NIH implemented multiple principal investigator (MPI) grants starting in 2007 to support projects led by teams of principal investigators (PIs) who have shared responsibility and are each named as a PI for the award. Although the MPI arrangement can be effective in enabling single-grant supported projects for integrated teams working on common sets of goals, it isn’t the optimal approach for many collaborative projects and can pose challenges in some circumstances. For example, if an early stage investigator (ESI) joins an MPI R01 or other MPI major research grant, there may be unintended consequences such as the following:
- ESIs receiving an MPI R01will lose their status as ESIs, which reduces their chances of getting their own single-PI R01 to support independent work in their laboratory that is not dependent on the MPI team.
- An MPI R01 is not a qualifying award for the established investigator Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program and thus PIs who only hold MPI R01s from NIGMS are not eligible to apply for MIRA.
NIGMS recommends that ESIs carefully consider the risks of agreeing to be part of MPI applications and only do so when it’s the best way to support the research that they most want to do. Collaborative research can be—and very frequently is—conducted by PIs who each have their own research grant, and this approach gives researchers the most flexibility in setting their research directions and priorities.
As always, we encourage ESIs (and all applicants) to contact a program officer at NIGMS before writing any application to get advice on the best approaches for finding appropriate research funding.
Many thanks for this clear blog.