Better at the Bench

how do i find the institute that is right for my application?

The NIH is made up of 27 institutes and centers! Here is a link to a list and description of the many NIH institutes that you can apply to. After looking through the list you may have one of two thoughts…

(A) “Wow, my proposal could go to multiple institutes.” Congratulations! Some institutes, like NCI (National Cancer Institute), give funding preference to applicants with primary sponsors that have a cancer related R01… so look into these preferences and see if you can take advantage of any of them. In addition, do a little research and look at the different funding rates of the different institutes. The success rate of one institute may be higher than the other… in which case (obviously) apply to the one that has the higher success rate (duh). Any little bit helps.

(ii) “Uh oh, my proposal doesn’t really address the mission of any institute.” Do not worry. In this case check out this handy website, NIH RePORTER (NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools). Under the query tab, type in a few key words that pertain to your research and it will present you with all the NIH funded grants that also share these key words, provide you with an abstract of the research projects that are funded, and most importantly reveal the institute that funded this research. An alternative resource is the NIH RePORTER mathchmaker tab. Using this tool, you can copy and paste in a significant portion of your specific aims or abstract into the text box and the program will provide you with either a list of similar NIH funded projects or a list of program officers that oversee this research. Yes, you may need to rethink your research a bit to make sure it falls within the mission of the institute, but this tool provides solutions regarding where you should start.

One final note: Make sure that the grant/fellowship/award you choose to apply for is offered by the institute you want to apply to. A small, but necessary detail. To make things a bit more difficult, while some F-awards and K-awards are broadly offered by by all (or nearly all) of the NIH institutes (example: the F31, F32, K99), some institutes offer more specialized awards (F99/K00). There are a lot of opportunities out there… and it’s a bit like matchmaking… you just have to do your research and make sure that the grant you want to apply for is offered by the institute you want to apply to — for easy reference you can use the institute/program matrix provided by the NIH (a screen shot is provided above).