President Obama, in an effort to stimulate the economy and support critical research, will announce $5 billion in grants when he visits the National Institutes of Health on Wednesday, according to an administration official.
The money, which comes from Recovery Act funds, is aimed at supporting “12,000 critical research projects — and tens of thousands of jobs associated with them, ranging from teachers and lab technicians to database managers and scientists,” the official wrote in an e-mail. Obama, who will be joined by Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and top medical experts, will tour a lab before speaking at the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. More than 450 NIH employees, scientists, local officials and members of Congress are expected to be on hand. The White House says the research grants are part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s overall investment of $100 billion in innovative research and advancing science and technology infrastructure.
