Michael Lauer, head of the external grantmaking program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced his retirement, effective tomorrow.
A cardiologist who joined NIH in 2007, Lauer spent a decade leading NIH’s biggest funding program, which last year spent $39 billion on nearly 60,000 grants at more than 2500 institutions. His departure comes 1 day after Lawrence Tabak announced he was stepping down immediately as principal deputy NIH director after 15 years as the top aide to the agency’s director. Health economist Jay Bhattacharya, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the job, is awaiting Senate confirmation.
Lauer was intimately involved with enforcing NIH’s beefed-up sexual harassment policies requiring institutions to report to NIH when an agency-funded scientist was disciplined for harassment. During his tenure, he oversaw the removal of dozens of harassers from grants.
Lauer has drawn great controversy, however, for playing a leading role in a controversial campaign NIH began in 2018 to enforce rules that require grantees to disclose foreign sources of research support. The ongoing effort has caused more than 100 U.S. academic scientists, the vast majority of them of Chinese descent, to lose their jobs and destroyed the reputations of hundreds more.
