NIMH Instrumentation Program (S10 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

The NIMH Instrumentation Program encourages applications from NIH funded investigators to purchase or upgrade a single commercially available instrument or to purchase a group of components to create an instrument that is not commercially available. The goal of the NIMH Instrumentation Program is to make such instruments available to either individual laboratories or core facilities that conduct mental health-related research. Examples of instruments that might be submitted under this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) include light microscopes, electron microscopes, spectrophotometers, and biomedical imagers.

Deadlines:

Letter of Intent: September 7, 2022; September 10, 2023; September 9, 2024
Application Due Date: Oct. 7, 2022; Oct. 10, 2023; Oct. 9, 2024

RFA-MH-22-155 Expiration Date October 10, 2024

More Information

Eligibility Requirements

The PD/PI should document (in the biographical sketch) technical expertise directly related to the type of requested instrument. The PD/PI does not need to have an NIH research grant or any other research support but is expected to be an expert on the requested instrument. The PD/PI may be a core director, tenured, or non-tenured faculty member of the applicant organization. The PD/PI must be affiliated with the applicant organization and must be registered on eRA Commons.

Multiple PDs/PIs are not allowed under the S10 mechanism.

There is no restriction on the number of applications an institution (as identified by a specific UEI number) can submit to the SIG and/or High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Programs each year, provided the applications request different types of equipment. However, only one application to the Basic Instrumentation Grant (BIG) Program is allowed per receipt date. Concurrent SIG, HEI or BIG applications for the same instrument (or the same type of instrument with added special accessories – for example, to meet the HEI budget requirement) are not allowed unless documentation from a high-level institutional official is provided, stating that this is not an unintended duplication, but part of a campus-wide instrumentation plan. Applicants are advised to discuss with the SIG Scientific/Research Contact (Section VII) potential duplicates before submitting two applications for the same type of instrument.

A single application requesting more than one type of instrument (for example, a mass spectrometer and a confocal microscope) is not responsive to this FOA and will not be reviewed.

Amount Description

Applications will be accepted with an award budget between $200,000 and $600,000. There is no maximum limit on the cost of the instrument, but the maximum award is $600,000. S10 awards are only for the cost of the instrument, so indirect costs cannot be requested.