💸 98 Longevity Impetus Grants were awarded in 2021, thanks to generous donations from @juanbenet @jamesfickel @VitalikButerin @JedMcCaleb @KarlPfleger @FEhrsam and 1 anonymous donor.
I'll summarize outcomes in this thread, awardees listed in prior one:
I'll summarize outcomes in this thread, awardees listed in prior one:
https://twitter.com/MartinBJensen/status/1456301500255195136?s=20
🦸🏽 While I've been doing most of the tweeting, the Longevity Apprentices @LNuzhna @kush__sharma @edmarferreira & Tara Mei are the real heroes for running the operations.
This has been a great Apprenticeship project, merging action and exposure to research
martinborchjensen.com/apprenticeship
This has been a great Apprenticeship project, merging action and exposure to research
martinborchjensen.com/apprenticeship
🚅 The review + awards process was fairly smooth, thanks in part to @kush__sharma's custom reviewer UI. Several reviewers told us unprompted that it was their best review experience ever; the UI took 2 wks to make, so there's low hanging fruit for other agencies in that area.
⚖️ We decided to make reviews double-blind while evaluating ideas, unblinding only to check whether the group was qualified if complex experiments were proposed.
This worked well to spread awards to less famous institutions, scientists from other fields, and junior researchers...
This worked well to spread awards to less famous institutions, scientists from other fields, and junior researchers...
🐣 For example, 21% of the grants went to grad students and postdocs, who normally wouldn't even be allowed to apply.
5 grants were awarded to PIs less than a week into running their own lab.
3 grants went to non-academic institutions with good ideas for accelerating the field.
5 grants were awarded to PIs less than a week into running their own lab.
3 grants went to non-academic institutions with good ideas for accelerating the field.
🏦 Grant sizes were $16k-500k, median ~$200k. Success rate 15.4%, vs ~9% for NIH R21s (most comparable) & ~21% for R01s.
We're giving away ~$21M total this year, compared to ~$350M from the NIA to aging biology research (they have >$1B earmarked for Alzheimer's & social studies).
We're giving away ~$21M total this year, compared to ~$350M from the NIA to aging biology research (they have >$1B earmarked for Alzheimer's & social studies).
🥧 There are other sources than the NIA, but very roughly #Impetus added order of 5% to the $s for #Aging research in the US in 2021.
Personally, I'd love to see #AgingBiology be the majority of the NIA's extramural budget, and the NIA budget increased 10-20x. 📈
Personally, I'd love to see #AgingBiology be the majority of the NIA's extramural budget, and the NIA budget increased 10-20x. 📈
♀️♂️ Impetus success rate 45% lower for female vs male applicants (lowish n), where NIH is ~even 😟
Our reviewers were 66% M + it was blinded = no strong hypothesis. Did notice among awardees that when PI/trainee pair were M/F, PI sometimes listed as sole applicant & vice versa.
Our reviewers were 66% M + it was blinded = no strong hypothesis. Did notice among awardees that when PI/trainee pair were M/F, PI sometimes listed as sole applicant & vice versa.
👪 Proposals spanned a wide range of topics, including new hypotheses and validating existing ones, new clinical trials, new therapeutic approaches, new biomarkers and measurement tools, and datasets that could illumine mechanisms of aging and their human translation.
⚡️ If you're just learning about this, everything happened ~10x faster than standard grants. Applicants seem to have taken 1-5 days to prepare proposals, and almost all got decisions within 1-4 weeks (80% within 3 weeks).
🧑🏽🏫 The Longevity #Impetus Grants were obviously inspired by @patrickc @tylercowen @pdhsu @SKonermann's visionary COVID-19 Fast Grants.
I hope that getting to N=2 inspires more default #fast funding programs, to make us more than 🥜s!
I hope that getting to N=2 inspires more default #fast funding programs, to make us more than 🥜s!
(Re. video, note that 'embrace the follower' happened here, with @tylercowen giving us a lot of helpful pointers. And I'm less dismissive of leader's importance than Derek's tongue in cheek video; Impetus would not have happened without Fast.)
‼️ And the most important update: #ImpetusGrants won't be a one-off, as @LNuzhna will be taking on the leadership of the program moving forward. She's already planning a focused call for applications in 2022, using existing and new donations. Follow her! impetusgrants.org
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