2009-03-25
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced additional
details on some of the new funding opportunities made possible through
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
NIH has announced that applications for a total of $2.5 billion in
grants funded by ARRA are currently available. The grants will fund
scientific research, competitive and administrative supplements on
existing grants, construction and improvement of research facilities,
and the purchase of scientific equipment. Specifically, NIH has
indicated that it will allocate ARRA funds as follows:
- At least $200 million in Challenge Grants
to support research on topics that address specific scientific and
health research challenges in biomedical and behavioral research that
would benefit from significant two-year jump start funds
- $1 billion in construction grants to help build new or improve existing research facilities and help stimulate the economy
- $300 million in shared instrumentation grants to facilitate the purchase of research equipment that will enable scientists and researchers to complete their critical work
Institutions and researchers that receive ARRA funds will be
required to submit progress reports outlining how many jobs were
created as a result of the awards. They must also assess the
environmental impact of their facilities to encourage green building
designs and technologies.
NIH has also issued enhanced review criteria
for evaluating the scientific and technical merit of research grants
applications and cooperative agreements submitted for FY 2010 funding,
as well as a new, nine-point scoring system that will be used for the evaluation of all applications. In addition, NIH will suspend the appeals procedures
for investigators responding to ARRA Funding Opportunity Announcements
(FOAs), because of the time sensitivity of the granting process.
To further assist the research community, NIH is providing through its Web site a comprehensive listing of all grant opportunities available as a result of ARRA. The site includes a broad outline of types of projects that NIH expects to fund
as well as resources and detailed information on Requests for
Applications and Notices related to ARRA funding opportunities.
ARRA-related Web sites have also been developed by the individual NIH centers and institutes such as NHLBI, NIDDK, NIA and NCI, among others, in an effort to provide additional guidance on the suggested topics of interest for the Challenge grants, and Supplemental grants.
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