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NIH Request for Information: Metrics to Assess the Value of Biomedical Digital Repositories

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NIH is requesting input from the community on existing and desired approaches for measuring and assessing the value of biomedical data repositories. The request for information (RFI) seeks input on a number of topics related to these repositories, including but not limited to:

  • Utilization metrics.
  • Quality and impact indicators.
  • Service indicators.
  • Governance and infrastructure metrics.
  • Use case studies.

RFI responses should be sent to NIH_Repository_Metrics_RFI@mail.nih.gov by September 30, 2016. Please see the RFI for additional information on submitting input.

If you have any questions about the RFI, please let me know.

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Partnering with Professional Societies

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Not long ago, Jon Lorsch and I and several other NIGMS staff met with the leadership of one of the professional societies that represents many of our grantees. It was an opportunity to discuss NIGMS’ policies and grant mechanisms, hear about challenges that investigators face, and share ideas about how the biomedical research and training environment can be improved.

Meetings of this kind are not unusual, but they are just one of the ways we interact with the society partners related to NIGMS’ mission and, through them, communicate with their members. Another way is by attending the societies’ scientific meetings, where our staff learn about the latest research in the field, conduct grantsmanship workshops, and answer questions about the funding process.

The professional societies help us disseminate—and receive—information. For instance, they share our notices about funding opportunities and changes in NIH policies as well as respond to our requests for information. Leadership from the professional societies attend the open sessions of our Advisory Council meetings and sometimes speak during the public comment period, enhancing the exchange of information between the Institute and our constituency.

We also collaborate with professional societies on specific activities. Recent examples include meetings convened by FASEB on rigor and reproducibility and by ASBMB on research training. With ASCB, we co-organized the Life: Magnified exhibit, which brought biomedical science to a public place.

We greatly value our interactions with the societies and invite suggestions for additional ways we can partner.

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First MIRA Awards to New and Early Stage Investigators

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UPDATE: The MIRA FOA for early stage investigators has been reissued.

We have begun making grant awards resulting from responses to RFA-GM-16-003 (R35), the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) for New and Early Stage Investigators pilot program. We received 320 applications in areas related to NIGMS’ mission, and they were reviewed by four special emphasis panels organized by the NIH Center for Scientific Review. We anticipate making 93 awards, which is more than we estimated in the funding opportunity announcement (FOA); the corresponding success rate is 29.1%.

The awards will be for a 5-year project period, as is typically the case for NIGMS R01 awards to new and early stage investigators. Most awards will be for the requested and maximum amount of $250,000 in annual direct costs, with an average of $239,000 and median of $250,000. In Fiscal Year 2015, NIGMS R01 awards to new or early stage investigators averaged $209,000 in annual direct costs (median of $198,000) and had a 24.4% success rate. During the same period, all competing NIGMS R01 awards averaged $236,000 in annual direct costs (median of $210,000) and had a 28.8% success rate. Thus, the MIRA pilot program had success rates similar to those of comparable R01 applications and offered some direct financial benefit to this group of applicants. We expect other benefits of the MIRA program, including increased funding stability and research flexibility, reductions in time spent writing and reviewing grant applications and improved distribution of NIGMS funding, will accrue among these investigators and the community at large as implementation of the MIRA program continues.

You can find more information about the awards on NIH RePORTER by entering RFA-GM-16-003 in the FOA field; however, the record of funded grants will not be complete until after the end of Fiscal Year 2016 (September 30). Because the initial budget period of MIRA awards will be offset by existing NIGMS grant support from other mechanisms (e.g., career awards), the first-year budget of a MIRA may be lower than the annual funding level used to calculate the average and median amounts shown above. We plan to post a detailed analysis of MIRAs after we have issued all the awards. We’ve previously posted information on NIGMS R01 award sizes and success rates for new and early stage investigators.

As I mentioned in my last post, we’re planning to reissue the MIRA FOA for early stage investigators in the near future.

You can find additional information about the program on our MIRA web page.

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Webinar for Bridges Applicants

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UPDATE: The slides from the Bridges Webinar and Answers to Frequently Asked Questions have been posted.

