The President’s budget request for FY 2013 is out and the White House has prepared a handy summary of the R&D portions.

Some highlights:

• The National Science Foundation would increase 4.8 percent compared to FY 12, to $7.4 billion in FY13. (Research accounts up 3.9 percent)
• The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program (NITRD) overall up 1.8 percent (NSF share up 6.1 percent)
• DARPA funded at $2.8 billion. And Defense 6.1 increases to $2.1 billion.
• NIST Labs up 13.8 percent
• DHS S&T up 26.3 percent to $729 million
• DOE Office of Science up 2.4 percent

As expected, these aren’t huge increases, but in the context of the current fiscal climate, they demonstrate that the Administration continues to make investments in research and development a priority. It’s certainly a better position from which to start the annual budget process than if they’d proposed cuts.

We’ll have more on the DOE Office of Science budget and NSF CISE budget today after budget briefings at those agencies.