Originally posted on the NIH website
ORIP’s S10 Instrumentation Grant Programs support purchases of state-of-the-art commercially available instruments to enhance research of NIH–funded investigators. Instruments that are awarded are typically too expensive to be obtained by an individual investigator with a research project grant. Every instrument awarded by an S10 grant is used on a shared basis, which makes the programs cost-efficient and beneficial to thousands of investigators in hundreds of institutions nationwide.
S10 awards are made to domestic public and private institutions of higher education, and non-profit domestic institutions such as hospitals, health professional schools, and research organizations. To be eligible for an S10 award, an institution must identify three or more Principal Investigators with active NIH research awards who demonstrate the substantial need for the requested instrument.
Awards are issued for one year, and matching funds are not required. However, ORIP expects institutions that compete for S10 awards to provide an appropriate level of support for associated infrastructure, such as space to house the instrument, technical personnel, and post-award service contracts for instrument maintenance and operation.
Types of instruments supported by S10 funding include, but are not limited to X-ray diffraction systems, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometers, DNA and protein sequencers, biosensors, electron and confocal microscopes, cell-sorters, and biomedical imagers.
ORIP manages the S10 programs by issuing Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) with one annual receipt date. Active FOAs are:
- Basic Instrumentation Grant Program (BIG) – the BIG Program funds grant awards in the $25,000 to $250,000 range.
Deadline: June 1, 2021 - Shared Instrumentation Grant Program (SIG) – the SIG Program funds grant awards in the $50,000 to $600,000 range.
Deadline: June 1, 2021 - High-End Instrumentation Grant Program (HEI) – the HEI Program funds grant awards in the $600,001 to $2,000,000 range.
Deadline: June 1, 2021
ORIP encourages applicants to familiarize themselves with the program requirements in these most recent announcements before finalizing their applications so that submitted documents follow the up-to-date guidance on the application content and format.
Frequently Asked Questions
ORIP has a series of Frequently Asked Questions and Answers (Q&As) to describe some of the NIH policies and practices relevant to S10 applications and S10 grants.
In the last 5 years, ORIP has awarded over 500 S10 instruments
The S10 instruments are awarded to research institutions throughout the nation to meet the needs of NIH-funded investigators and other biomedical researchers, as reflected by the equal proportion of instruments and NIH-funded research projects in each of the nation’s four geographical regions.
Northeast
| S10: | 35.0% |
| Research Grants: | 31.0% |
The S10 program supports state-of-the-art technologies needed by NIH-funded investigators, by funding instruments across a wide range of categories in response to requests.
The S10 instruments support research funded by all NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs). The instruments are shared by multiple NIH-supported users. Shown below are the percentages of research grants awarded by NIH ICs to S10 users in FY 2015.
