and encourage all who care about this issue – and I believe that’s all of us – to raise your voices as well.
A message to alumni: Proud of our community of shared values
As we conclude another successful academic year, some 15,000 or so new graduates will go forth from the University of Washington and begin to carve their post-college paths. Among them are visionaries who dream of interplanetary travel and asteroid-mining, newly minted Ph.D.s with expertise in everything from classics to bioengineering, and Washington students who were the first in their families to enroll in college and will leave the UW with a diploma and untold opportunities. Each graduate’s story is unique and powerful.
At the UW, excellence is the norm
It’s that time of year when we commemorate hard work, excellence and a job well done. It’s an important moment — or series of moments, as we work through finals and ceremonies small and large — when we reflect on who we are as a community and the bright future that is possible when we work individually and together to achieve great things.
UW stands with the world to fight climate change and protect our future
With almost a hundred of our university peers and with the Governor Inslee and other governors, mayors and business leaders, we have become signatories of the CERES letter stating that in the absence of leadership from the federal government, we remain in solidarity with those around the world committed to a transition to clean energy and to holding global warming to well below 2°C.