Donna Krupa
(301) 634-7209
dkrupa@the-aps.org
American Physiological Society (APS) launches one year stop-gap measure to aid top fellowship candidates
BETHESDA, MD -- The American Physiological Society (APS; www.the-APS.org) will use more than $400,000 from its reserve funds in the next eight months to underwrite fellowships for early-career scientists. The move comes in response to falling success rates for postdoctoral fellowship applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), America’s largest scientific funding agency.
“The decreased availability of postdoctoral fellowships has a significant and negative effect on the training of new researchers, and thus on the discovery process that benefits all,” said APS Executive Director Martin Frank. “The APS Council [Board of Directors] voted unanimously to take action to support fellows whose applications scored high at the NIH but were not funded by the Institutes.” Postdoctoral fellows work in the laboratory of senior scientists where they perform valuable research while making the final step in establishing themselves in their field.
Over the past five years as the NIH saw its yearly budget increases level off, the NIH has awarded an increasingly smaller percentage of fellowship requests according to the Institute’s published data. Since 2000, when the success rate for fellowship applications was above 45 percent, the chance of getting funded fell to less than one in three in 2006.
Put another way, only slightly more than one-quarter of the applications that were reviewed by the NIH last year received funding. The dollar amount of the fellowships that were awarded remained flat, mirroring the funding levels the NIH received from Congress during the period.
Post-doc Award Open to Members
APS will dip into its reserve funds and allocated $420,000 to support up to 10 postdoctoral fellowship applications in the coming months. The goal is to support postdoctoral scientists who are scheduled to work in the laboratories of members of the American Physiological Society, but have not been funded despite a high priority score.
To be eligible for the Fellowship Initiative, the candidate must be an APS member and remain a member throughout the APS award period. In addition, the candidate’s mentor must be a member in good standing of the APS for at least three years immediately prior to filing the application. Members applying for the fellowship must be the principal investigator on their research project and have received a priority score of 200 or better from the NIH. The candidate must be planning to revise and submit their fellowship application to NIH or other federal agency or foundation and agree to return the balance of the award in the event other funding is received.
Two Award Periods Over Eight Months
Awards are for a total of $42,000 consisting of a stipend of a $37,000 stipend and $5,000 as a Fellow’s institutional allowance for direct costs such as health insurance, books, and travel. Applications must be submitted online through the APS Online Award Module (no paper applications are accepted) and received no later than 5:00 PM EST on or before August 1, 2007 and January 2, 2008. Award announcements will be made in mid- to late September for the award period beginning October 1, 2007 and in mid- to late February for the award period beginning March 1, 2008. Only one fellowship application per host laboratory will be awarded.
Investing in the Talent of Scientific Researchers
According to Frank, “The Governor of Massachusetts has recently announced a $1 billion life sciences initiative for the state. At the same time, countries like the United Kingdom and Singapore have developed strategies for attracting researchers and corporations. Our hope is that Congress will see our good faith effort to invest in our scientists, and will join our efforts by boosting funding for NIH.”
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Physiology is the study of how molecules, cells, tissues and organs function to create health or disease. The American Physiological Society (APS) has been an integral part of this scientific discovery process since it was established in 1887.