Researchers hoping for financial support from the newly formed US Department of Homeland Security are increasingly anxious that their grant requests will not be answered — this year, at least.

The department was established in January by the amalgamation of several existing agencies, and was allocated $554 million for its research and development arm for this financial year, which ends on 30 September.

Charles McQueary, undersecretary for science and technology at the department, has indicated that most of that money will initially be spent on technology, rather than science (see Nature 423, 106; 2003) — particularly on efforts to harness available technology for the Coast Guard, border guards and emergency first-responders.

Several researchers in subdisciplines such as chemical sensing and microbiology say they were nevertheless encouraged by their existing funding agencies — and by officials from the homeland security department itself — to apply to it for grants.

Now they are upset that no money is forthcoming. “It seems like a bureaucratic morass,” complains Art Snow, a chemist working on sensors at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. Snow says that he applied for funding earlier this year but has since become frustrated by the lack of communication over what kind of proposal its research wing is seeking. “I don't know how to prepare to work with them,” he says.

One physicist at a Department of Energy laboratory, who declined to be identified, says he was told that Pentagon funding for his work in detecting chemical agents was ending, and that the new department was his best bet for future support — even though it is not yet ready to offer grants. As a result, he says, his research team is now starting to break up. And a microbiologist who works on bacterial detection at a southeastern university says that the defence department asked him to turn to the homeland security department for funds. “Everybody is saying somebody that else will do it,” he says. “And I'm out of money.”

Officials at the homeland security department, which is sitting on some 3,000 unsolicited research proposals, concede that its programmes have been delayed: so far, they say, only about half of the money due to be released by 30 September has been spent. The amount is “not as much as we would have liked”, says an official at the department's science and technology branch who declined to be named.

But the official points out that the agency's budget for the year wasn't finalized by Congress until March. He says that he expects the situation to improve in the autumn.

The official said last week that the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency — a branch of the department modelled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — will ask for research proposals “within a matter of days”. It also plans to establish its first university-based research centres in November. These moves, he says, will provide more definitive points of contact for researchers hoping to get their work funded by the department.