NIH Announced  81 awards – 10 Pioneer awards, 51 New Innovator awards, and 20 Transformative Research awards – with total funding of approximately $155 million in 2012. These High Risk-High Reward program awards are given to allow talented investigators to…

Following up on recommendations from the Finch Report, the UK government will spread￡10 million among 30 institutions receiving funding through the Research Councils and UK higher education funding councils to assist those institutions in transitioning to the open access funding…

The Golden Goose Awards are intended to recognize investigators who have pursued what might have appeared at the time to be research topics of questionable value but have yielded valuable results. The name for the awards – Golden Goose –…

Ironic, yes, but, apparently, quite true. “Big Data” research is all the rage currently, as evidenced by announcement by the White House in March 2012 of $200 million in funding for big data research and development. The National Library of…

The Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR) is a standard federal form for progress reporting on Federally-funded research and related activities. All federal agencies sponsoring research awards has or is transitioning to the RPPR for interim progress reporting. While the RPPR…

A three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals in Washington ruled today that President Obama, in his March 9, 2009 Executive Order and subsequent guidance issued by NIH, correctly interpreted the 1996 Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which bars use of…

NIH published guidelines and procedures (and also Grants.gov packages) for submitting Successor-in-Interest (Type 6) and Change of Grantee Institution (Type 7) applications electronically.     •    Notice of Pilot for Processing Post-Award Changes in Grantee Organizational Status: Successor-in-Interest (NOT-OD-12-133)    •    Notice…

In a recent Notice (NOT-OD-12-139), NIH published changes “in payment method, policies, and processes for awards to foreign institutions made on or after October 1, 2012” and also changes to FFR requirements for foreign institutions. Note that these changes do…

On August 20th, NIH published NOT-OD-12-140, which announces a new Special Council Review policy as a step toward more effectively managing extramural research support. A key fact behind the perceived need for this new policy is that NIH support from…

Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) are offered by many US employers as part of their health care benefit plans. The Treasury Department and IRS in a recent notice indicated that they were considering modifying the use it or lose it rule.…