Good morning. I'm Patty Weber, I'm a Program director at the National Cancer Institute at the MDI.
It's one of the many 27
institutes and centers at the NHS.
So the NIH is broken down into those
and institutions and centers.
And 24 of the institutes
and centers actually do fund SBIRs.
And so at NIH the programs are all run kind of differently
in each of the institutes,
so it's important to not only look at NIH's
main website for SBIR funding opportunities -
and you really ought to take a look at each of the institutes
individual websites
and if you're interested
in The National Cancer Institute,
our website is SBIR.cancer.gov.
So the NIH central runs several different
programs for, for applicants.
As well as we actually at MCI we just started a new program
called the applicant assistance program.
So if you've never been successful at
obtaining an SBIR or STTR award,
you can get application assistance right up front.
And they put you in touch with specialists that work
with you to develop your specific aims page
and then they'll put you in touch with a programs official like myself - I can also
help with that process.
And that actually is one of the most important messages
I want to get across to you today.
You really need to reach out to that program officials
in each of the individual institutes to which
your technology you might have the best application
to apply to. You want to contact us
well in advance of those application deadlines
and as you've probably heard, there's 3 grant receipt dates.
January 5th, April 5th,
and September 5th. But reach out to us several months
in advance. Send us your specific aims page.
We are more than happy to review that,
give you ideas on how to improvve it,
because that really is the key
to the the successful review.
Each of your applications are assigned to three
or four reviewers at the Centre for Scientific Review
but that specific aims page is what the other unassigned
reviewers are looking at to get an idea of what your technology
is so that's a really important page.
And as I said program officials can help you
with that.
The other thing I recommend is that you want to be sure to use the
assist program - the assist function when you're going to submit an application
because it really helps you to not miss anything
and that's something that's been available in the last couple of years that I've heard
good reviews from folks that have used the Assist program.
Let's see - I'm looking at the budget - budget section.
So NIH has a pretty big SBIR/STTR budget.
Of the 27th
institutes and centers, the NCI is the largest - so we have about a $130 million
in our budget each year.
So you don't necessarily want to
think of applying to an institute because we have the biggest budget
but you need to think about whether or not your technology applies
to the mission of a given Institute.
And that's kind of where you want to start.
And then whether you apply for the SBIR
or STTR really depends on the structure
of your company and whether your PI needs to be employed at an academic
institution or can they be an employee of a small business And
whether or not that technology is being licensed out of a university - in those
cases you do tend to want to apply to the STTR program.
And I do want to give a plug for the next
annual HHS SBIR conference coming
up in Dallas in October.
This is usually a three day meeting
and we have a lot of different speakers at this conference
to talk to you about putting your budget together.
You can speak
with grants management people.
You can speak with again program directors from the different institutes.
We do a mock review so that you can understand a little
bit better how the Center for Scientific Review
conducts a review of your proposal.
A highly recommended conference, and it moves around the country.
We always do it in the fall.
I'm going to say - oh I do want to also give a plug for a
contract. I'm - toward the end the month there is going
to be a contract solicitation
and it's only under the SBIR program - so you can't have an STTR contract.
But do take a look at the contract mechanism.
Thank you.