A letter to the community from Dr. James Deye and Francis Mahoney
Fall 2002

Dear Physicist:

As attendees at the recent workshop sponsored by the APS in Boston on opportunities for physicists in biology, we were struck by the degree of interest and the depth of the existing research in this interdisciplinary area. It is clear that biological research has developed to the point where the quantitative methods, measurements and instrumentation of physics are critical to further progress in this field. However, it was also evident that few physicists are aware of the central role played by the National Institutes of Health in funding biological and medical research and training.

The NIH is comprised of 27 individual units, usually called “Institutes”. The National Cancer Institute is the largest and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering is the newest. These Institutes will have an aggregate budget of about $27 billion in Fiscal Year 2003. The NIH can also be divided into an intramural and extramural research component, the former represents about 15% of the total NIH budget and involve NIH employees conducting research in NIH’s own labs and clinics, located mostly in Bethesda, Maryland . The extramural component funds the majority of federally-sponsored biomedical research around the USA. Thus the NIH offers very significant funding opportunities for physicists who wish to work at the biomedical interface.

The extramural program staff of the NIH can be a very valuable resource to physicists in navigating a complex bureaucratic system to obtain research and training grant funding. Toward that end, we are always willing to answer your questions by phone or email or to direct you to more specifically appropriate people within NIH. Below you will find some web sites that should be helpful to scientists who want to apply for funding at the NIH.

• Funding Opportunities
• Grant Policy Guidelines
• Research Training and Fellowships
• Award Data
  
• Applications and Forms
• Standard Receipt Dates
• Referral and Review Process  
• Guide for Grants and Contracts
• Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects (CRISP)
  

We appreciate the efforts of the APS and its Division of Biological Physics in bringing these disciplines together and we look forward to more productive interactions in the future.

James A. Deye, Ph.D.
Program Director
Radiation Research Programs
National Cancer Institute/NIH
(301) 496-6111
deyej@mail.nih.gov

Francis J. Mahoney, Ph.D.
Program Director
Radiation Research Programs
National Cancer Institute/NIH
(301)496-9360
mahoneyf@mail.nih.gov