Talk Overview
Numerous challenges, such as a decrease in grant funding, face the US biomedical workforce and threaten to undermine the progress of the research enterprise. Dr. Ronald Germain (NIAID), a thought leader in the scientific community, links many of these issues on how the NIH grant funding system works. He proposed, both in a publication and an iBiology talk, to replace the R01 grant system with one that supports individuals, not projects, and holds the recipients accountable through retrospective review. He argues that a system like this “would permit creative, unfettered research by new investigators, better tie ongoing research contributions to continued grant funding, and help match the number of investigators seeking support with available funds.” His proposal is influenced by the successful funding programs of the NIH Intramural Program and the HHMI.
On October 20, 2015, iBiology hosted a live Google Hangout with Dr. Ronald Germain to talk about the need to reform the NIH R01 grant system and to dive deeper into his “person-not-project”-based proposal. The event was moderated by Dr. Ron Vale, a UCSF professor, HHMI investigator, and founder of iBiology. Watch the archived Hangout above.
Speaker Bio
Ron Vale
Professor of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology; Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
University of California, San Francisco Continue Reading
Ron Germain
Dr. Ronald Germain is chief of the Lymphocyte Biology Section and Laboratory of Systems Biology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH. His research contributes to the understanding of how the immune system functions from the molecular level up to the level of the organism. He’s helped elucidate the expression, structure, and… Continue Reading
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