NIH Directors Pioneer Award Program

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NIH Directors Pioneer Award Program

• Jeremy M. Berg
• National Institute of General Medical Sciences
• May 22, 2006

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Clinical Enterprise
New Pathways to Discovery
Research Teams of the Future
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NIH Directors Pioneer Award

• Intended to support individuals as opposed to
  projects
• Significantly simplified nomination (application)
  process
• Five-page essay
• 3 letters of reference
• Single representative work

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NIH Directors Pioneer Award 2004

• Multi-tiered review process
• Nominations review by NIH staff, outside
  reviewers
• Approximately 1/3 of nominees invited to apply
• Applications reviewed by outside reviewers
• 20 finalists interviewed at NIH for final review
• Final review by Advisory Committee to Director,
  NIH
• Nine awards made in September 2004
• gt1300 nominations
• Each award 500K direct costs per year for five
  years
• gt51 commitment of effort required

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2004 NIH Directors Pioneer Awardees
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NIH Directors Pioneer Award 2005

• Program re-announced for FY2005 with minor
  modifications
• Self-nominations only
• Women, underrepresented minorities, and
  individuals in early to mid-career especially
  encouraged to apply
• Direct discussion of why NDPA award is
  appropriate requested in essay
• More than 800 nominations received

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NIH Directors Pioneer Award 2005

• External review of nominations (Yes or No)
• External review of applications
• 3 reviewers, 2 from designated field, 1 from
  outside
• Review criteria
• Innovation
• Motivation
• Potential impact
• Scoring
• Each category scored 1-5 (5 best)
• Overall score (1-5)
• Each reviewer listed Top 4 applicants
• 20 finalists interviewed

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NIH Directors Pioneer Award 2005
Correlation Between Top 20 in Each Category
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2005 NIH Directors Pioneer Awardees
http//nihroadmap.nih.gov/pioneer/Recipients05.asp
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2005 NIH Directors Pioneer Awardees
Pehr Harbury, Ph.D.
Harbury plans to use his Pioneer Award to develop
an approach called DNA Display as a means of
engineering drugs significantly more quickly and
cheaply than is currently possible.
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2005 NIH Directors Pioneer Awardees
Erich Jarvis, Ph.D.
Jarvis plans to use his Pioneer Award to test a
hypothesis about the genetic machinery underlying
vocal learning that could pave the way for
repairing vocalization disorders in humans.
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2005 NIH Directors Pioneer Awardees
Vicki Chandler, Ph.D.
Chandler plans to use her Pioneer Award to search
in humans for mechanisms similar to those she has
characterized in plants, as these mechanisms
could be associated with certain human diseases.
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NIH Directors Pioneer Award 2006

• Program re-announced for FY2006 with minor
  modifications
• Applications rather than nominations used
• 3 letters of recommendation and single
  representative work submitted at time of
  application
• More than 450 applications received
• Single round of outside review performed
• Interviews to be scheduled for August 2006

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NIH Directors Pioneer Award

• Short application concentrating on investigator,
  problem selected, evidence for innovation
• Review conducted without careful matching of
  expertise of reviewers and applicants
• Interviews provide evaluation of credibility that
  allows risk taking during review

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nihroadmap.nih.gov