The recent, automatic, across-the-board federal government cuts, known as sequestration, will significantly impact university research, according to Paul O'Keefe, assistant provost for research administration.

"[The National Institutes of Health] has been cut by 5.1 [percent] this year, and [the National Science Foundation] has already announced that it will fund 1,000 fewer projects this year, a decrease of around [nine percent] from the number they usually fund," explained O'Keefe in an email to the Justice. "The impact on Brandeis will be significant, but it's hard to predict exactly how significant at this point."

"We're working hard to produce a strategy for responding to whatever may come our way," O'Keefe added.

Over the past three years, Brandeis has received an average of $48 million per year in federal research funding, according to O'Keefe.

Two thirds of those funds, about $32 million, come from the National Institutes of Health, while 12 percent, almost six million dollars, comes from the National Science Foundation.

The remainder of the federal funds Brandeis receives-about 21 percent, equaling about $10 million-comes from other federal agencies.

Within Brandeis, 76 percent of those funds goes to the sciences, while the Heller School for Social Policy and Management receives 21 percent of the funds, leaving about one percent to other departments.

"I think the sequestration business coming out of Washington is just a good example of [how] sometimes things are going to be out of your control, that can give us a pretty solid kick in the head," said University President Frederick Lawrence at a faculty meeting earlier this month. "That's not just a Brandeis story, that's research universities generally. I can tell you that my inbox is filled with correspondence from fellow presidents in the [Association of American Universities] about how are we going to deal with this."

"None of us is in a situation to simply absorb that without taking pretty careful attention," Lawrence added.

-Andrew Wingens