NIH’s electronic appointment system – xTrain – has now expanded to accept appointments to NIH institutional career development awards (K12s and KL2s) and National Library of Medicine (NLM) research training grants (T15s). By using xTrain, program directors and administrators for these grants can now forgo paper appointment forms and appoint students and postdoctorates to NLM training grants and scholars to NIH career development awards electronically.

The NIH Guidelines on Human Stem Cell Research establish policy and procedures under which the NIH will fund human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research and create a new NIH Registry of eligible hESC lines that comply with the standards described in the Guidelines. A web-based form will be used for the purpose of submitting information about hESC lines to the NIH, along with assurances and supporting documentation of compliance with the NIH Guidelines.

The new PHS Noncompeting Continuation Progress Report, also known as the PHS 2590, implements several new policy changes and is now available for use. A grace period to November 1, 2009 is permitted for eSNAPs due September 15, 2009 to accommodate the changes.

Academic Research Enhancement Awards (AREAs) support biomedical research projects at health professional schools and colleges and universities that have not traditionally been major recipients of NIH research funding. For more information on how to help your students gain valuable research experience read on…

On July 8, President Obama nominated Dr. Francis S. Collins to be Director of the National Institutes fo Health. Dr. Collins, a physician and geneticist, has served as the Director of the National Genome Research Institute, where he led the Human Genome Project to completion. Congress is now considering his nomination.

All awardees of ARRA funds, including NIH recipients, are required to file a quarterly report for each project to provide information on the numbers of jobs created or retained, how much of the project is complete, etc. Within a month of submission, these reports will be made available to the public on the Recovery.gov Web site, achieving an unprecedented level of transparency into the ways Federal funds are spent. For more information on what you can do to prepare and how we can help read on…

The National Institutes of Health is grateful for the outstanding services provided by NIH peer reviewers and wishes to minimize disincentives that such service may incur on reviewers’ research pursuits. Therefore, appointed members of chartered standing NIH study sections, NIH Boards of Scientific Counselors, NIH Advisory Boards or Councils, and the NIH Peer Review Advisory Committee may now submit R01, R21, and R34 applications according to alternate or “continuous” submission and review procedures.

Review and award of applications which propose the use of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) were delayed pending the issuance of the NIH Guidelines on Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research. Now that the Guidelines have been issued, review and award for those applications will take place as follows…

In mid July, the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) and the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) held a workshop to discuss strategies for maximizing core facility use and efficiency and to identify common problems encountered in managing facilities. In today’s challenging economy, core facilities can help extramural researchers achieve more through the cost-efficient sharing of expensive “core” resources–cutting edge tools that are otherwise difficult to find or afford.

Implementation of many of the Enhancements to Peer Review began with the May 2009 review meetings, and applicants are receiving summary statements with new features, such as scores determined under the new system. To understand your summary statement, read on…