U.S. ATLAS HL-LHC Upgrade Level 2 and Deputies-NSF only Management Mailing List

[Michael Tuts <tuts AT pmtuts.net>]

Dear NSF L2 managers and deputies,

 

As you may have read in the news, Columbia has been targeted by the Trump administration (Dept of Education, Health and Human Services, and GSA) which has led to the headlines that $400M in federal grants have been cancelled at Columbia. It is reasonable to ask what, if any, impact this has on the NSF MREFC cooperative agreement ($83M total with ~$35M yet to go) for which Columbia is the prime awardee and from which you receive your subawards. The short answer, at this time, is no impact. I have had discussions with our Columbia administration, and with Jim Shank and Saul Gonzalez at NSF and for now we are told to continue with business as usual. NSF has started to act on our FY25 (Q3+Q4) request ($6.9M) and in addition will provide $3M designated as contingency to take us through June of this year. They hope to have that out this week before issues like CRs and/or shutdowns come to the fore on Friday. That is good news.

 

In summary we are proceeding with business as usual, but I would advise you and all your IC’s to work with your sponsored projects offices to make sure your institution’s invoicing is up to date, so that we can pay those invoices as soon as possible, since as you are aware these are uncertain times.

 

Thanks, Mike