More Changes to Funding at NIH to Benefit Researchers

Shrinking pools of research funding, lower success rates, and increasing resource scarcity at research institutions strain most researchers, but new researchers have had a particularly difficult time securing funding of late and many have left the field as a result. The NIH has signaled awareness of these pressures, announcing in April changes to the biosketch form that benefit new researchers and the replacement of the onerous “one resubmission” rule with a more relaxed policy.

Today, Dr. Sally Rockey and Dr. Francis Collins announced that the NIH would allow its centers and programs to offer longer, sustained funding to researchers in the model of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s (HHMI) “people, not projects” funding model. Continue reading “More Changes to Funding at NIH to Benefit Researchers”

In Case You Missed It: NIH Amends Resubmission Policy

In 2009, the NIH restricted the number of resubmissions of applications for funding to one (A1), requiring any subsequent new research funding applications (A0) to be substantially different from the unfunded application. Shrinking research budgets and the impacts of this restriction–it requires researchers to substantially re-direct their work, which may mean reorienting the efforts of a whole lab–were taking an obvious toll on research, with many meritorious ideas being abandoned as a result of this restriction. Continue reading “In Case You Missed It: NIH Amends Resubmission Policy”