NIH to experiment with high-risk grants

December 11, 2013

NIH currently spends less than 5% of its US$30 billion budget on grants for individual researchers, including the annual Pioneer awards, which give seven people an average of $500,000 a year for five years. In contrast, NIH’s most popular grant, the R01, typically awards researchers $250,000 per year for 3‒5 years, and requires a large amount of preliminary data to support grant applications. Collins says that the NIH has no plan to move away from R01s. But he notes that a 2012 report commissioned by NIH found that Pioneer awardees publish more highly cited papers than R01 recipients. (Nature)