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NIH Director’s Pioneer Award Program Jeremy M. Berg National Institute of General Medical Sciences May 22, 2006

NIGMS Re-engineering the Clinical Research Enterprise Public-Private Partnerships High-risk Research Interdisciplinary Research Nanomedicine Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Structural Biology Building Blocks, Biological Pathways and Networks Molecular Libraries and Imaging ImplementationGroups New Pathways to Discovery Research Teams of the Future Clinical Enterprise

NIGMS NIH Director’s Pioneer Award Intended to support individuals as opposed to projects Significantly simplified nomination (application) process  Five-page essay  3 letters of reference  Single representative work

NIGMS NIH Director’s Pioneer Award 2004 Multi-tiered review process  Nominations review by NIH staff, outside reviewers Approximately 1/3 of nominees invited to apply  Applications reviewed by outside reviewers  ~20 finalists interviewed at NIH for final review  Final review by Advisory Committee to Director, NIH Nine awards made in September 2004  >1300 nominations  Each award $500K direct costs per year for five years  >51% commitment of effort required

NIGMS 2004 NIH Director’s Pioneer Awardees

NIGMS NIH Director’s Pioneer Award 2005 Program re-announced for FY2005 with minor modifications  Self-nominations only  Women, underrepresented minorities, and individuals in early to mid-career especially encouraged to apply  Direct discussion of why NDPA award is appropriate requested in essay More than 800 nominations received

NIGMS NIH Director’s Pioneer Award 2005 External review of nominations (Yes or No) External review of applications  3 reviewers, 2 from designated field, 1 from outside Review criteria  Innovation  Motivation  Potential impact Scoring  Each category scored 1-5 (5 best)  Overall score (1-5)  Each reviewer listed Top 4 applicants 20 finalists interviewed

NIGMS

NIH Director’s Pioneer Award 2005 Correlation Between Top 20 in Each Category

NIGMS 2005 NIH Director’s Pioneer Awardees

NIGMS 2005 NIH Director’s Pioneer Awardees Pehr Harbury, Ph.D. Harbury plans to use his Pioneer Award to develop an approach called DNA Display as a means of engineering drugs significantly more quickly and cheaply than is currently possible.

NIGMS 2005 NIH Director’s Pioneer Awardees Erich Jarvis, Ph.D. Jarvis plans to use his Pioneer Award to test a hypothesis about the genetic machinery underlying vocal learning that could pave the way for repairing vocalization disorders in humans.

NIGMS 2005 NIH Director’s Pioneer Awardees Vicki Chandler, Ph.D. Chandler plans to use her Pioneer Award to search in humans for mechanisms similar to those she has characterized in plants, as these mechanisms could be associated with certain human diseases.

NIGMS NIH Director’s Pioneer Award 2006 Program re-announced for FY2006 with minor modifications  Applications rather than nominations used  3 letters of recommendation and single representative work submitted at time of application More than 450 applications received Single round of outside review performed Interviews to be scheduled for August 2006

NIGMS NIH Director’s Pioneer Award Short application concentrating on investigator, problem selected, evidence for innovation Review conducted without careful matching of expertise of reviewers and applicants Interviews provide evaluation of credibility that allows risk taking during review

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