Welcome to all of Orac’s friends, visitors from his entertaining & enlightening blog entitled Respectful Insolence. Apparently Orac is sweating out an NCI score in the excellent range (ie, 150-200) and reciting the inciteful & insightful
Ode to the NIH Payline in the meantime. Enjoy while you await the announcement of winners in your own IC.
Archive for February, 2007
Ode to the NIH Payline
NHLBI Clinical Research Guide
Cool! The NHLBI just added a wonderful Clinical Research Guide Website “to guide potential investigators in organizing a clinical research application and to provide information on conducting a study and maintaining an award.”
The guide is quite user-friendly both in terms of organization/navigation and information provided. Enjoy – and thanks, NHLBI!
Roadmap Cleared Concepts
Well, the closest things to cleared concepts for trans-institute initiatives anyway. The New Roadmap Initiatives for 2008 actually look promising.
The IC Directors have selected 5 topics to be developed for further consideration as Major Roadmap Initiative Proposals: Read the rest of this entry »
NIH Payline Central
Update: Please see the NIH Paylines & Resources page for the latest information.
The NIH Extramural Financial Operations Website covers NIH fiscal policy, award trend data, budget presentations, and information about the whole sausage-making process. If you scroll to the very bottom of the page, they now also provide a summary table with links to the funding policy of individual ICs. I’m still hopeful eventually these links will provide payline data. Most Advisory Councils have met now, so watch the Website of your favorite IC both for payline info and cleared concepts (ie, future funding opportunities). Best of luck to you all!
NIGMS Seeks Strategic Input
The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) invites online input from the scientific community as it sets its research and funding priorities for the next 5 years. Read the rest of this entry »
Misconduct in Misconduct Investigation
Unlike the NIH, Purdue has been much less forthright in their recent investigation into allegations of scientific misconduct, and as a result, they have been taken to task by Science and many others in the scientific community: Read the rest of this entry »
Conflicts of Interest
The NIH conducts targeted site visits to examine “Compliance in Action“, such as those conducted from 2000-2002 to examine how various components of the responsible conduct of research are implemented in the real world at NIH-funded institutions. Most recently, they published summary findings from a series of targeted site visits in 2006 specifically looking at conflict of interest. More on all this at the main NIH Conflict of Interest Website.
A word to the wise from the NIH and NSF grapevines: be careful with that effort reporting and keeping under the federal salary cap. Recent effort reporting audits (with teeth & fines behind them) by both federal research sponsors are finding investigators working more hours than is humanly possible. Or legally allowed in any case.
Continuing Resolution Continues through Sept
Criminy. FY06 funding levels for the rest of FY07, though the NIH did get an extra $619.5 million to tide the ICs over. Sort of. I will update payline data as the various ICs list their updates … though most won’t have any new news, I suspect. Read the rest of this entry »
K99/R00 Projections
Update: NIAID provides an explanation as to why they fund more K22s than K99s plus information on the two mechanisms.
Having helped with one of these kangaroo mechanism proposals recently, I am looking forward to learning more from program officers how this initiative shakes out. Initial word from the grape vine leaned toward supporting postdocs early in their training (and as always, dual IC assignment encouraged). Once this second round of applications is reviewed, the NIH career development folks should have more insightful insight to offer, which I’ll gladly pass along. In the meantime, the number (total of 171 awards anticpated) and distribution (see below) of FY07 awards is available. Hard to believe NINR and NCCAM are only funding 1 award each for the entire year. Perhaps they are waiting to see how well the program works before investing heavily. On the other hand, NCI is replacing their K01 mechanism (except for diversity enhancement) with the K99/R00.
NCI 20
NHLBI 18
NIDCR 5
NIDDK 15
NINDS 12
NIAID 6
NIGMS 12
NICHD 8
NEI 4
NIEHS 10
NIA 7
NIAMS 4
NIDCD 4
NIMH 10
NIDA 6
NIAAA 3
NINR 1
NHGRI 3
NIBIB 5
NCRR 7
NCCAM 1
NCMHD 3
FIC 2
NLM 5
Total 171
Competitive Edge to NIH Proposals
Although the NIH is completely transparent about its peer review process, its funding priorities, and its recommendations for preparing fundable applications, Universities and for-profit companies repackage this material in grantsmanship presentations all the time. I am not sure what value is added beyond the NIH offerings but am happy to make available the powerpoint presentation I created over the years in my last position. This NIH Grant Proposal Preparation Guidance file provides a shotgun approach to covering all the major factors to consider in seeking funding from the NIH. Some time has passed since I left the grantwriting workshop lecture circuit, so the screen shots have become dated, and little specific guidance is included for the SF424. However, the underlying principles apply, the URLs are current, and my talking points are included with each slide (you may need to right click & ask to edit the slides and/or save the PPT file on your computer to read the slide notes), so please have at it if you think this might be useful. Remember, though, going to workshops, clicking through online tutorials, and following tip sheets is absolutely no substitute for seeking advice from colleagues and program officers and having your peers read and critique your narrative – at the very least the specific aims page.
