Publishing a paper on research with a previous employer, funded by my current employer

Question

I will be an author or co-author on a few papers at an upcoming conference. The papers are on work that I did as a government contractor. As of a few months ago, I accepted a position with the government, working on the same things with the same people, continuing my previous research. The abstracts were submitted when I was a contractor, and I stated my affiliation as being with that company. My question is: when submitting and publishing the final paper, should my affiliation be with my previous employer or the government?

Some relevant info:

• At the time of publication, the government contracting company will no longer exist.

• The government will be funding my travel to this conference.

• Although the contractor was paying my bills when I was conducting this research, we were under a cost-plus contract and the government was funding everything.

Answer 1

An acknowledgement would be proper: Researcher X was previously funded in this research by Z.

It keeps it clean. While the company may no longer exist, its principals still do.

In general, acknowledging liberally is preferred over being stingy.