Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

The National Institutes of Health has granted $67.4 million in funding for trailblazing research that could reap great benefits but which are not guaranteeing immediate results, including genomics and proteomics studies, NIH said Monday. The Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration (EUREKA) program grants $200,000 per year for up to four years for researchers that test unconventional ideas or "tackle major methodological or technical challenges," according to NIH. Of the 56 grants, 10 researchers will receive a total of $10.6 million for two-year awards through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. "EUREKA awards reflect NIH's continued commitment to funding transformative research, even if it carries more than the usual degree of scientific risk," NIH Director Francis Collins said in a statement. "The grants seek to elicit those 'eureka moments' when scientists make major theoretical or technical advances...

The National Institutes of Health has awarded 970 stimulus grants worth more than $625 million — around 14 percent of total NIH stimulus grant funding to date — to projects that fall within the broad family of 'omics disciplines, according to a preliminary analysis of the NIH funding database conducted by GenomeWeb Daily News . As of Sept. 30, the close of the fiscal year, the National Institutes of Health had awarded a total of $5 billion in stimulus funding — nearly half of the $10 billion appropriation that NIH will disburse over two years under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 . The $5 billion figure includes both grants and contracts, however. For grants alone, NIH had awarded approximately $4.4 billion via 12,789 ARRA grants as of Oct. 7, according to the database. The 970 grants awarded to 'omics projects comprise 7.5 percent of the stimulus grants awarded so far, but the total funding awarded to these projects makes up 14 percent of NIH ARRA grant ...