Biophysical Society Newsletter | August 2017

4

2017

BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

AUGUST

Public Affairs

to successful research programs in large labs, and whether the analysis of productivity on which the plan was based was focused on the correct metrics. NIH has indicated that it will be tracking the impact of funding decisions for the targeted group to ensure that the program is implemented cor- rectly and results in increased funding rates. NIH is also encouraging the development and testing of metrics that can be used to assess the impact of NIH grant support on scientific progress. The NGRI website is https://grants.nih.gov/ngri. htm. Supreme Court Allows Limited Version of President’s Travel Ban On June 26, the US Supreme Court ruled that a limited version of President Donald Trump’s travel ban could go into effect. The court will hear argu- ments in the case in October. In the meantime, the ruling bars citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from travelling to the United States unless they have a “bona fide” connection with a person or entity in the country. This could be an offer of admission to a university for a student or a job offer from a company or university. The offer must be formal and documented. It appears that this order would not allow those attending meetings or giving an invited lecture to enter the country. The Biophysical Society will continue to monitor the situation and asks those affected by the ban to let us know by filling out the survey at http:// www.biophysics.org/Policy/AdvocacyAction/. NAS Reports ARPA-E Program Showing Success On June 13, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) released An

New NIH Program Offers Boost to Early and Mid-career Investigators In a surprising development, one month after an- nouncing a plan to limit funding to the equivalent of three RO1s based on a new index, the GSI, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it was scrapping that plan. At the NIH's Advisory Committee to the Director meeting in June, NIH Deputy Director Larry Tabak an- nounced a new program, the Next Generation Researchers Initiative (NGRI). Through this pro- gram, NIH will target three types of investigators: investigators seeking their first award, mid-career investigators at risk of losing all funding, and mid-career scientists seeking a second grant that would stabilize their careers. Mid-career investiga- tors are defined as those who have been an NIH principle investigator for less than 10 years. For this targeted group, NIH seeks to provide fund- ing to those whose proposals score in the top 25 percent but are below the funding cut-off score. Currently, NIH funds, on average, grants that are in the top 20 percent only. NIH plans to put $210 million towards the program in FY 2017, and estimates it will take five years to reach a steady state in redistributing awards to this targeted group of investigators. The goal is build up a fund of $1.1 billion for NGRI. The money will come from freeing up funds through funding decisions and emphasizing programs such as the National Institute of General Medicine Sciences' Maximizing Investigators’ Re- search Award (MIRA) and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Dis- eases' Supplements to Advance Research (STAR) from Projects to Programs. The program, which went into effect in June, replaces a plan to cap investigator support at the equivalent of three grants in order to redistribute funding. That plan, announced in May, received pushback from the community on what the limit would do to collaborations, the cut off of funding