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The latest discoveries in Grantomics
The long term goal of Grantome is to compile data from different scientific funding organizations from around the world. At this point at the kick off of Grantome, our database incorporates data from the National Institutes of Health, which is the largest source of medical research funding in the world. In this series of blogs, we have analyzed data for the R01 grant, which is the most common investigator-initiated research grant that is sponsored by NIH.
The postdoctoral training period is nearly essential for all research scientists who aspire to lead a research laboratory in a university or non-profit research center. To characterize the transition of scientists from postdoc to established PI, we previously conducted an analysis of how many postdocs with a NIH-sponsored F32 fellowship went on to become PIs of a R-esearch grant. In 2006, NIH int...
Jun 21, 2014
Previously, we calculated the fraction of the R01 grant pool that each institution has obtained in 2013, and how this fraction has changed over time. We now wanted to perform a complementary analysis, determining institutional variability in the length of time that individual PIs are able to maintain NIH grant funding. This analysis would be of interest to university administrators who want to rec...
Jun 7, 2014
In our database, for any grant we report "Related Projects" that are renewals of ongoing projects from individual investigators. We wanted to improve this by identifying "Related Projects" more generally in which we group different grants based on the text in the abstract. We analyzed the similarities of 2013 NIH grant abstracts with lengths of at least 100 words (disregarding the public health r...
May 24, 2014
A dream of every research scientist is to run their own independent laboratory, where they will be able to explore their ideas, educate future scientists and contribute to the university's service. The Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) (Parent F32) provides the financial support for the training of postdocs who "have the potential to develop into independent investigators...
May 1, 2014
In the previous set of posts, we analyzed the relative success of institutions at obtaining R01 research grants and the impact of geographic distribution. In particular we calculated the net change in the fraction of total R01 grants between 2000 and 2013. Even though many people believe that the Boston area is the future of scientific research, we concluded that California is the place to watch f...
Apr 12, 2014
Recent data reported by the NIH suggests that the number of PIs that are funded by R01 and R01-equivalent grants has been nearly constant for many years. Yet from the perspective of a PI who is down in the trenches fighting for funding, people seem to be losing their grants left and right, with well-established and historically successful investigators sending in multiple grant applications at eve...
Apr 1, 2014
As funding levels continue to tighten and success rates for NIH grants drop, a key question is: how many principal investigators (PIs) are these grants supporting, and how has it changed over time? Recently there was a ScienceInsider article on this topic, which showed that the number of PIs that are funded by R01 and R01-equivalent grants has dropped by ~1000 between 2012 and 2013. This is a muc...
Mar 17, 2014
The hot, most fundable research areas come and go over time, as with many fads. For example, research dollars that are devoted to develop a particular technology or method will grow rapidly after it is initially discovered, eventually stagnate as its potential is realized, and decline as it is replaced by better technologies. Staying on top of the latest research trends is critical for securing re...
Mar 4, 2014
Does geographic location confer competitive advantage in the R01 rat race? Symbiotic relationships often develop between geographically clustered firms with related goals and interests, and this results in enhanced productivity and output for each. It is well known for medical scientific research that the Boston and San Francisco areas are each home to some of the most prolific universities and...
Feb 17, 2014
The gap between the rich and the poor is widening in the general population. Similarly, we wanted to determine if the richest R01-funded institutions have the fastest and most favorable rates of expansion. For each institution we calculated what fraction it obtained of the total number of R01 grants that were awarded in 2013, as well as the average rate of change in that fraction per year. The...
Feb 9, 2014
These days it seems that every institution is losing grant money. Nonetheless, some institutions are becoming increasingly competitive as they secure ever-larger percentages of the R01 grant pool over time. For the 50 institutions with the largest fraction of the active R01 grants in 2013, identified in our previous blog post, we calculated how this fraction has changed over every year from 19...
Feb 2, 2014
The R01 is of indisputable importance to supporting medical research. Statistics from the NIH data book report that $14.9 billion dollars were awarded to R01 type research project grants in 2013. R01 grants support virtually all costs associated with medically relevant research projects that are conducted over a 3-5 year timeframe. For many competitive research laboratories, R01 grants, with an...
Jan 26, 2014
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