CURRENT NEWS FOR OCTOBER 2006

posted 10/12/06
2007 Pioneer Award Competition-Biomedical Research $2.5M over 5 years
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today the new round of competition for the NIH Director's Pioneer Award. This program supports exceptionally creative scientists who take highly innovative -- and potentially transformative -- approaches to major challenges in biomedical research.

The Pioneer Award supports individual scientists rather than specific projects and allows recipients to pursue promising new research directions that could have unusually great impact.

Each Pioneer Award provides $2.5 million in direct costs over five years. NIH funded 35 scientists in the first three years of the program, which is part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. In September 2007, the agency expects to make between five and ten new Pioneer Award grants. Scientists at all career levels and engaged in any field of research may apply for the Pioneer Award, as long as they are interested in exploring biomedically relevant topics. The centerpiece of the streamlined, electronic application process is an essay on the investigator's vision for addressing a biomedical challenge, the importance of the problem, and the person's qualifications to engage in groundbreaking research. The application period opens on Friday, December 1, 2006 and closes on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Application instructions are located at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-RM-07-005.html Additional information on the Pioneer Award can be located at http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/pioneer. This news release is available online at http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/oct2006/nigms-12.htm.

posted 10/06/06
NIH Change in Standing Receipt Dates Beginning in January 2007
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be changing the standard receipt dates for grant applications to NIH, AHRQ, and NIOSH. The new receipt dates will be effective as of January 2007 and will apply to both paper and electronic applications.

The transition to electronic application submission has made NIH aware of the problems posed by having very large numbers of incoming grant applications being submitted on any single day. This large amount of submissions at one time has impacted Grants.gov and eRA systems, where response time can be slowed down under heavy volume. It also impacts the Grants.gov and NIH help desks where they see a large spike in call volume around the current receipt dates. The new dates will spread the flow of applications out rather than "boom and bust" cycles.

The new receipt dates are based on many factors including:

-- The heaviest receipt dates from all agencies on Grants.gov are the first of the month, the 15th of the month, the first Friday, and last day of the month. The proposed NIH receipt dates have been intentionally offset from these dates to improve Grants.gov response times for NIH applicants.An effort was made to use recurring days of the month for simplicity(i.e. new R01s would come in on February 5 and renewals on March 5).

-- The R01's, NIH's most frequently used mechanism, were kept early in the receipt window to allow time for processing. The receipt date of the 5th of the month was chosen to miss Grants.gov's heaviest volume days.

Applications for Request for Applications (RFAs) and Program Announcements (PAs, PARs, PASs) with special receipt dates continue to be due on the specified dates listed in the FOA. For an application to be considered on time it must be received by Grants.gov by 5 p.m. local time for the applicant institution. (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-06-050.html)

To view the new schedule of receipt dates and to obtain the entire NIH notice see: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-07-001.html