Washington University has been invited to submit proposals for the NIH National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) Program.

The Shared Instrumentation Grant Program is designed to make available to institutions expensive research instruments that can only be justified on a shared-use basis and for which meritorious research are described. The Shared Instrumentation Grant Program provides a cost-effective mechanism for groups of NIH-supported investigators to obtain commercially-available, technologically sophisticated equipment costing more than $100,000. Since the intent of the program is to promote sharing, a major user group of three of more investigators must be identified. A minimum of three major users must be Principal Investigators on NIH peer reviewed research grants at the time of the application and award.

The Shared Instrumentation Grant Program is designed to provide for the acquisition or updating of expensive shared-use instrumentation not generally available through other NIH mechanisms, such as the regular research project, program project, or center grant programs. Proposal for research on advancing the design or for the development of new instrumentation will not be considered. Applications will be accepted for a single, commercially-available instrument or an integrated instrument system. An application requesting more than one type of instrumentation will not be considered responsive to this program announcement and will be returned.

Shared Instrumentation Grant Program provides support for expensive state-of-the-art instrumentation utilized in both basic and clinical research. Awards for instrumentation will range from $100,000 to $500,000.

Note that although Washington University may submit more than one application for different instrumentation, applications for similar instrumentation will require documentation that this duplication is part of a campus-wide institutional plan. An internal screening of proposed applications will be held to ensure that this criterion is met.

Please distribute this announcement to the appropriate faculty in your department. If you wish to submit a proposal for the University, please forward the following materials for internal review:

Cover page (attached)
(See attached file: Nomination Cover Page for Washington University (federal) Internal Competitions.doc)
A description of the proposed instrumentation to be purchased or developed and the research it will support.
Cost of the instrumentation.
Curriculum vitae of the principal investigators and co-investigators.

Materials should be electronically to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it no later than 11:59 PM on February 8, 2007.

*Please note that the full proposal is due by March 21, 2007. (see details at http://internalcompetitions.wustl.edu/ocfr/grants.nsf/Current?OpenView
or http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-07-105.html ).