A Plan To Improve Biomedical R&D

An ambitious new plan to tackle two controversial challenges facing the biomedical workforce—the lack of diversity and a paucity of academic jobs for new Ph.D.s—has been put forth by the National Institutes of Health. Under the plan, announced at the December meeting of the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director, NIH will spend an average of $50 million per year for the next 10 years to support undergraduates at institutions that have a diverse student population and receive less than $7.5 million annually in research grants from NIH. The agency will also award 25 grants this fiscal year and 25 in 2014—with each grant worth about $250,000—for innovative training programs that prepare young scientists for nonacademic careers, such as in industry or science policy. After the doubling of the NIH budget from 1998 to 2003, the U.S. saw an explosion in the number of biomedical Ph.D.s, said Sally Rockey, NIH ...