Straws in the Wind - Part 301

From the Philadelphia Inquirer: With continued uncertainty about federal research funding, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school [last] Friday launched a $200 million fund to finance innovative projects at their earliest stages. The initial fund will support research and educational advances at the School of Engineering and Applied Science over the next five years, the school said.

“The federal government is no longer a reliable partner,” said Vijay Kumar, Penn’s engineering school dean. “And what we’d like to do is to make sure that we can establish partnerships on which our faculty can rely on, going into the future. And that’s through philanthropy.”

It is the largest such venture ever launched by the engineering school and comes as President Donald Trump’s administration continues to threaten research funding at the nation’s universities. Penn earlier this year directed its schools and centers to cut 4% from certain expenses in the next fiscal year while keeping in place earlier reductions made in response to Trump administration’s policies and ongoing threats to federal funding. The new fund is not designed to replace lost federal funding, Kumar said. Penn traditionally has received about $1 billion in federal research funding annually. But he said it can fund early-stage research and back research areas the Trump administration may not support, such as climate change and vaccinations...

Full story at https://www.inquirer.com/education/penn-engineering-research-fund-trump-20260328.html.