Tag: MIRA

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Virtual Office Hour for Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award for Early Stage Investigator Applicants

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UPDATE: The MIRA office hour on December 12 has reached its capacity and registration is closed. For additional sessions, visit the Navigating NIGMS Grants webpage.

We’re hosting a virtual question-and-answer “office hour” on Thursday, December 12, for Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) (R35) early stage investigator (ESI) applicants. This small group session is designed to help late-stage postdoctoral researchers and early career faculty plan their future applications. We’ll start with a brief presentation of key components of the ESI-MIRA application (research strategy, biosketch, budget, etc.) and spend the rest of the time in open discussion to answer your questions.​

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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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Early Stage Investigators and Multi-PI R01 Grants

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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: 

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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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Webinar for the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) Program for Early Stage Investigators

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UPDATE: The video and slides [PDF] for this webinar are now available.

I’m pleased to announce that the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) notice of funding opportunity for early stage investigators (ESIs) (PAR-23-145) has been reissued. MIRA funding provides support for an area of research in an ESI’s laboratory that falls within the NIGMS mission. The next application due date is October 3, 2023.

We’re hosting a webinar to discuss the key features of the ESI MIRA program and to answer your questions:

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Funding Opportunity: Continuation of the ESI MIRA Program

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We’re pleased to share the notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) (PAR-23-145) to provide sustained support for biomedical research through our Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) (R35) program for early stage investigators (ESIs). This NOFO allows applications from ESIs proposing research within NIGMS’ scientific mission.

NIGMS has granted MIRAs to ESIs since Fiscal Year (FY) 2016. We’ve analyzed and published application and funding trends for MIRAs from FY 2019 to FY 2021 and for various funding types, including MIRA, for FY 2022. Changes in this iteration of the NOFO include:

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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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Intent to Reissue MIRA Funding Opportunity Announcement for Early Stage Investigators (R35)

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I’m pleased to announce that the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) for the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) for early stage investigators (ESIs) will be reissued in the spring of 2023. MIRA provides support for a research program in an ESI’s laboratory that falls within the NIGMS mission. For details, see NOT-GM-23-017. 

The reissued FOA will essentially be the same as the previous one, with a couple of minor changes:

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Webinar for the NIGMS Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) Program

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UPDATE: The slides [PDF] and video from this webinar are now available.

I’m pleased to announce that the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) funding opportunity announcement (FOA) for established and new investigators (PAR-22-180) has been reissued. MIRA provides support for the program of research in an investigator’s laboratory that falls within the NIGMS mission. The next application due date is January 17, 2023.

We’re hosting a webinar to discuss the key features of this FOA and to answer your questions:

Friday, October 21, 12:30-2:00 p.m. ET
Zoom meeting link
Meeting ID: 160 903 8368
Passcode: NIGMS

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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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