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June 27, 2019

Archived: Funding Opportunity: NIGMS National and Regional Resources

By Susan Gregurick and Peter Preusch

UPDATE: The slides [PDF, 296KB] from the National and Regional Resources Webinar have been posted.

Research resources provide access to technologies, methods, and expertise that are not generally available to individual laboratories. Large-scale research resources can significantly broaden access to cutting-edge technologies and can achieve economies of scale not possible for facilities serving individual institutions.

We have just published a new funding
opportunity announcement (FOA) to support national and regional (multistate) resources for biomedical research that will provide access to state-of-the-art facilities, equipment, technologies, research tools, and software to many users. We expect the impact of these resources and the number of users to be on a similar scale to what is achieved by synchrotron beamlines and cryo-electron microscopy centers.

Resources eligible for funding must:

  • Have been developed with previous NIGMS support
  • Be able to accommodate a regional- or national-scale user community
  • Be available to any qualified biomedical researcher, regardless of their focus
  • Provide technical capabilities within NIGMS-supported research areas

Resources should not:

  • Require substantial technology research and development efforts
  • Replace or duplicate institutionally supported resources or those supported by other NIH institutes and centers

Existing resources that meet the criteria above may apply to this FOA. Alternatively, multiple, existing facilities that together meet these criteria can propose to merge to create a single resource eligible for funding. This FOA includes support to maintain and upgrade resource capabilities, to make their availability known through community outreach, and to provide user training and support. Stand-alone data repositories and knowledgebases will not be supported through this FOA because separate FOAs for those activities will be issued soon, coordinated by the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy.

Resources must be dedicated to user service and have a focus on optimizing access, utility, and efficiency of operations. Investigators who are interested in support for large-scale resources with significant technology development efforts should not apply to this FOA but should instead consider the NIGMS Biomedical Technology Research Resource (P41) program. If you have any questions about this FOA, please contact Peter Preusch.

topic Funding Opportunities , Resources
tag Research Resources

About the Authors

Susan Gregurick

Before transferring to the NIH's Office of Data Science Strategy, Susan directed the NIGMS division that supports a range of research and training activities, including in the fields of computational biology, bioinformatics, mathematical and statistical biology, and biomedical technology development.

Peter Preusch

Until his retirement in December 2020, Peter handled grants on the biophysics of nucleic acids and nucleoprotein complexes and on the biophysics of membranes and membrane proteins. He also managed other programs in the BBCB division and served as the point of contact for the NIGMS Collaborative Program Award for Multidisciplinary Teams (RM1) and NIGMS National and Regional Resources (R24).