March 6, 2017
While NIH policies focus on early stage investigators, we also recognize that it is in our interest to make sure that we continue to support outstanding scientists at all stages of their career. Many of us have heard mid-career investigators express concerns about difficulties staying funded. In a 2016 blog post we looked at data to answer the frequent question, “Is it more difficult to renew a grant than to get one in the first place?” We found that new investigators going for their first competitive renewal had lower success rates than established investigators. More recently, my colleagues in OER’s Statistical Analysis and Reporting Branch and the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute approached the concerns of mid-career investigators in a different way – by looking at the association of funding with age. Today I’d like to highlight some of the NIH-wide findings, recently published in the PLOS ONE article, “Shifting Demographics among Research Project Grant Awardees at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)”. Using age as a proxy for career stage, the authors analyzed funding outcomes for three groups ….
December 16, 2016
Yesterday, NIH published a guide notice establishing stipend levels for postdoctoral trainees and fellows supported by Kirschstein-NRSA awards in fiscal year (FY) 2017. The 2017 increase of NRSA postdoctoral stipend levels reflects ….
November 23, 2016
We’d like to call your attention to a recently released NIH Guide notice that provides awardees with additional guidance related to the increases in postdoctoral NRSA stipends for postdoctoral researchers with 0,1 and 2 years of experience that go into effect December 1, 2016. As you may recall from earlier blog posts, under the Department of Labor’s revisions to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), as of December 1, 2016, US salaried, full-time professional workers will be entitled to overtime pay if they are paid below the new FLSA defined threshold. As described in an op-ed by NIH Director Francis Collins and Department of Labor Director Thomas Perez, “Fair Pay for Postdocs: Why We Support New Federal Overtime Rules,” NIH will increase postdoctoral NRSA stipends to start at levels above the new FLSA threshold, recognizing the contributions that postdoctoral researchers make to the NIH mission and that postdoctoral research activities – like most biomedical research careers – often exceed forty hours a week and do not neatly fall into hourly shifts. …..
May 18, 2016
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is the law that contains overtime pay provisions for employees across the United States, entitling all US workers to overtime pay unless they are exempted because they are paid on fixed, preset salaries; are engaged in executive, administrative, or professional duties; and are paid at least $23,660 per year. Today, a historic change to this act has occurred – under the new rule, the overtime pay threshold will be increased to $47,476, effective December 1, 2016. ….
December 2, 2015
Monday, in a blog post on the Feedback Loop, colleagues at NIGMS outline the recent history of NIH’s efforts that impact graduate student training, as well as recent discussions beyond NIH on how to modernize and revitalize graduation education and training.
These conversations raise an important question, “Is NIH’s support of graduate-level training keeping pace with how we do science?”. …..
November 30, 2015
In 2014, the NIH announced that it was going to distribute the NIH postdoctoral benefits survey to collect information on benefits available to postdoctoral researchers at different institutions. The survey was launched in response to a report on the biomedical research workforce from an Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) working group. ….
November 24, 2015
As part of a wider initiative to shape the future direction of research training for the biomedical workforce as a whole, we at the NIH are actively pursuing ways to examine the physician-scientist workforce and to optimize training for clinicians seeking research careers. Physician-scientists face some challenges and career transition pathways unique to being in a clinical career track, hence the need for a specific focus on this workforce.
July 31, 2015
I am pleased and excited to announce that in August, Dr. Kay Lund will join NIH as the inaugural director of the NIH Division of Biomedical Research Workforce Programs. As you might recall, the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director‘s Biomedical Workforce Working Group recommended that NIH recruit a leader and establish a dedicated office to guide NIH’s training and development of a well-prepared biomedical workforce….
March 25, 2015
There has been a lot of discussion in the community about the age of NIH supported researchers. As I’ve mentioned here on the blog before, we continue to examine how best to sustain the biomedical workforce. There are many ways to characterize our workforce or the biomedical research ecosystem, and many factors that contribute to successfully obtaining an NIH award. Since the topic of age is a popular one right now, I’d like to share with you some recent analyses that my office looked into regarding the distribution of research funding by age group.
We examined total and direct costs of NIH research project grants from 1998 through the last full fiscal year, and graphed the distribution of research funding by age group. The full data is posted on RePORT, and since the patterns are similar, I’ll post the graph of direct cost funding distribution below: ….
February 3, 2015
From enhancing diversity to supporting training in emerging fields, over the past three years NIH has continued to examine the needs of the biomedical workforce and create initiatives that will sustain the amazing work being performed by you, the extramural research community. Our efforts place a lot of focus on trainees and early stage investigators through policy changes and new programs, but there are two sides to every equation. We have many well-established research programs run by senior investigators. We want to explore how ….
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