Category: Funding Trends

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What Are the Chances of Getting More Than One NIGMS R01?

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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.

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Application and Funding Trends in Fiscal Year 2023

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NIGMS continues to support a broad range of scientific topics and investigators within its research portfolio, including support for investigator-initiated research project grants (RPGs) at institutions throughout the country. As part of its commitment to transparency, NIGMS examines and publishes data on annual trends reflected in its RPG portfolio. In this post, we review and describe investigator-level trends associated with competing R01/R01-equivalent RPGs including those in the Institute’s R35 Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program.

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Application and Funding Trends in Fiscal Year 2022

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NIGMS continues to support a wide range of topics and investigators, maintaining a broad biomedical research portfolio. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2022, NIGMS received a congressional appropriation of $3,092,373,000. Consistent with the Institute’s mission, a large portion of these funds support investigator-initiated research project grants (RPGs) at institutions throughout the country. As part of its commitment to transparency, NIGMS publishes data on annual trends in its grant portfolios. In this post, we describe investigator-level trends for RPGs and review the trends associated with competing RPGs as well as those in the Institute’s Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program.

NIGMS Investigator-Level Trends for Research Grants

At NIGMS, we focus on supporting a broad group of investigators. As a result, we monitor two statistics that describe our investigator pool: the cumulative investigator rate and the number of funded early stage investigators (ESIs). The number of newly funded ESIs has notably increased over recent years, and continued support for ESIs is integral to the success of the biomedical research enterprise and is a priority for the Institute. Figure 1 illustrates the number of ESIs who received their first competing NIGMS R01-equivalent grants each year between FY 2013 and FY 2022. In FY 2022, NIGMS awarded R01-equivalent grants to 319 ESIs in total: 31 investigators received R01 awards, 268 investigators received R35 (MIRA) awards, and 20 investigators received NIH Director’s New Innovator Awards (DP2s). These data include DP2s (four awards) administered by NIGMS on behalf of the NIH Office of the Director. The number of funded ESI MIRAs in FY 2022 was the largest to date, and more than four times larger than in the program’s first year. Overall, the number of funded ESIs has risen almost every year since FY 2013, with the slight decrease in the number of awards between FY 2017 and FY 2018 due in part to the introduction of the MIRA program in FY 2016 and a temporary reduction in the built-up ESI applicant pool as more ESIs received funding.

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Increasing Diversity in NIGMS’ Medical Scientist Training Program

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Since the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) began in 1975, it has supported more than 14,000 clinician-scientist trainees. The program provides predoctoral training grants (T32) to institutions to develop and implement effective, evidence-informed training for students pursuing both a clinical and a research doctorate degree (i.e., M.D.-Ph.D.).

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Application, Review, Funding, and Demographic Trends for Maximizing Investigators’ Research Awards (MIRA): FYs 2019-2021

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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).

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A Closer Look at the NIGMS AREA (R15) Program

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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.

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Application and Funding Trends in Fiscal Year 2021

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NIGMS maintains a diverse biomedical research portfolio, supporting a wide range of topics and investigators. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2021, NIGMS received a congressional appropriation of $2,991,417,000. As part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, this budget increased by 3.4% to $3,092,373,000 for FY 2022. The majority of these funds support research project grants (RPGs) at research institutions throughout the country. In alignment with its commitment to transparency, NIGMS publishes data on annual trends in its grants portfolio. In this post, we first describe investigator-level trends for RPGs, then review the trends associated with competing RPGs, and lastly examine trends in the Institute’s Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program.

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Do MIRA Investigators Apply for More Grants From Other NIH Institutes and Centers Than R01 Investigators?

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NIGMS’ Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) provides investigators with flexibility and stability for their research programs. Investigators who receive MIRA support must dedicate 51% of their research effort toward the grant and are ineligible to apply for or receive other NIGMS research support (with some exceptions). One question frequently asked is whether the NIGMS funding restriction changes the likelihood that MIRA grantees will submit applications to other NIH institutes and centers (ICs). In this post, we compare data on post-award grant applications from NIGMS-funded investigators.

To compare application behavior between MIRA and R01-funded investigators, we created sets of both established (EI) and early stage (ESI) investigators supported by NIGMS R01s (called the comparator group) who have not received a MIRA. The EI comparators were matched according to race/ethnicity, gender, time since acquisition of first R01, and average annual NIGMS funding. For the ESI comparator group, we used all ESI NIGMS R01 awardees.

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MIRA Renewals: Award Rates and Budget Changes

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NIGMS funded its first round of renewals for the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program in Fiscal Year (FY) 2021. In this post, we compare data on the award rates and award sizes of MIRA renewals and R01 renewals to provide some insights into the early outcomes of MIRA renewals. We also examine award rates and budget changes for investigators applying to convert their NIGMS R01s to MIRAs.

In the first section, we present award rates (the percentage of reviewed applications that receive funding), considering both programs overall and then FY 2021 renewal applications specifically. The second section describes the award sizes for the two types of grants collectively, followed by award size changes for FY 2021 renewals. Where sample sizes and privacy concerns allow, we distinguish between established investigators (EIs) and early stage investigators (ESIs) renewing their first grants (“ex-ESIs”) as they often have different characteristics for award rates and sizes. All budget values shown in the post are yearly direct costs.

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Application and Funding Trends in Fiscal Year 2020

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On December 27, 2020, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, was signed into law. The appropriation provides NIGMS with a budget of $2,991,417,000, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2021, a 1.8% increase over the FY 2020 appropriation. With this increased budget, NIGMS is committed to providing taxpayers with 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.

NIGMS maintains a diversified biomedical research portfolio, supporting a wide range of topics and investigators. NIGMS and NIH programs and policies aim to increase the number of funded investigators and to maintain researchers’ funding stability over time. In this post, we describe NIGMS investigator-level trends for selected R01-equivalent grants as well as overall research project grant (RPG) trends for FY 2020 compared to previous fiscal years.

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