Biologists with grandiose research proposals often turn to the risk-tolerant Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) to get themselves started. However, the world's only intercontinental research funding agency is now working hard to convince its members — 13 individual nations plus representation from the European Union — that frontier research is a wise investment in tough economic times. The 20-year-old HFSP distributes about US$60 million a year to support research into complex biological systems. Last week, the programme's secretary-general, geneticist Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, met with an elite group of about two dozen scientists to discuss where the frontiers of biology might lie.

Participants agreed that genetic technologies will continue to be central to frontier biology; that fields such as microscopy will continue to drive it; and that new developments in chemistry will feed it. Tom Henzinger of the Institute of Science and Technology in Vienna also convinced participants that pure mathematics could become an increasingly useful tool in understanding biological processes.

"We remain open to any approach — the three sole criteria remain excellence, risk and biology," says Winnacker, who has previously served as secretary-general of the European Research Council and president of the German research agency the DFG.

The general messages from the brainstorming session will feed into the organization's first formal strategy report, which will be crucial when the HFSP's members meet in May. Winnacker is already bracing himself for trouble: Japan, which normally contributes around half of the budget, has this year cut its contribution by 5%, and the global financial crisis is squeezing all members. Winnacker hopes that the report will help to secure continued funding for this unique programme, whose unbureaucratic support of big ideas is popular with scientists. "It is a paradox that science is international, but funding is regional or national," Winnacker notes. "The HFSP is the only agency with none of the political borders that make joint funding so complicated."