BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski is scheduled to talk about the impact automatic spending cuts would have on the National Institutes of Health.

The Democratic senator is set to speak in Bethesda on Wednesday.

She will be joined by NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Carol Greider, who is a Nobel Prize winner and the director of the Johns Hopkins Molecular Biology and Genetics Department.

Mikulski, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, will tour the NIH neuro-technology lab.

NIH supports more than 18,000 jobs in Maryland.

About $85 billion in federal cuts are set to automatically start taking effect March 1 unless lawmakers agree to a deal.