Principal investigators (PIs) occasionally tell us they don’t plan to apply for the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program because their institutions expect them to have multiple R01 grants and thus they need to stick with R01 funding. To address this issue, we thought it would be useful to examine the likelihood of getting more than one NIGMS R01.

Figure 1 shows the percentage of PIs who held more than one NIGMS R01 between fiscal years 2014 and 2024 (FY14 and FY24). The first MIRA grants were awarded in FY16, so FY14 and FY15 represent years prior to the beginning of the program. In FY14 and FY15, only 16% of PIs had more than one NIGMS R01. This percentage hovered around 14-15% until 2019, when it began declining. The decline was likely the result of an increasing number of PIs converting their R01s to MIRAs and an Institute policy that PIs could not have more than two NIGMS R01s. Importantly, even before the MIRA program started, only a small fraction of PIs had more than one NIGMS R01. These data are consistent with an analysis we performed previously of how many early stage investigators (ESIs) who were awarded NIGMS R01s between FY04 and FY15 obtained a second NIGMS R01.

NIGMS supports a variety of structural biology research resources, including those funded through the Mature Synchrotron Resources (MSR) program. We’re currently evaluating the MSR program to inform future directions about the structure and operations of the program. As part of this evaluation, we’re seeking input from the extramural community (e.g., principal investigators and key personnel of MSR awards, resource staff, the user community, members of relevant advisory boards, and any other interested parties) on their experiences with and/or opinions on NIGMS-supported synchrotron resources.

In this Feedback Loop post, we revisit our previous analysis of application, review, funding, and demographic trends for the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program over Fiscal Years (FYs) 2019 to 2021. We look at trends for applicants by race/ethnicity and by gender. Due to privacy requirements and small numbers, applicants from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in biomedical research (Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander) are combined into a larger group that can be reported. Because of the small applicant numbers, we’re unable to show intersectional analyses of race/ethnicity and gender or analyses of applicants with disabilities. 

Table 1 shows the number of new awards made and associated award rates by fiscal year for Established Investigators (EIs) and Early Stage Investigators (ESIs).

Continuing our regular posts detailing funding trends for NIGMS programs, here we provide a closer look at the NIGMS Academic Research Enhancement Awards (AREA) R15 program. AREA grants support small-scale research projects involving primarily undergraduate students at institutions that received no more than $6 million in funding from NIH in 4 of the past 7 years. Awards can be up to $300,000 in direct costs for the entire project period of up to 3 years. Unlike most of our other Research Project Grant (RPG) awards, which have noncompeting renewals on an annual basis, R15 funds are obligated in the first year and last the duration of the project period. Grantees can renew these awards in a competitive proposal process.

NIH offers two different R15 awards: AREA and the Research Enhancement Award Program (REAP). The key distinction between them is that AREA grants are available to undergraduate-focused institutions, while REAP grants are available to health professional and graduate schools. See the FAQs about the programs for a list of common questions. NIGMS participates in only the AREA program.

One of the most common questions we receive about the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program is the likelihood of an application’s funding given a certain overall impact score.

Frequent readers of this blog may note that we typically provide statistics as they relate to our R01 portfolio, but we’ve yet to provide a similar “funding curve” for the MIRA program. One reason that MIRA applications haven’t been included in these analyses is that, unlike most R01 applications, MIRA R35 applications don’t receive a percentile score. The percentile score allows for normalization of overall impact scores across study sections to account for any differences in scoring behavior that are observed in review panels. See the Office of Extramural Research’s comprehensive blog post for more information about overall impact scores and percentiles.

NIGMS is committed to ensuring that taxpayers get the best possible returns on their investments in fundamental biomedical research. As part of this commitment to stewardship, we regularly monitor trends in our funding portfolio.

We recognize the value of a diversified investment portfolio and approach our research investments in a similar fashion. Sustaining a broad and diverse portfolio of talented investigators is a central goal of the Institute, as a wide variety of research questions can be studied by an investigator pool that comprises many different backgrounds, fields, and skills. To monitor this, we track the “cumulative investigator rate,” which indicates the proportion of unique investigators actively seeking funding who had an NIGMS grant in a given Fiscal Year (FY). As shown in Figure 1, the number of investigators seeking support consistently increased between FY 2006 and 2014, but the number of NIGMS-funded investigators remained relatively unchanged over that same period. As a result, the cumulative investigator rate steadily decreased. Since FY 2014, the cumulative investigator rate has steadily increased, as the number of applicants seeking support has stabilized and the number of investigators receiving support has grown by 14%. Currently, 37.4% of investigators seeking R01/R35 funding from NIGMS received support in FY 2017.

NIGMS is committed to ensuring that taxpayers get the best possible returns on their investments in fundamental biomedical research. As part of an NIH-wide commitment to enhancing stewardship, we regularly monitor trends in the Institute’s funding portfolio. One of the most commonly cited metrics when discussing grants is success rate, calculated as the number of applications funded divided by the number of applications reviewed. As shown in Figure 1, the success rate for NIGMS research project grants (RPGs) was 29.6% in Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, the same as it was in FY 2015. Although we funded a record number of competing RPGs in FY 2016, we also received more applications than in FY 2015, leading to a level success rate. The first applications and grants for the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) (R35) program are included in the FY 2016 RPG counts. The increase in RPG applications in FY 2016 has reversed the downward trend noted in last year’s analysis.

We recently analyzed the career outcomes of scholars who participated in the NIGMS IRACDA program. A goal of this program is to provide a diverse pool of postdoctoral scholars with research and professional skills needed to be successful in academic careers. The program combines a mentored postdoctoral research experience with an opportunity to develop additional academic and teaching skills, including a teaching practicum at a partner institution that enrolls a substantial number of students from underrepresented groups. Since its inception in 1999, 25 research-intensive institutions have received IRACDA awards, which have supported more than 600 scholars. Our assessment focused on the 450 alumni who completed their training through November 2014. Important findings include:

• IRACDA scholars are diverse: 63% are female, and 53% identify as a race/ethnicity other than white, non-Hispanic.
• Approximately 73% of IRACDA alumni are in academic faculty positions at a range of institutions (see Figure 1).
• Among the scholars in faculty positions, 35% are at research-intensive institutions, 25% are at primarily undergraduate institutions and the remaining percent are at associate- and master’s degree-granting institutions. In addition, 25% of the IRACDA alumni in academic positions are faculty at a designated minority-serving institution.

We have published median and mean direct cost award amounts for R01 grants, but these statistical aggregates can mask variations present in our grant portfolio. In this analysis, we illuminate two major differences in R01 award size distributions: those between single-principal investigator (PI) and multiple-PI (MPI) grants and those between new and competing renewal grants. It is worth noting that the numbers are per award values rather than the total NIGMS support provided to investigators and that award size can also be influenced by NIH-wide policies and NIGMS-specific policies that promote the consideration of multiple factors in making funding decisions. The first major distinction in NIGMS R01s exists between single-PI and MPI awards. NIH has allowed applications that identify more than one PI since Fiscal Year 2007. Many MPI applications request, and receive, larger amounts of funding than do typical single-PI applications. As shown in Figure 1, single-PI awards have a size peak in the range of $175,000-200,000 in direct costs (funds typically directly associated with the research project rather than overhead costs), while MPI awards tend to have larger budgets and a broader size distribution. MPI awards are, on average, approximately 25% larger for each additional PI (data not shown).