UPDATE: The slides [PDF, 296KB] from the National and Regional Resources Webinar have been posted.
Research resources provide access to technologies, methods, and expertise that are not generally available to individual laboratories. Large-scale research resources can significantly broaden access to cutting-edge technologies and can achieve economies of scale not possible for facilities serving individual institutions.
We have just published a new funding opportunity announcement (FOA) to support national and regional (multistate) resources for biomedical research that will provide access to state-of-the-art facilities, equipment, technologies, research tools, and software to many users. We expect the impact of these resources and the number of users to be on a similar scale to what is achieved by synchrotron beamlines and cryo-electron microscopy centers.
Resources eligible for funding must:
- Have been developed with previous NIGMS support
- Be able to accommodate a regional- or national-scale user community
- Be available to any qualified biomedical researcher, regardless of their focus
- Provide technical capabilities within NIGMS-supported research areas
Resources should not:
- Require substantial technology research and development efforts
- Replace or duplicate institutionally supported resources or those supported by other NIH institutes and centers
Existing resources that meet the criteria above may apply to this FOA. Alternatively, multiple, existing facilities that together meet these criteria can propose to merge to create a single resource eligible for funding. This FOA includes support to maintain and upgrade resource capabilities, to make their availability known through community outreach, and to provide user training and support. Stand-alone data repositories and knowledgebases will not be supported through this FOA because separate FOAs for those activities will be issued soon, coordinated by the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy.
Resources must be dedicated to user service and have a focus on optimizing access, utility, and efficiency of operations. Investigators who are interested in support for large-scale resources with significant technology development efforts should not apply to this FOA but should instead consider the NIGMS Biomedical Technology Research Resource (P41) program. If you have any questions about this FOA, please contact Peter Preusch.