High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant Program (S10 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

This opportunity is not limited in number, but there can be no duplication among the entries.

This funding opportunity is to continue the High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant Program administered by ORIP. The objective of the Program is to make available to institutions high-end research instruments that can only be justified on a shared-use basis and that are needed for NIH-supported projects in basic, translational, and clinical biomedical or biobehavioral research. The HEI program provides funds to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, leading-edge, specialized, commercially available instrument or an integrated instrumentation system. An integrated instrumentation system is one in which the components, when used in conjunction with one another, perform a function that no single component can provide. The components must be dedicated to the system and not used independently.

Types of supported instruments include, but are not limited to: MRI imagers, PET/CT imagers, cyclotrons, photoacoustic imagers, mass spectrometers, NMR spectrometers, electron microscopes, cryo-electron microscopes, X-ray diffractometers, and super-resolution microscopes. Applications for standalone computer systems (supercomputers, computer clusters and data storage systems) will only be considered if the system is solely dedicated to biomedical research.

In particular, the HEI program enables the introduction of advanced leading-edge technologies providing new capabilities to biomedical research. In such cases, a risk-return trade-off is expected and allowed. Due to the novelty of the technologies and the uniqueness of their implementation, specialized and technologically savvy groups of investigators will be needed to lead the adoption of such advanced instruments for biomedical research and to develop innovative biomedical applications. Therefore, if such a novel instrument is requested, the applicant should demonstrate special technical expertise, merging multiple fields of science and technology, such as biology, physics, and bioinformatics. For integrated systems, the applicant must provide a detailed description about how the system will be put together and about the technical expertise of the individual(s) who will be responsible for assembling the system. The applicant must also provide a detailed description of training for the investigators listed in the application about the use of the novel technology in advancing their research. Accordingly, the HEI program requires that any unique instrument or an integrated system must be developed by reliable commercial vendors and guaranteed by the manufacturer’s one-year warranty.

All instruments and integrated systems must be dedicated to biomedical research only.

Application Instructions

An internal application process is required to verify that each equipment request from our institution is unique. Faculty who intend to submit an equipment request must email the following information:

- PI Name

- Instrument requested

- Total direct costs

- Short justification of what the instrument will be used for

- A list of potential users

 to limitedsubs@uw.edu by 5:00 PM Wednesday, March 19, 2025, preferably as a PDF.

Additionally, our office will provide the RFA-required table that includes information about the performance of all previous S10-awarded instruments within the past five years. See Other Attachments, II) Letters of Support.