You’ve determined that you’re conducting research related to the NIGMS mission and have found a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) you’d like to apply to. Now it’s time to craft your application.

There are many resources providing guidance on what to include in an NIH funding application. We recommend reviewing our grant writing webinar series, which discusses faculty readiness and submission considerations, as well as determining whether a funding opportunity is right for you and writing a competitive application. NIH’s Write Your Application webpage also includes valuable guidance.

Now that you understand the major types of research project grants NIGMS supports and where to apply, let’s discuss our Institute’s funding opportunities that focus on research capacity building.

What Is Research Capacity Building?

Part of NIH’s mission is to increase the participation and representation of researchers at institutions that don’t receive large amounts of NIH funding. This includes institutions that have partnerships with Tribal organizations and that educate students from backgrounds underrepresented in biomedical research, and those in states and jurisdictions that traditionally have low levels of NIH funding.

The first post in this series introduced our Institute’s research priorities. This post outlines the major types of research project grants that NIGMS supports and where to find notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs) to which you can apply.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the new web resource, Which Research Grant Is Right for Me? This interactive decision tree will be particularly useful for investigators who are new to or less familiar with NIGMS notices of funding opportunities that support research. Through a series of yes/no questions, potential applicants can identify the best potential fit to one or more of the major research project grant types we support, including R35, R16, R15, and R01.

The questions work through the eligibility criteria for the different award types. For example:

We receive many questions from prospective applicants about getting NIGMS funding for their research: How do I know if my research fits within the scientific interests of NIGMS? What grant programs does the Institute offer? What are NIGMS' research priorities? Whom do I talk to—and when—to learn more?

This post will help to answer those questions. And because it’s the first post in a new series from our staff, think of it as a primer for your initial interactions with us.

UPDATE: The video from this webinar is available.

NIGMS supports basic research that increases our understanding of biological processes and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. NIGMS also supports research in specific clinical areas that affect multiple organ systems: anesthesiology and peri-operative pain; clinical pharmacology common to multiple drugs and treatments; and injury, critical illness, sepsis, and wound healing. We have five scientific divisions that support research, research training, and capacity building in a range of scientific fields.

As you may be aware, NIH will implement a new policy to promote the sharing of scientific data. This policy, which will require NIH grantees to submit a data management and sharing (DMS) plan as part of a grant application, goes into effect January 25. NIGMS believes that, in general, most of our grantees already meet the new NIH policy requirements, which we explain more fully in a list of FAQs.

Sharing scientific data accelerates biomedical research discovery, in part, by enabling validation of research results, providing accessibility to high-value datasets, and promoting data reuse for future research studies. Submitting a DMS plan as part of a grant application will formalize what NIGMS principal investigators already do and make explicit their plans for sharing data with the larger scientific community. Most DMS plans are expected to be concise (no more than two pages), and a sample plan is available, with a final fillable version available soon.

NIH has developed a website with details about the policy, guidance, and implementation. If you have questions about this new requirement after reviewing our FAQs, please contact NIH DMS policy staff or your NIGMS program officer.

Grants.gov is migrating to the cloud, resulting in a period of planned downtime for the website. Though necessary, the downtime will significantly impact preparing and submitting your grant applications to NIH. The Grants.gov system outage will begin on Friday, September 23, at 12:01 a.m. ET, and end on Thursday, September 29, at 11:59 p.m. ET.

In response to this system outage, application due dates falling between September 22 and September 30 will move to October 3. You can learn more about these deadlines in NOT-OD-22-190, as well as on the Grants.gov community blog and the NIH Office of Extramural Research website.

UPDATE: Learn more about noncompliance and withdrawal of applications by reading our Frequently Asked Questions.

We frequently come across compliance issues when reviewing NIGMS T32, T34, and K12 institutional training grant applications. We’re providing information to help applicants avoid the consequences of not following the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) instructions, which could result in the withdrawal of applications without review:

At the September meeting of our National Advisory Council, I presented a concept clearance for our next step in response to the recommendations of the working group on sepsis. The videocast of the presentation is now available.

Watch the sepsis concept clearance at the September Advisory Council meeting.