US Representative Richard Burr (R-NC) and Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) submitted legislation proposals that would establish a new Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Engineering at the National Institutes of Health (NIH; Bethesda, MD). A new institute would formalize and expand the activities of the two-year-old NIH Bioengineering Consortium, which has held successful symposiums for the past two years and taken other steps to encourage bioengineering research through grants from NIH to academic investigators and contracts with small biotechnology companies. Although such developments are encouraging, critics say that without its own institute, bioengineering research proposals stand less chance of being funded following NIH review than do hypothesis-driven proposals for conducting studies in basic research. NIH invested about $500 million in bioengineering-related projects last year, according to official estimates.