NHMRC 2013 grants announced

The NHMRC has delivered its 2013 funding round of $559.1 million to health and medical researchers across Australia.

The announcement, made by Prime Minister Tony Abbott accompanied by Minister for Health Peter Dutton, supports the best Australian health and medical research and the best researchers leveraged around national priority areas.

Funding support was given to 963 grants across three NHMRC research support schemes and five fellowship schemes.

This year’s round of funding included 652 project grants worth $423.5 million and will support investigator-initiated research projects in clinical, biomedical, public health and health services research. From over 5000 applications, 19% were funded.

“It was a tough year,” said Brendan Crabb, president of the Australian Association of Medical Research Institutes. “The project grant scheme had a 16.9% success rate - that’s the lowest we’ve had. It’s getting into the red zone.”

In last year’s round, 20.5% of project grants were funded, previously the success rate has been up around 30%.

“If you’re in the top 20% then you are up there,” said Crabb. “We have a primed system with a lot of researchers and postdocs coming through but with a flat budget this means the success rate for grant applications is low.

“This is concerning because we don’t know where the tipping point is. Somewhere along the line the psychology of positivity will change and it will become too hard.”

Grants for early-career fellowships did make up some of the mix, with 128 worth $38.6 million being given, along with 60 career development grants of $23.9 million.

Six partnership projects worth $4.5 million were funded and will support researchers and policymakers to identify ways to improve health practice and 12 European Union Collaborative Research Grants worth $4 million will support multinational research collaborative projects.

Victoria received the highest amount of funding, with $236.4 million for 414 grants. This was helped by the University of Melbourne drawing the largest funding package of $80.1 million for 145 grants followed by Monash University at $67.2 million.

See the NHMRC website for more information on grant outcomes.