Into the Numbers

At the NIGMS Feedback Loop, Acting Director Judith Greenberg shares her institute's funding plan for fiscal year 2012. She notes that as the National Institutes of Health has yet to be appropriated funds for 2012, this plan assumes NIGMS would have a funding level similar to that for 2011. Of the estimated $2.034 billion budget, 67 percent would support Research Project Grants, and 76 percent of that amount would go to noncompeting grants while 23 percent would be for competing grants and 1 percent for supplements, Greenberg says. She then breaks down the RPG budget further: 93 percent would fund investigator-initiated research and 7 percent would pay for grants submitted in response to requests for applications. Finally, she adds that "the portion of the competing RPG budget spent on investigator-initiated research during the last 8 years has varied between 87% and 94%, further indicating that NIGMS commits a relatively small amount of RPG funds to grants that are not investigator-initiated."