“I find myself being more conservative with it than I might otherwise be because I don’t know down the road how hard it is going to be to get the money for big sustaining grants,” said Cox, a former Crimson design editor. “I’m being much more conservative than I would be naturally.”

Harvard is also looking to reduce costs by pooling together resources through faculty collaboration, according to University Provost Alan M. Garber ’76.

“People are watching every dollar that they spend,” Garber said. “Our faculty are already collaborative, but they also recognize that anything that gives them an edge in terms of getting research funding should be pursued more aggressively.”

THE GRANT GAME

But internal cost-cutting can only go so far. For what’s left, Harvard researchers and the administrators who support them are putting more emphasis on the normally onerous task of grant writing.

The School of Public Health, which receives around 60 percent of its operating revenue from the federal government, is taking steps to increase the competitiveness of its researchers by coaching junior faculty members through the grant application process, according to Dean of the School of Public Health Julio Frenk.

Meanwhile in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Assistant Dean for Research Administration Elizabeth A. Lennox said that the school will try to adjust its grant proposals to fit the kind of research that federal agencies are more likely to support.

“All federal funding is not going to go away tomorrow night,” Lennox said. “You learn within the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation what areas they are funding, so that you can strategically go after that money.”

Lennox said that the research division of FAS has hired two additional staff members and hosts seminars to help researchers pursue grant funding.

Cox currently has five National Science Foundation grant proposals under consideration, a high number of applications targeted at increasing his lab’s chances at winning a proposal.

“It’s already a bit of a bloodbath,” Cox said of the competition over a shrinking pool of federal funding sources.

Researchers say that in addition to the fierce competition, an emphasis on grant writing comes with risks and consequences.

“It leads you to A, waste a lot of time, and B, miss a lot of opportunities, because you can’t guess what the funding opportunities will be in a year or two’s time,” said physics and biology professor Michael M. Desai.

Junior faculty like Cox face particularly intense pressure as they try to advance in their fields. Cox said that without the adequate financial resources or established reputations necessary to take bold risks, some labs must focus on short-term gains. This austerity could make significant discoveries less likely, he said.

“The problem with science is yes, you want to have sure bets, but a lot of the biggest breakthroughs come from risky things,” Cox said.