Selection of judges and applicants for the NIH Director's Pioneer Awards has been revamped

When the US National Institutes if Health (NIH) announced the winners of the first annual NIH Director's Pioneer Award last year, one fact stood out: all nine awardees were men. This year, thanks to a flurry of protests from scientists, the winners are likely to be a more diverse bunch.

Shortly after the announcement of last year's winners in September 2004, individual scientists and groups such as the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) and the Association for Women in Science complained about the “striking lack of diversity.”

“The selection of such a homogeneous group of award winners sends an unavoidable message to women that they are not worthy of recognition as 'pioneers' and indeed may be considered less valued than men by the highest levels of the NIH,” wrote ASCB's then-president Harvey Lodish and Women in Cell Biology chair Ursula Goodenough.

I was impressed with the changes they made, this should be a model for other grant application processes. Ben Barres, Stanford University

In response, the NIH transferred responsibility for the awards from the director's office—which had little experience with grants—to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The agency also named Jeremy Berg, the institute's director—and one of several NIH researchers who complained—to redesign the program.

Together with Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and NIH researcher Judith Greenberg, Berg redesigned the award scheme to include more women and minorities as both applicants and judges.

“I was impressed with the changes they made, this should be a model for other grant application processes,” says Stanford University neuroscientist Ben Barres (see page 916), who has served as a judge both years.

The changes are significant: up to 40% of this year's referees are women or minorities, and applicants can nominate themselves. Last year, by contrast, 60 of the 64 judges were men and “unconscious bias” probably affected the outcome, notes Barres. “Applicants had to be nominated—people tend to nominate men for these things,” he says.

The awards, worth up to $500,000 for five years, aim to support creative and novel approaches to biomedical research. The 2005 winners are set to be announced 29 September.

This year's applications have been reworded to say that women and members of underrepresented groups are “especially encouraged” to apply, and that the award is available to early- and mid-career scientists.

According to Berg, 26% of this year's applicants are female, and the breakdown for the 20 finalists reflects the applicant pool. In 2004, women made up only 21% of the 1,300 applicants and only 2 of the 21 finalists. Because the award is given to researchers for novel biomedical research strategies, it attracts applicants with technical and engineering backgrounds, fields that have fewer women, says Berg. The NIH does not have data on the status of minority applicants.