US President Barack Obama's proposed budget for fiscal year 2011 looks to be a mixed bag for young scientists. If Congress accepts the president's budget requests, postdocs funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will receive a significant stipend boost. But biomedical early-career scientists, although bolstered by an ongoing federal initiative to keep their grant application success rates high, are facing a decline in the number of available competing grants. Early-stage researchers in other fields, meanwhile, may benefit from higher allocations in such areas as energy and climate change. The US$66-billion non-defence research and development budget was announced earlier this month.

Under the proposal, postdoctoral training stipends funded by the NIH's Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards (NRSAs) would go up by 6%, on the heels of a 1% increase implemented for fiscal-year 2010 that follows several years without a rise. “If this goes through, it will be fantastic for postdoctoral scholars,” says Cathee Johnson Phillips, executive director of the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA). “It is a recognition of their value to the scientific enterprise.”

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The boost, Johnson Phillips notes, would set a significant precedent, as many universities and research institutions across the nation use the NRSA as a standard for their own postdoctoral pay levels. The proposed increase “will challenge US institutions to pay their postdocs more”, she says. Johnson Phillips says that the NPA plans to ask members to advocate for the increase to federal legislators. “We are making this one of our priorities this year,” she says.

Overall, Obama's budget request for the NIH seeks $32.1 billion, up $1 billion — although it will fund 199 fewer competing grants. An NIH policy established last year calls for 'special consideration' of early-career researchers' grant applications, which means they are guaranteed to be funded at the same success rate as more seasoned investigators, says Sally Rockey, the NIH's acting deputy director for extramural research.

However, fewer available competing grants must inevitably translate into fewer awards for all applicants in 2011 than in 2010. “Success rates will dip for everyone unless the NIH gets a larger appropriation from Congress,” says Howard Garrison, director of the office of public affairs of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

The proposed National Science Foundation (NSF) allocation, up about 8% to $7.4 billion, includes about $6 billion for core research activities. Two of three programmes aimed specifically at early-career researchers and graduate students would be funded at higher levels under the president's budget proposal. CAREER, the NSF's faculty early-career development programme, which aims to get more young investigators into faculty positions, is up by 6.5% to $209.2 million, and the Graduate Research Fellowship Program is up by 16.4% to $158.2 million.

The Department of Energy budget would rise by more than 7% to $28.4 billion, including a 16% increase to $370 million for global climate-change research. This and other budget increases could mean significant grant funding opportunities for young investigators who often have the most innovative proposals, says Martin Apple, president of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents.

“If you are a young investigator, there are hundreds of millions of dollars that weren't there before,” says Apple.