Are you preparing an institutional Bridges to the Baccalaureate or Bridges to the Doctorate grant application? If so, you may have questions about the funding opportunity announcements, data tables and FORMS-D package required for the upcoming September 25 receipt date.

We’re offering a webinar for Bridges applicants (link no longer available) on Thursday, August 18, from 1:15-2:45 p.m. EDT. You may send questions to us (Mercedes Rubio or Patrick H. Brown) before the webinar or post them in the chat box during the event. If you’re away from your computer, you can access the webinar from a mobile device or listen to a voice-only option by dialing 1-888-390-0690 from anywhere in the United States or Canada and entering the participant passcode 6253723.

We look forward to talking to you about the Bridges programs.

NIGMS Staff Participating in August 18 Webinar

Division of Training, Workforce Development, and Diversity:

Alison Gammie, Director

Shiva Singh, Undergraduate and Predoctoral Training Branch Chief

Mercedes Rubio, Bridges to the Baccalaureate Program Director

Patrick H. Brown, Bridges to the Doctorate Program Director

Sailaja Koduri, Program Director

Office of Scientific Review:

Brian Pike, Acting Chief

Rebecca Johnson, Scientific Review Officer

Division of Extramural Activities:

Justin Rosenzweig, Grants Management Specialist

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Early Notice: MIRA Funding Opportunity for Early Stage Investigators

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UPDATE: The MIRA FOA for early stage investigators has been reissued.

Many people have contacted me wondering whether NIGMS is going to reissue the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) for New and Early Stage Investigators (R35). We are planning to further test the MIRA concept for early career investigators and expect to publish a funding opportunity announcement (FOA) this summer. Applications would be due in the fall.

As announced in the notice of intent to publish this FOA, the program will be similar to last year—except that it will be open only to NIH-defined early stage investigators (ESIs). Investigators can request an extension of their ESI status for certain specified reasons. The new announcement will include some other changes, so please be sure to read the entire FOA when it comes out.

Once the forthcoming FOA is published in the NIH Guide, we will provide more details here and will update the MIRA webpage. In the meantime, we encourage ESIs with expertise and insights in any area of science within the NIGMS mission to consider applying.

Know others who might be interested in this FOA? Please share this early notice with them.

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Revisiting the Dependence of Scientific Productivity and Impact on Funding Level

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A 2010 analysis by NIGMS and subsequent studies by others (Fortin and Currie, 2013; Gallo et al., 2014; Lauer et al., 2015; Doyle et al., 2015; Cook et al., 2015) have indicated that, on average, larger budgets and labs do not correspond to greater returns on our investment in fundamental science. We have discussed the topic here in A Shared Responsibility and in an iBiology talk. In this updated analysis, we assessed measures of the recent productivity and scientific impact of NIGMS grantees as a function of their total NIH funding.

We identified the pool of principal investigators (PIs) who held at least one NIGMS P01 or R01-equivalent grant (R01, R23, R29, R37) in Fiscal Year 2010. We then determined each investigator’s total NIH funding from research project grants (RPGs) or center grants (P20, P30, P50, P60, PL1, U54) for Fiscal Years 2009 to 2011 and averaged it over this 3-year period. Because many center grants are not organized into discrete projects and cores, we associated the contact PI with the entire budget and all publications attributed to the grant. We applied the same methodology to P01s. Thus, all publications citing the support of the center or P01 grant were also attributed to the contact PI, preventing underrepresentation of their productivity relative to their funding levels. Figure 1 shows the distribution of PIs by funding level, with the number of PIs at each funding level shown above each bar.

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NIH Request for Input: Transformative High-Resolution Cryo-EM

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NIH is requesting input from the community on scientific opportunities, critical needs and strategies for realizing the scientific potential of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). The request for information (RFI) seeks input from researchers, institutions, professional societies and others interested in cryo-EM, including those who have not done any work in the area but have an interest in doing so in the future.

The RFI solicits input on a number of topics, including but not limited to:

  • Cryo-EM needs and capacity.
  • Workforce development and training.
  • Technology development.

RFI responses should be sent to cyro-em@mail.nih.gov by August 8, 2016.

If you have any questions about the RFI, please let me know.

