input for NIH opportunity for Shared Instrumentation Grant (S10) Program

[George McNamara]

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Dear Confocal listserv,

Several percent of NIH's SIG (S10) program has been awarded every year
for new light microscopes - confocal, multiphoton, deconvolution, high
content screening, etc. The SIG has issues an RFI for comments.

In my message to the SIG program I will recommend increasing the annual
budget (it's been flat for a long time, except for ARRA bump) to $1B per
year, plus annual inflation adjustments (increases), to get a lot more
new instruments into the reach of NIH researchers (all instruments,
current mix is pretty good). This will also provide an economic
stimulus, enabling vendors to increase R&D to produce even better
instruments.

You can check on recent S10 funded projects at

http://projectreporter.nih.gov/reporter.cfm

Project number field:  1s10

Note: default search period is current fiscal year (top right corner).

In the result table, columns are sortable. By my count there are 99
awards listed 2014 (the default search found 151). The RePORTer database
now also shows performance of older grants by amount of publication. The
data also includes the amount of money funded - often the price of the
instrument (sometimes the institution kicks in some money if over a
limit). A couple of current examples:
$599K CV7000
$399K Imaging flow cytometer ImageStreamX-markII
$395K TIRF microscope
$600K CyTOF mass cytometer
$600K CyTOF mass cytometer (nice to see consistent funding)
$456K Leica SP8 AOBS UV
$558K LEICA SP8 WWL CONFOCAL MICROSCOPE
$453K TMA Grandmaster-Panoramic 250 system
$494K INTEGRATED PHOTOACOUSTIC AND ULTRASOUND IMAGING WITH THE VEVO LAZR
$267K FLIM upgrade for Olympus FV1000 confocal microscope
$834K BROAD WAVELENGTH RANGE ZEISS 780 NLO/CONFOCAL SYSTEM FOR THE
CORNELL IMAGING CORE

the 2014 awards summed to $52,546,574 ... I note that the US government
fiscal year starts in October, so some of the "2013" entries belong with
"2014" (but not all of them!). For the past decade plus, S10 has been
funded about $66M per year. This is what I will write in should be at
$1B per year.

Sincerely,

George
p.s. for those of you in countries not eligible for S10 awards, I
encourage you to contact your funding agencies to publish online
research instrument awards, funding requests, and a way to encourage
increasing the budget for shared instruments.


    *From:* Shared Instrumentation
    *Date:* July 22, 2014 at 4:35:23 AM PDT
    ***Subject:* *Message from Shared Instrumentation Grant (S10) Program*

    Dear:

    This is to let you know that the NIH's Office of Research
    Infrastructure Programs (ORIP) has issued a Request for Information
    (RFI) to solicit comments from the community on the Shared
    Instrumentation Grant (SIG) Program (S10).  This RFI is available at
    https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-14-104.html.  It
    gives an opportunity to S10 applicants, users of awarded shared
    instruments, and others who have interest in the Program to comment
    on the Program requirements and suggest modifications to improve the
    Program effectiveness and enhance its impact on the NIH research
    community.

    Respectfully yours,

    SIG Program

    Office of Research Infrastructure Programs

    NIH/OD/DPCPSI

    6701 Democracy Boulevard

    Bethesda, MD 20892-4874

    301-435-0772 (V)
    ***

    https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-14-104.html

    Response to this RFI is voluntary. All interested parties are
    invited to respond. The responder should identify themselves in the
    following categories (the responder can choose more than one category):

    a. an S10 awardee;

    b. a user of an S10 awarded instrument;

    c. an S10 applicant but not an S10 awardee;

    d. an S10 reviewer;

    e. a manager of Core facility;

    g. an NIH-funded investigator;

    h. an employee of an instrumentation company;

    f. none of the above, a member of a wider research community.