We’re offering administrative supplements to provide summer research experiences for undergraduate students. These supplements are open to all NIGMS-funded investigators with active R01, R35, and R37 awards, including those in their final year of funding or in a no-cost extension. We’ll accept requests under PA-18-591, Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional).

We wish to support students at any stage of their undergraduate career. Students may be U.S. or non-U.S. citizens. We encourage principal investigators to select students who otherwise would not have access to research experiences to participate in this program. Only one request per principal investigator will be considered. 

If you’re considering applying to the Collaborative Program Grant for Multidisciplinary Teams (PAR-20-103) or to the Biomedical Technology Development and Dissemination Center (PAR-20-104) funding opportunity announcements (FOAs), you’ll want to join our webinar:

Thursday, March 5, 3:00-4:00 p.m. ET

We’re pleased to announce that the IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) funding opportunity announcement (FOA) (PAR-20-102) has been reissued. INBRE fosters the development, coordination, and sharing of research resources and expertise that expand research opportunities and increase the number of competitive investigators in IDeA-eligible states. The program achieves these goals through partnerships between research-intensive and primarily undergraduate institutions, community colleges, and tribally controlled colleges and universities.

As we did last year, we’re offering administrative supplements to NIGMS-funded awards for the purchase of helium recovery systems.

The deadline for these supplement applications is March 30, 2020.

As in previous years, we're offering administrative supplements to NIGMS-funded R01, R35, and R37 awards for the purchase of single equipment systems (such as components of a working microscope).

The deadline for these supplement applications is March 30, 2020.

NIH has published two new funding opportunity announcements (FOAs): PAR-20-089, Biomedical Data Repository (U24 - Clinical Trials Not Allowed) and PAR-20-097, Biomedical Knowledgebase (U24 - Clinical Trials Not Allowed). As noted in the FOAs, data repositories and knowledgebases have distinct functions, metrics for success, and sustainability needs. In order to support these resources most effectively, NIGMS intends to fund them as separate cooperative agreement grants. NIGMS applications proposing a free-standing data repository or knowledgebase resource must apply under one of these FOAs. Thus, applications submitted as R01s or R35s will not be considered for funding.

For questions about NIGMS’ support for these resources, please contact Veerasamy Ravichandran.

Ninety percent of the applications to our Maximizing Investigators' Research Award for Early Stage Investigators (known as the ESI MIRA program) that were submitted in October are about to undergo peer review. The remaining 10% were administratively withdrawn, mostly because the research proposed fell outside the NIGMS mission. This is comparable to the proportion that was withdrawn over the past 3 years.

Withdrawn applications represent a lot of wasted time and effort on the part of affected PIs and are the source of considerable frustration. So what can you do to minimize the chance of this happening to your ESI MIRA application in the future?

The Support of Competitive Research (SCORE) program strives to increase the research competitiveness of faculty at institutions with a historical mission or demonstrated track record of training and graduating students from backgrounds underrepresented in biomedical research (see NIH’s Notice of Interest in Diversity). Funding opportunity announcements for the three SCORE mechanisms were just reissued:

In March, we released an NIH Guide notice informing the community of our intent to continue the Innovative Programs to Enhance Research Training (IPERT) R25. We’re now pleased to announce that the IPERT funding opportunity announcement (FOA) (PAR-19-383) has been reissued with minor changes. The goal of IPERT is to enable the scientific community to develop and implement innovative educational activities that equip diverse cohorts of participants with the skills required for careers in the biomedical research workforce. IPERT activities must integrate the required components of the Research Education Program Plan (REPP), including the following core elements:

We’re pleased to announce that the Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Awards (IRACDA) (K12) funding opportunity announcement (PAR-19-366) has been reissued with some minor changes. IRACDA combines a mentored postdoctoral research experience at a research-intensive institution with an opportunity to develop critical teaching and mentoring skills at a teaching-intensive partner institution that has a diverse student population. The primary goal of the program is to develop an inclusive pool of well-trained biomedical scientists who have the necessary knowledge and skills to pursue independent academic teaching and research careers. An additional goal of IRACDA is to benefit the teaching-intensive partner institutions by: