Incredible shrinking grant deadlines at the BRAIN Initiative
“A month is crazy,” says one former recipient, referring to a new funding opportunity’s timeline.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has reduced the grant application deadlines for its BRAIN Initiative, causing concern among researchers. The "Integrated BRAIN Circuits Program," offering around $1 million annually, has a deadline of 7 October, just 38 days after the notice was released on 7 September. This short timeline is causing frustration, with one former grantee describing it as "crazy."
The NIH has been working on this program for over a year, but the sudden tight deadline has left some teams reconsidering their applications. Zhe Sage Chen, a professor of neuroscience at New York University, said one of his teams has decided to postpone their application until the next year. This trend of shorter deadlines reflects the administration's apparent efforts to "straitjacket" NIH funding, which has seen cuts in recent years.
The BRAIN Initiative, launched in 2013, aims to develop technologies for understanding brain functions and disorders. However, its funding has declined by more than 30 percent since 2023. The increased difficulty in posting funding notices for the BRAIN Initiative stems from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) now clearing these announcements, which is taking longer due to budget fluctuations and reorientation.
This delay has made it increasingly difficult for researchers to plan and prepare their applications.
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