Enabling scientists across the country with access to innovative technologies to advance biomedical research was the goal behind the more than 450 Recovery Act instrumentation grants, dispersed to groups of NIH-funded scientists in 42 states and the District of Columbia.
Awarded through the NIH National Center for Research Resources, the grants ranged from $100,000 to $8 million and will result in the purchase of new, specialized instruments, such as high-powered electron microscopes, high-resolution mass spectrometers, and supercomputers.
At the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, researchers will use a $7.8M grant to purchase components of a 10.5 Tesla whole-body magnetic resonance imaging system. The most powerful of its kind in the world, this instrument will provide scientists with unprecedented views inside the human body, including greater detail of the human brain, torso and extremities. With their $8 M award, a powerful, 950 megahertz nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer (one of just two in the country) has been purchased by researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore to study human tissues and cells in atomic detail in order to design more effective drugs and to identify new ways to treat cancer, HIV/AIDS and heart disease.
The awards required that instruments be shared. An estimated 3,500 scientists nationwide will have access to these new tools, vital for enhancing and advancing breakthrough discoveries in the prevention, treatment and cure of disease.
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