October 14, 2024

Q&A: A Randomized Approach to Awarding Grants

The Novo Nordisk Foundation, one of the biggest personal clinical research study funders in the world, announced last month that it would start employing a partial randomization system to money some types of research jobs. Together, these grants make up approximately 10 percent of the organizations total research job funding, says Lene Oddershede, the senior vice president of natural and technical sciences at the Novo Nordisk Foundation, who supervises the grant financing process. In 2020, the top 1 percent most highly funded private investigators got 10 percent of the National Institutes of Healths Research Project Grant (RPG) funding, an increase of 2 percent from 2013, while the least-funded half of detectives got only 20 percent of the overall RPG funding, a number that has actually stayed fixed for the previous years. The foundation plans to gather info on how the partial randomization system affected the types of tasks moneyed over the efforts initially 3 years.The Scientist spoke to Oddershede about the new partial randomization action and why the structure decided to institute it.Lene Oddershede, senior vice president of natural and technical sciences at the Novo Nordisk Foundationnovo Nordisk foundationThe Scientist: What is partial randomization of financing and how are you using it?Lene Oddershede: A partial randomization suggests that its not a complete randomization, which would be a pure lottery game. The Swiss Research Council has carried out a partial randomization in numerous of their instruments.Now, youre from the US, you probably would ask, what about United States funding companies?

The Novo Nordisk Foundation, one of the largest personal clinical research funders in the world, announced last month that it would start employing a partial randomization system to fund some types of research study projects. In 2020, the leading 1 percent most highly funded investigators received 10 percent of the National Institutes of Healths Research Project Grant (RPG) financing, a boost of 2 percent from 2013, while the least-funded half of investigators got only 20 percent of the overall RPG financing, a number that has actually remained fixed for the past years. The structure prepares to gather info on how the partial randomization system impacted the types of projects moneyed over the efforts first 3 years.The Scientist spoke to Oddershede about the new partial randomization step and why the foundation chose to set up it.Lene Oddershede, senior vice president of natural and technical sciences at the Novo Nordisk Foundationnovo Nordisk foundationThe Scientist: What is partial randomization of financing and how are you employing it?Lene Oddershede: A partial randomization suggests that its not a full randomization, which would be a pure lottery game.