I didn't comment when I saw the PI who posted about going from 5% to ND so hoping they see this (or that other people said it at the time) but: 1) program can still pick up the 5% if it hasn't been more than a year and 2) if it's ND but competitive, they can pick this one up as well.

I would not say that POs are out of the loop, they just are not the final word as to what gets funded. POs are going to have many, many things they want funded but their directors are going to tell them, "we have money for 2 of yours, pick." So not out of the loop, just screwed like everyone else.

I'm choosing to believe this is their way of getting Rodgers to retire without causing a scene.

A fun thing for societies/conferences to do moving forward for the next few years, hold off on inviting IC Directors and invite @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social instead.

He protected his staff as best he could. Dealing with people getting RIF'ed with humanity and compassion. He made mistakes as we all do, but I gained so much respect for him this year. Wishing him well. And hoping for more IC Directors like him. One day.

Walter has always been a solid dude. Never worked with him myself but have close friends who worked with him at many levels. Always appreciated how he supported his staff and let them do their thing. And this year?

For my former IC I predicted that it would be full of red state optometrists.

Yeah. One of the fun things that happened to me in 2025 was going on a site visit and inadvertentlly telling someone that they actually weren't going to be on council.

My previous institute did not participate in the K01 program but your application will be reviewed in a study section with K01s from other institutes. That is not necessarily bad but it does include the likelihood that 1+ of your reviewers are not from your discipline

The de facto case for NIH has always been "there are more good grants than we have money for". I completely respect any skepticism but in this day and age? There are more good ideas than we are capable of funding..

Correct.

Council membership is entirely out of the IC's hands. Entirely

I don't know about study section but advisory councils are now entirely out of the ICs hands. Determined entirely by political appointees. Would not be surprised if this impacted study sections at some point.

So if a non-scientist, presidential appointee has to sign off before you fund a grant, and that application was not discussed, do you think that makes it more or less likely that it will be approved? I'm not fucking with you by the way, this is just how you have to think now.

This is where we are. We had an "outlying success rate". Do you think the grants we funded aren't good? Of course they were. It's just that we could fund more of our good grants than other ICs could. This should be the case at ALL ICs!

For the entirety of NIH, you now have to justify EVERY grant you want to fund. And that's fine in a sense. But we're going to NEED to fund some ND-competitive applications and that makes that exponentially more difficult.