Give NIH Your Feedback on Improving Diversity in its SBIR/STTR Programs

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NIH is committed to improving the participation of all people in our small business research SBIR & STTR programs. One of the goals of the SBIR and STTR programs is to encourage participation in innovation and entrepreneurship by socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses (SDB) and women-owned small businesses (WOSB), groups who historically have been underrepresented in both the SBIR/STTR applicant and awardee pools, and have slightly lower success rates than applicants across the board.

As part of our ongoing efforts to increase SBIR/STTR participation among women and minority applicants, NIH has issued a request for information (NOT-OD-17-008) to better understand the barriers that prevent SBIR/STTR awardees from participating in the existing diversity supplement program, and to inform its consideration of developing a new diversity supplement program specific to the SBIR/STTR programs. All responses are due by December 16, 2016, and should be submitted as described in the announcement.

One comment

  1. I am not sure if there is any conscious or unconscious bias coming out of the peer review process because of the race. Can PI and team’s information such as names be excluded from reviewers? I understand that the qualifications of the PI and team are important, but just curious about the equality of the review process for PIs from different ethnical groups. I read an email yesterday from NIH. It compared the success rates for PIs from different ethic groups. From the article, there is apparently a big difference. I thus suggest this to be studied further and a truly blind review should be implemented.

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