Federal research money travels through the
- National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Department of Defense
- National Institutes of Health
The NIH receives ~$30 billion / year. Located in Bethesda, Maryland. Has both an intramural and an extramural program.
- ~80% extramural
- ~10% intramural
- remainder administrative costs
NIH is organized into 27 institutes and centers (e.g.):
- National Eye Institute
- National Institute on Aging
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
- National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
- National Institute on Drug Abuse
- National Institute of Mental Health
- National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Congress allocates money to the NIH per institute. In this way, the legislative branch sets overall national priorities for topical areas of research, but does not specify individual research projects.
How does extramural funding get allocated?
The NIH has the Center for Scientific Review which organizes the evaluation of all extramural scientific funding.
Grant proposals are sent to the CSR, which then assigns the proposal to a study section. There are three “funding cycles” during the year, so three dates on which you can submit a proposal.
There are ~100 standing study sections, organized by scientific discipline (e.g.):
- Cancer Etiology Study Section
- Cellular and Molecular Biology of Neurodegeneration Study Section
- Cognition and Perception Study Section
- Medical Imaging Study Section
- Neural Basis of Psychopathology, Addictions and Sleep Disorders Study Section
- Social Sciences and Population Studies A Study Section
The study section has a scientific review officer (SRO) who is an employee of the NIH. The rest of the study section is made up of scientists who have agreed to serve. There is typically a roster of ~20 scientists. Program officers from the institutes often attend as well.
Each grant is read by three reviewers and scored in several areas on a 1-9 scale (1 being the best): Significance, Investigator(s), Innovation, Approach, Environment. These are then integrated into an Impact score.
Each reviewer reads and scores the grant separately. The scores for all grants in the study section for that cycle of .
If after this initial review the proposal falls in the bottom half of proposals, it is then triaged and not further discussed.
Grants discussed in order from highest to lowest scores. Each reviewer makes an argument for their scores. After discussion with the panel, they can then change their final impact score. The rest of the panel then provides their score, and they have to give a value within the range of the reviewers, or disclose to the group why they want to vote “out of the range”.
With the grants ranked, they are then passed to the Council in each institute to see if they want to fund them. The council is composed of administrative leaders of the Institute, as well as a rotating panel of extramural scientists who advise the Institute. The council will typically set a “payline” and fund all grants with scores better than that line. They may cut the budget or number of years requested for grants close to the payline. Sometimes will reach below the pay line for grants they deem to be of programatic interest.
If funded, the grant is then assigned a program officer, who will help administer the grant, evaluate your progress reports, and generally act as your liaison to the NIH system.
Serving on study section is an incredibly time consuming activity. Nonetheless, scientists are very willing to do so. Why?
