NIH Funding Rankings

[BNSN]

I realize that the NIH stopped providing rankings after 2005 and instead now gives raw data in a huge excel file. Does anyone know if someone does all the tedious work of summing up each school and then ranking it?

I am not putting much stock in this insofar as where I go to school, but I am just curious since it is fun trivia.

Thanks.

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[Neuronix]

I've investigated this possibility in the past. It seems to me that for the USNews research rankings, the NIH funding of the medical school and its affiliates are pooled together and listed for that medical school. So in other words, it's already been done.

Someone did challenge me on this once for Tri-I and it turned out that the NIH funding for the three main institutions was very, very close to the number reported by USNews for Cornell Med.

It's funny that if you If you look at the NIH data for Harvard Med they were in the past ~#19. It's when you throw in all their affiliates that they go to a dominating ~$1 Billion dollars. But the NIH will report MGH and BID and etc etc etc all separately.

 

[BNSN]

Thanks for your insight, Neuronix.

Two questions. First, what is BID? Second, wouldn't all the research at MGH be clinical work, therefore unimportant for MSTP students in terms of ranking a school's research expenditures? (I am assuming MGH does only clinical work. I am guessing hospitals don't have basic science labs, right?)

 

[Neuronix]

Two questions. First, what is BID?

That is Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in the Boston area, one of Harvard's many affiliates.

I am guessing hospitals don't have basic science labs, right?

Incorrect. It is Man's Greatest Hospital after all. I joke, yet many medical centers have basic science laboratories that are part of a standalone medical center. This includes some smaller hospitals that are not big name institutions. For example, Jefferson's childrens hospital AI DuPont Hospital for Children has a number of basic science labs. These may be counted as "affiliates" of a medical school, and hence you may go work there if you're a student at that school. The money in the NIH's, and really everyone else's, eyes is reported completely separately. As students we are in a unique position of typically having full access to the resources of all of an institution's affiliates, whereas this relationship is typically much more complex for residents and faculty.

Anyhow, if you can find data that ranks institutions only on basic science funding, more power to ya. You can try based on individual departments, but even there Departments of Medicine, for example, often do large amounts of both basic science and clinical research.

 

[JHopRevisit]

It takes about 2 seconds to sum everything up if you use Excel Pivot tables. If you have excel, just google "pivot tables" and it'll handle the rest. I did it for immunology stuff when I was applying, but the info's pretty useless for applicants. Just did it for fun one day. If you post me the link I can even do it for you, although I visit SDN pretty infrequently so no promises on when I'll see it.

Also, there's a thread around here about all the affiliates schools have, that's a good question to ask on the interview trail, about how much different affiliates interact, whether students can work with them, and if there's anything affiliates are known for. Every school does things slightly differently, at some places if you do basic science you're placed under a basic science dept. in the university, other places divvy up appointments with their schools of medicine and hospitals in all sorts of ways. That's what makes these stats tough to compare, depending on how schools divide this stuff up comparisons can be apples to oranges.

 

[peve]

Second, wouldn't all the research at MGH be clinical work, therefore unimportant for MSTP students in terms of ranking a school's research expenditures? (I am assuming MGH does only clinical work. I am guessing hospitals don't have basic science labs, right?)

This is getting off topic, but I thought I would interject.

I work at MGH in a non-clinical lab and almost all of the research going on in this building, and another building down the street, is focused on basic research that has clinical applications. The thing about MGH is that it is associated with Harvard Med, and a large number of the PIs are professors at the Medical School. So they end up doing very basic research even though their funding may in part be through the hospital. I think working at a Harvard/MGH lab would be an MSTP student's dream, because you have a lot of access to clinical samples, but have the support to do great basic science. I would postulate that this happens at many large teaching hospitals, but I only have experience here.