NIH recently funded 106 new awards for high-risk, high-reward research

Recently, NIH announced that 106 grants were funded for innovative, potentially groundbreaking research projects. These grants were funded through the NIH Common Fund's program on High-Risk, High Reward Research. The grants were awarded through several mechanisms, including:

• The NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, which supports scientists with outstanding records of creativity pursuing new research directions to develop pioneering approaches to major challenges in biomedical, social science, and behavioral research.
• The NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, which supports exceptionally creative early career investigators who propose innovative, high-impact projects in the biomedical, behavioral or social sciences within the NIH mission.
• The NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award, which supports individuals or teams proposing transformative projects that are inherently risky and untested but have the potential to create or overturn fundamental paradigms and may require very large budgets.
• The NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, which supports outstanding junior scientists with the intellect, scientific creativity, drive, and maturity bypass the traditional postdoctoral training period to launch independent research careers.

Additional focus areas were added this year, which included projects studying Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and COVID-19.