FR AB - Science Reference

FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SOCIETIES FOR EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
respondents is very similar to that of all NIH grantees.
The over-representation of university-based researchers
in the survey sample may reflect the fact that this group
was selected only from the population of R01 grantees
rather than recipients of all types of research project
grants.
The median direct cost laboratory budget for the survey
respondents is $300K. By taking the median direct
cost of all competing R01 awards in FY 1999, which
was $171K and multiplying it by 1.43 (the average
number of R01s per laboratory) and dividing it by 77%
(the average percentage of the direct cost budget from
NIH), one can obtain an estimate of the direct cost laboratory
budget for NIH R01-supported investigators.
This amount is $319K, which compares reasonably
with the $300K amount from the survey.
It was also possible to compare the survey respondents
and non-respondents in terms of the length of
time a particular R01 award was retained. Each NIH
grant is assigned a unique identification number, part
of which consists of a “year of support” field. This field
indicates the number of continuous years of support
for that grant. For survey respondents, the distribution
was 54% for R01s held for less than five years, 25% for
R01s held between five and ten years, and 21% for
R01s held for greater than 10 years. For the nonrespondents,
these percentages were 54%, 28% and
18%, respectively. [If an investigator had multiple R01
grants, only the longest-held grant was used in the
analysis.]
7. Specialized equipment refers to instruments found in
limited numbers in a department or entire institution.
Examples are biosensors, cell sorters, mass spectrometers,
NMR instruments, confocal microscopes, biomedical
imagers, DNA sequencers, X-ray diffractometers,
analytical ultracentrifuges, microarray instruments and
bioinfomatics hardware/software.
176 JOURNAL OF BIOMOLECULAR TECHNIQUES, VOLUME 11, ISSUE 4, DECEMBER 2000
8. Routine use equipment is common research equipment
items typically found in most labs and/or departmental
common use rooms. Examples are tissue culture hoods
and incubators, preparative centrifuges, UV spectrophotometers,
scintillation counters and freezers.
9. From the Evaluation of NIH Shared Instrumentation
Grant Program: Reports From Users (NCRR), the average
number of major users per instrument is 5.2. A
major user is defined as a Public Health Service (PHS)supported
investigator who accounts for a significant
fraction of instrument use time. The average number of
minor users per instrument is 9.0. A minor user may be
either PHS-sponsored investigators whose individual
share does not constitute a significant percentage of
average use time, or investigators whose instrument
research is not supported by PHS. Because most of the
instruments costing $100,000 or more will likely be
shared, the committee assumed that the number of
users should be a minimum of five and a maximum of
fourteen (five major users and nine minor users). However,
it is unlikely that all of the minor users would be
R01 recipients. Therefore, the committee estimated ten
users (five major users and five minor users) for instruments
costing $100,000 or more. For instruments costing
less than $100,00, some instruments would be
shared and some would not be, so the committee estimated
that the average number of users is approximately
five.
10. Since funding for high-end equipment (instrumentation
costing more than $100,000) is extremely limited,
FASEB recommends that NIH provide funding for the
total estimated need of the research community: $150
million.
11. For equipment costing less than $100,000 (for which
there are other sources of support) FASEB recommends
that NIH fund two-thirds of the $75 million estimated
need: $50 million.