Biophysical Society Newsletter | August 2017

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BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER 4 AUGUST 2017
Public Affairs
New NIH Program Offers
Boost to Early and Mid-career
Investigators
In a surprising development, one month after an-
nouncing a plan to limit funding to the equivalent
of three RO1s based on a new index, the GSI, the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced
that it was scrapping that plan. At the NIH's
Advisory Committee to the Director meeting in
June, NIH Deputy Director Larry Tabak an-
nounced a new program, the Next Generation
Researchers Initiative (NGRI). Through this pro-
gram, NIH will target three types of investigators:
investigators seeking their first award, mid-career
investigators at risk of losing all funding, and
mid-career scientists seeking a second grant that
would stabilize their careers. Mid-career investiga-
tors are defined as those who have been an NIH
principle investigator for less than 10 years. For
this targeted group, NIH seeks to provide fund-
ing to those whose proposals score in the top 25
percent but are below the funding cut-off score.
Currently, NIH funds, on average, grants that are
in the top 20 percent only.
NIH plans to put $210 million towards the
program in FY 2017, and estimates it will take
five years to reach a steady state in redistributing
awards to this targeted group of investigators.
The goal is build up a fund of $1.1 billion for
NGRI. The money will come from freeing up
funds through funding decisions and emphasizing
programs such as the National Institute of General
Medicine Sciences' Maximizing Investigators’ Re-
search Award (MIRA) and the National Institute
of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Dis-
eases' Supplements to Advance Research (STAR)
from Projects to Programs.
The program, which went into effect in June,
replaces a plan to cap investigator support at the
equivalent of three grants in order to redistribute
funding. That plan, announced in May, received
pushback from the community on what the limit
would do to collaborations, the cut off of funding
to successful research programs in large labs, and
whether the analysis of productivity on which the
plan was based was focused on the correct metrics.
NIH has indicated that it will be tracking the
impact of funding decisions for the targeted group
to ensure that the program is implemented cor-
rectly and results in increased funding rates. NIH
is also encouraging the development and testing
of metrics that can be used to assess the impact of
NIH grant support on scientific progress.
The NGRI website is
htm.
Supreme Court Allows
Limited Version of
President’s Travel Ban
On June 26, the US Supreme Court ruled that a
limited version of President Donald Trump’s travel
ban could go into effect. The court will hear argu-
ments in the case in October.
In the meantime, the ruling bars citizens of Iran,
Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from
travelling to the United States unless they have a
“bona fide” connection with a person or entity in
the country. This could be an offer of admission
to a university for a student or a job offer from a
company or university. The offer must be formal
and documented. It appears that this order would
not allow those attending meetings or giving an
invited lecture to enter the country.
The Biophysical Society will continue to monitor
the situation and asks those affected by the ban
to let us know by filling out the survey at http://
NAS Reports ARPA-E
Program Showing Success
On June 13, the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) released An