National Institute of General Medical Sciences - Research and Research Training Funding

Research and Research Training Funding

NIGMS places great emphasis on supporting investigator-initiated research grants. It funds a limited number of research center grants in selected fields, including structural biology, chemistry, computational modeling, trauma and burn research, systems biology and biomedical technology. It also supports centers that build research capacities in states that have historically received low levels of NIH funding. In addition, NIGMS supports several important scientific resources, including the NIGMS Human Genetic Cell Repository and the Protein Data Bank.

NIGMS has initiatives in structural genomics (the Protein Structure Initiative), pharmacogenomics, and computational modeling of infectious disease outbreaks. The Institute also promotes the collaborative approaches increasingly needed to solve complex problems in biomedical science.

NIGMS research training programs recognize the interdisciplinary nature of biomedical research and stress approaches that cut across disciplinary and departmental lines. Such experience prepares trainees to pursue creative research careers in a wide variety of areas.

Certain NIGMS training programs address areas in which there are particularly compelling needs. One of these, the Medical Scientist Training Program, produces investigators who hold the combined M.D.-Ph.D. degree and are well trained in both basic science and clinical research. Other programs train scientists to conduct research in rapidly growing areas like biotechnology and at the interfaces between fields such as chemistry and biology and behavioral and biomedical sciences.

NIGMS also has a Postdoctoral Research Associate Program, in which postdoctoral scientists receive training in NIH or Food and Drug Administration laboratories.