The number of awards is contingent upon NIH appropriations and the submission of a sufficient number of meritorious applications. ORIP intends to fund about 20 awards, corresponding to a total of about $30 million, infiscal year 2017.
Applications will be accepted that request a single, commercially available instrument or integrated system which costs at least $600,000. There is no upper limit on the cost of the instrument, but the maximum award is $2,000,000. Since the cost of the various instruments will vary, it is anticipated that the size of the award also will vary.
Awards are made for one year only.
The High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant Program encourages applications from groups of NIH-supported investigators to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, specialized, commercially available instruments or integrated systems that cost at least $600,000. The maximum award is $2,000,000. Types of instruments supported include, but are not limited to: X-ray diffraction systems, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometers, DNA and protein sequencers, biosensors, electron and confocal microscopes, cell-sorters, and biomedical imagers.
Dates: Proposals must be submitted between April 16, 2016, and May 17, 2016.
Applicants are advised to discuss with the HEI Scientific/Research Contact any questions about appropriate types of equipment, eligibility, and Program requirements, prior to submitting an application.
The instrument should be integrated in a core facility, whenever possible.
Major User Group
A Major User group composed of three individuals who have substantial need for the instrument must be identified. Each member of this group must be a PD/PI on a distinct NIH-funded research grant or cooperative agreement award in an area of basic, translational, or clinical research. (The requirement is one award per investigator, with more awards per investigator allowed. An award given to multi-PDs/PIs is counted only once towards the fulfillment of this requirement.) PDs/PIs on NIH training or fellowship grants (e.g., T and F mechanisms) and other non-research grants are not eligible to be Major Users. Once the eligibility requirement has been met, additional users with active research awards from NIH or other sources may be added as Major or Minor Users. Investigators with funding from sources such as other Federal agencies (e.g., NSF, DoE, DoD), private foundations or academic institutions can be added as Major Users provided they are engaged in basic, translational or clinical research and can demonstrate a substantial need for the instrument once the requirement of at least three NIH-funded Major Users has been met. Major Users can be researchers from the same department or from several departments, divisions or schools at the applicant institution, or from nearby or regional institutions. In certain circumstances, as technology dictates, Major Users may come from distant institutions, but they must demonstrate the need for and regular access to the instrument.
To demonstrate the clear need for the requested instrument, the projects supported by NIH research grants should together require at least 75 percent of the Accessible User Time (AUT) – see Section Other Project Information for the definition of AUT. Major Users supported by NIH grants should together require at least 35 percent of the AUT.
The Major User group must meet the eligibility requirement at the time of submission and at a later time if/when the application is considered for funding by the HEI Program Staff.