NIH-NIDCR St. Louis Forum

Please save the date for the National Institutes of Health-National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIH-NIDCR) Forum to be held in St. Louis on August 20, 2024 (more details on location and times to follow). We anticipate options for in-person and virtual participation. This exciting event will bring together leading researchers, clinicians, and trainees to discuss the latest advancements in oral and craniofacial health research.

The forum will feature a variety of presentations and discussions, including a keynote from Director Rena D’Souza, DDS, MS, PhD, who will offer valuable insights into NIDCR’s support of oral and craniofacial research. The Research Forum will offer a unique opportunity for ATSU researchers to connect with colleagues from different disciplines to explore new avenues for collaboration.

Let’s Leverage All of Us To Learn More About Health and Disease in Diverse Populations

In a new commentary in Nature Medicine, National Institutes of Health (NIH) leadership invites the research community to take advantage of the extraordinary resources made available by NIH’s All of Us Research Program. 

Like several other population-based programs, All of Us is collecting extensive genomic and health data from large numbers of volunteers. However, the All of Us Research Program has the unique advantage of a highly diverse group of participants, half of whom are of non-European genetic ancestry. The diversity of the All of Us cohort enables discoveries to be made that would not be possible with more narrowly focused datasets. By leveraging All of Us, researchers can advance precision medicine for all populations.

NIH's commentary highlights strategic areas in which the scientific community can partner with All of Us using its cloud-based Researcher Workbench. Also, check out this news release about brand new research results from All of Us, including the identification of more than 275 million genetic variants that have never been reported before. They may inspire you to explore the All of Us data to drive new discoveries of your own.

Jack Morris (researchsupport@atsu.edu) with Research Support here at ATSU is the best resource for faculty interested in participating in All of Us.

NIH Guidance on Marking Changes in Resubmission Applications

NOT-OD-24-061 informs the applicant community that, effective May 25, 2024, this guidance replaces previous guidance on marking changes in Resubmission applications. Markups such as bracketing, indenting, highlighting, bolding, italicizing, underlining, margin lines, change in typography, font, or font color, or any other type of markup should not be used to identify changes in Resubmission applications.

Changes made to a Resubmission application should only be outlined in the Introduction attachment. The Introduction must include a summary of substantial additions, deletions, and changes to the application. It must also include a response to weaknesses raised in the Summary Statement. Unless otherwise indicated in the Table of Page Limits, the Introduction may not exceed one page.

FY 2023 By the Numbers: Extramural Grant Investments in Research

NIH shares their annual update on NIH application, award, and success rate data. NIH spent $34.9 billion of its total $47.7 billion appropriation in FY 2023 for competing and noncompeting grant awards. This is a 4.7% increase (or $1.58 billion) in spending over the previous year. NIH supported 58,951 competing and non-competing awards in FY 2023. This was an additional 583 extramural grants compared to 58,368 in FY 2022, a 1.0% increase. NIH issued grants to 2,743 academic universities, hospitals, small businesses, and other organizations throughout the U.S. and internationally. 

The success rate for new research project grants (RPGs) increased 0.6 percentage points from 20.7% in FY 2022 to 21.3% in FY 2023. NIH received 2,688 fewer RPG competing applications and made 259 fewer awards in FY 2023 compared to the previous fiscal year (54,571 applications and 11,311 awards compared to 51,883 applications and 11,052 awards), but awarded a greater percentage of RPGs. The average nominal cost per RPG rose by 2.9% in 2023 to $609,790 from $592,617 in FY 2022. Read the full article for more information.

New Enhanced Look for eRA Commons Coming Soon

Hey, Commons users! Just a heads up that several Commons modules and screens will be moving to an improved visual appearance being adopted by all eRA modules. New screens will be rolled out during the next few months into spring including the Status screen for principal investigators, Personal Profile and more. See eRA Commons: Improved Visual Appearance for a complete list.

What does that mean for you? The capabilities remain the same. However, there will be changes in the way users navigate to other modules, access action items, and export documents.

To familiarize yourself with the changes, see Basics and Navigation for eRA Modules. Also check out a short video tutorial highlighting the main changes.