FR AB - Science Reference

shared research equipment. When asked if current
funding for the SIG Program was adequate, 42 percent
of the respondents responded that it was not.
A smaller fraction of the respondents (26 percent)
felt that the current level of support for the SIG budget
was adequate. Survey respondents expressed
even more dissatisfaction over the funds available for
shared equipment not covered by the SIG program
(instruments costing less than $100,000 involving multiple
users). In this case, 55 percent of the respondents
did not believe that “the level of funding support
from NIH was adequate” and only 17 percent of
the researchers supported this statement. Consistent
with these findings, the survey respondents placed a
high priority on having NIH increase the level of funding
for research equipment. A majority of them (65
percent) indicated that increased funding for equipment
and equipment-related categories should be one
of the top priorities in an expanding federal research
budget. In contrast, only 13 percent of the respondents
disagreed with this position. Consistent with this perception,
survey respondents also placed a very high
priority on increased funding for new specialized research
equipment within their own research laboratories.
For shared equipment and resources, respondents
indicated that NIH should invest more funds in
establishing new resource facilities employing emerging
technologies.
The overall perception of the survey respondents
was that equipment and equipment-related needs
were unmet and represented a serious problem in the
extramural research community. Data from the survey
indicates that NIH should invest additional funds to
meet these needs.
RECOMMENDATIONS
• FASEB recommends that NIH increase its level of
support for shared equipment costing $100,000 or
more to $150 million per year for FY2001 with
appropriate incremental increases thereafter.
• FASEB recommends that NIH increase its level of
support within the context of existing grant mechanisms
such as R01s and P01s for equipment costing
less than $100,000 to $50 million per year for
FY2001.
These amounts actually reflect the minimum
funding requirements that exist in the biomedical
research community because the survey results were
extrapolated to only the NIH R01-population and do
not capture the needs of investigators supported by
other NIH funding mechanisms or non-NIH funded
scientists.
INSTRUMENTATION NEEDS
FASEB also proposes that an expanded SIG program
be improved by:
• Decreasing the time from receipt of application to
award from the current approximately one year to
six months.
• Increasing the number of review cycles from one
to three per year.
• Raising the caps to at least $1 million to authorize
the purchase of more expensive equipment and
to compensate for inflation pressures.
• Allowing applicants to bundle two or more unrelated
pieces of equipment that together cost more
than $100,000.
• Providing support for a maintenance agreement
for up to three years if included in the instrument
purchase price.
• Permitting the establishment of facilities using
components rather than strictly commercial instruments.
• Using standing rather than ad hoc study sections
for reviewing SIG grant proposals so that consistency
in the review process is maintained.
• Selecting peer reviewers with adequate expertise
in emerging technologies.
THE SHARED INSTRUMENTATION
GRANTS PROGRAM
For almost twenty years, the Shared Instrumentation
Grant (SIG) program has allowed scientists to obtain
equipment and equipment-related items that would
be too expensive to purchase with research project
grant funding. In existence since 1982 and administered
by the National Center for Research Resources
(NCRR), the SIG program has provided researchers
with grants ranging between $100,000 to $500,000 to
procure state-of-the-art instrumentation. Instruments
purchased with SIG funds must be shared by at least
three National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported
researchers.
The budgets of the SIG Program have not kept
pace with the expansion of biomedical research in the
1990s. SIG awards totaled $32.5 million per year in
1990 and 1991, with no appreciable growth in program
funds since 1985. In 1992, SIG funds were reduced
to $8.8 million and did not rise above $10 million
per year until 1996. Only in 1999 did the SIG
budget return to the 1990 level. But the 1999 budget
for SIG grants ($34.2)—after adjusting for inflation—
had less purchasing power than the 1990 budget. In
2000, the SIG budget rose to $43.1 million. But when
expressed in 1990 dollars ($30.3 million), it is still
below the purchasing power of the program in 1990.
JOURNAL OF BIOMOLECULAR TECHNIQUES, VOLUME 11, ISSUE 4, DECEMBER 2000 167