June 15, 2001

NIH Announces High End Instrumentation Program

The NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts for the week of June 15 contains a program announcement to support acquisition of "high end instrumentation" (HEI). Managed by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), the HEI is an entirely separate program designed to compliment NCRR's existing Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) Program. The SIG provides awards between $100,000 and $500,000 toward the purchase of instrumentation that is commercially available but too prohibitively expensive to purchase under a standard research grant. The SIG program requires new instruments to be shared by three or more investigators. While the SIG program has been highly beneficial to support the purchase of advanced microscopes, mass spectrometers, DNA sequencers, and other equipment; it has long been recognized that the $500,000 cap on SIG awards has made them inadequate for obtaining high-field nuclear magnetic resonance imagers or other top-of-the-line technology.

The separate HEI program has been created to assist institutions in obtaining such equipment, which will be of great value to new biomedical research. HEI awards will provide between $500,000 and $2 million toward the purchase of such instruments. NIH estimates that $10 million will be available for the program in FY 2002, thus funding only 5-10 awards under this announcement. Letters of intent are due to NCRR by Aug. 14, applications must be received by Sept. 14.

Information: Stephen Heinig, AAMC Division of Biomedical and Health Sciences Research, 202-828-0488.