Elias Zerhouni, former director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent his last day in the job helping young scientists. On 31 October, he created a formal regulation out of what has been a de facto policy for the past two years aimed at reversing a steady decline in the number of young investigators securing the agency's bedrock R01 research grants.

The regulation means that first-time grant applicants won't be competing directly against seasoned investigators. Instead, the agency will "wherever possible" conduct initial peer review on applications from new investigators separately.

The agency expects that the policy will mean that at least 1,650 new investigators will receive awards in 2009 — up from a decade-long nadir of 1,354 grants in 2006. Since 1980, the average age at which researchers receive their first NIH grant has climbed from 37 to 42.