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| Figure 1. Data Across All NIH
Institutes. |
During the past year, the
Council has expressed continuing concern about the impact that cutbacks on
NIH funding were having on the training of new investigators. As seen in
Figure 1, over the last five years, the success rate for F32 applications
across all NIH institutes has decreased significantly. In many cases,
individual institutes are experiencing even more severe drops in success
rates.
In response to the Council’s concerns, a study group led by Douglas Eaton
was established and they recommended that the Council allocate funds from
the Society’s Reserve Funds to support the training of APS members whose F32
applications had missed the NIH Institute payline. At the Experimental
Biology meeting, Council agreed to dip into the Reserve Funds and allocate
$420,000 to support the funding of up to 10 postdoctoral fellowship
applications over the next year. The goal is to support postdoctoral
fellowship candidates who are scheduled to work in the laboratories of
members of the American Physiological Society.
In order to be eligible for the Fellowship Initiative mandated by Council,
candidates must be an APS member at the time of application and throughout
the award period. In addition, the postdoctoral mentor must have been a
member in good standing for at least three years immediately prior to
application and remains so throughout the award period. The postdoctoral
fellowship application submitted to NIH must have received a priority score
of 200 or better and rejected for funding by NIH. As an interim initiative,
the candidate is expected to revise and resubmit their fellowship
application to NIH or other Federal agency or major foundation and should
the applicant receive an award the remaining APS Fellowship funds would need
to be returned to the Society to help someone else.
The application deadlines for the Society’s Postdoctoral Initiative are
August 1, 2007 and January 2, 2008. Complete details about the new
Initiative can be found on the APS Website at
http://www.the-aps.org/awards/postdocinitiative07.pdf.
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