New NIH workforce director seeks to broaden funder’s reach

Ericka Boone wants to provide more support for less-funded US institutions and early career researchers

The new director of the extramural biomedical workforce at the National Institutes of Health has said that she wants to reach out more to institutions that receive only a small amount of the funder’s financial support but that nevertheless play an important part in the US’s biomedical R&D.

Most NIH funding goes to just 10 per cent of extramural institutions, neuroscientist Ericka Boone said in an article posted on the funder’s blog last week. Boone, whose appointment as director of the Division of Biomedical Research Workforce in the NIH’s Office of Extramural Research was announced in the blogpost, added that she wanted to focus her energies on the other 90 per cent.