By guest contributor Anna Campana, Sr. Pre-Award Research Administrator, R1 Cancer Center, with Sarah Trimmer, Founder, The Optimum Department

Since World War II, federal research funding has flowed to universities through a stable set of rules — negotiated indirect cost rates, peer-reviewed merit ...

Congress appropriated the money. It is not reaching investigators. That gap, between what is on paper and what is actually happening in labs and grant offices across the country is not an accident. It is the product of two decades of structural decisions universities made during good times, and an a...

Guest Contributor: Anna Campana, Sr. Pre-Award Research Administrator, R1 Cancer Center

Plaintiffs suing the U.S. Government over grant terminations early in 2025 had initial success in getting federal courts to stay agency actions. However, after the last few U.S. Supreme Court decisions, these st...

If you work in research administration, you already know the truth: the job has expanded, but the resources have not. 

Research administrators are now expected to:

• Track federal policy shifts across multiple branches of government

• Interpret agency guidance that is often incomplete, incons

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