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Outcomes Analysis of the NIGMS Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Awards (IRACDA) Program

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We recently analyzed the career outcomes of scholars who participated in the NIGMS IRACDA program. A goal of this program is to provide a diverse pool of postdoctoral scholars with research and professional skills needed to be successful in academic careers. The program combines a mentored postdoctoral research experience with an opportunity to develop additional academic and teaching skills, including a teaching practicum at a partner institution that enrolls a substantial number of students from underrepresented groups. Since its inception in 1999, 25 research-intensive institutions have received IRACDA awards, which have supported more than 600 scholars.

Our assessment focused on the 450 alumni who completed their training through November 2014. Important findings include:

  • IRACDA scholars are diverse: 63% are female, and 53% identify as a race/ethnicity other than white, non-Hispanic.
  • Approximately 73% of IRACDA alumni are in academic faculty positions at a range of institutions (see Figure 1).
  • Among the scholars in faculty positions, 35% are at research-intensive institutions, 25% are at primarily undergraduate institutions and the remaining percent are at associate- and master’s degree-granting institutions. In addition, 25% of the IRACDA alumni in academic positions are faculty at a designated minority-serving institution.

Continue reading “Outcomes Analysis of the NIGMS Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Awards (IRACDA) Program”

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Rochelle Long to Lead Pharmacology, Physiology, and Biological Chemistry Division

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Dr. Rochelle LongI’m very pleased to announce the selection of Rochelle Long as director of our Division of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Biological Chemistry (PPBC). Rochelle is a pharmacologist who has played leading roles in fostering research in pharmacogenomics through national and international collaborations.

She established and oversees the trans-NIH Pharmacogenomics Research Network and has catalyzed associated partnerships, such as the Global Alliance for Pharmacogenomics and the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium.

Rochelle has worked in PPBC since 1990, starting as a program director and rising to become chief of its Pharmacological and Physiological Sciences Branch in 1998. She has served as acting division director since Mike Rogers’ retirement in May 2015.

Rochelle’s plans include building bridges across scientific disciplines, working to strengthen emerging fields and promoting cross-disciplinary research. These are goals across the Institute—they are reflected in our strategic plan—and they’re particularly relevant for a broad-ranging division like PPBC.

Since I’ve had the opportunity to interact with her for several years, I know how skilled Rochelle is at organizing, motivating and generating cohesion among groups of people. These qualities will serve her well as PPBC director and as a member of the NIGMS senior leadership team.

For more about Rochelle, see our news announcement.

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Give Input on Strategies for Modernizing Biomedical Graduate Education

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We’ve been examining how best to support the modernization of graduate education at the national level to ensure that trainees gain the skills, abilities and knowledge they need to be successful in the biomedical research workforce.

We’re involved in a variety of efforts. For example, we and other NIH institutes and centers provided support for the development of training modules on rigor and reproducibility. We encouraged graduate programs at institutions that receive predoctoral T32 support from us to make their alumni career outcomes publicly available to prospective and current students. We’ve also offered administrative supplements to predoctoral T32 training grants to support innovative approaches in the areas of rigor and reproducibility, career outcomes and graduate education. In April, we held a symposium covering these and other topics in graduate education. Finally, we plan to write a new predoctoral T32 funding announcement.

We’re now soliciting input from the biomedical research community and other interested groups in response to a new request for information (RFI) on strategies for modernizing biomedical graduate education. We’d like to know your thoughts on:

  • Current strengths, weaknesses and challenges in graduate biomedical education.
  • Changes that could enhance graduate education to ensure that scientists of tomorrow have the skills, abilities and knowledge they need to advance biomedical research as efficiently and effectively as possible.
  • Major barriers to achieving these changes and potential strategies to overcome them.
  • Key skills that graduate students should develop in order to become outstanding biomedical scientists and the best approaches for developing those skills.
  • Potential approaches to modernizing graduate education through the existing NIGMS institutional predoctoral training grants.
  • Anything else you feel is important for us to consider.

Responses can be submitted via an online form and can be anonymous. They can also be emailed to modernPhD@mail.nih.gov. The due date for responses is August 5, 2016.