Early career investigators (postdoctoral and faculty) are often seeking a mentored research experience to further develop their careers in biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research. This includes new and early stage investigators who are doing research within the NIGMS mission and don't have a major research grant. To make it easier to find the right program, we've launched a new web resource, Which NIGMS Mentored Career Development Award Is Right for Me?

NIH implemented multiple principal investigator (MPI) grants starting in 2007 to support projects led by teams of principal investigators (PIs) who have shared responsibility and are each named as a PI for the award. Although the MPI arrangement can be effective in enabling single-grant supported projects for integrated teams working on common sets of goals, it isn’t the optimal approach for many collaborative projects and can pose challenges in some circumstances. For example, if an early stage investigator (ESI) joins an MPI R01 or other MPI major research grant, there may be unintended consequences such as the following: 

UPDATE: The video and slides [PDF] for this webinar are now available.

I’m pleased to announce that the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) notice of funding opportunity for early stage investigators (ESIs) (PAR-23-145) has been reissued. MIRA funding provides support for an area of research in an ESI’s laboratory that falls within the NIGMS mission. The next application due date is October 3, 2023.

We’re hosting a webinar to discuss the key features of the ESI MIRA program and to answer your questions:

We’re pleased to share the notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) (PAR-23-145) to provide sustained support for biomedical research through our Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) (R35) program for early stage investigators (ESIs). This NOFO allows applications from ESIs proposing research within NIGMS' scientific mission.

NIGMS has granted MIRAs to ESIs since Fiscal Year (FY) 2016. We’ve analyzed and published application and funding trends for MIRAs from FY 2019 to FY 2021 and for various funding types, including MIRA, for FY 2022. Changes in this iteration of the NOFO include:

I’m pleased to announce that the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) for the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) for early stage investigators (ESIs) will be reissued in the spring of 2023. MIRA provides support for a research program in an ESI’s laboratory that falls within the NIGMS mission. For details, see NOT-GM-23-017. 

The reissued FOA will essentially be the same as the previous one, with a couple of minor changes:

We’ve issued a funding opportunity announcement (FOA) (PAR 22-180) to provide sustained support for biomedical research through our Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program. This FOA allows applications from eligible NIGMS-funded investigators and from New Investigators proposing research within the scientific mission of NIGMS. The FOA also allows renewal applications from all eligible MIRA grantees (established and ex-Early Stage Investigators). Program directors (PDs)/principal investigators (PIs) who are currently Early Stage Investigators (ESIs) should apply through the ESI MIRA FOA and not to this announcement.

We recently reissued the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) for the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) for Early Stage Investigators (PAR-20-117). The first application due date is October 2, 2020.

We’re hosting a webinar to discuss this FOA and to answer your questions about the program on Thursday, August 6, 1:00-2:30 p.m. ET. To access the webinar, visit the WebEx meeting page (link no longer available). We plan to post the archived webinar and slides on the MIRA webpage after the event.

Ninety percent of the applications to our Maximizing Investigators' Research Award for Early Stage Investigators (known as the ESI MIRA program) that were submitted in October are about to undergo peer review. The remaining 10% were administratively withdrawn, mostly because the research proposed fell outside the NIGMS mission. This is comparable to the proportion that was withdrawn over the past 3 years.

Withdrawn applications represent a lot of wasted time and effort on the part of affected PIs and are the source of considerable frustration. So what can you do to minimize the chance of this happening to your ESI MIRA application in the future?

We’ve issued a funding opportunity announcement (FOA) PAR-19-367 to maintain continued support of our Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program. Under this new FOA, investigators with an active NIGMS R35 grant (both early-stage and established investigator MIRA) can submit renewal MIRA applications, and investigators with a single-PI R01-equivalent NIGMS award (DP1, DP2, R01, R37, SC1) can submit new MIRA applications.

As we work on issuing a new funding opportunity announcement (FOA) for the established investigator (EI) MIRA program, we thought it would be useful to address a few common questions we’ve been hearing. The new FOA will allow applications from NIGMS grantees who have one or more single-Principal Investigator (PI) R01-equivalent awards, just as the current FOA does. In addition, the new FOA (to be published by Fall 2019) will allow renewal applications from PIs who already have MIRA grants.