Top 50 NIH-Funded Institutions of 2020

A new federal fiscal year (FY) begins October 1, but lawmakers at deadline haven’t even agreed on stopgap funding needed to keep Washington fully functioning next month, let alone come to terms on a new budget for FY 2021.

As a result, nobody yet knows how much funding the NIH will have net fiscal year. President Donald Trump began the budget process in February, weeks before COVID-19 led to shutdowns nationwide, by proposing a record $4.9 trillion spending plan that would have cut the NIH’s budget by 7%, from $41.7 billion to $38.4 billion.

After those shutdowns, Congress approved a combined $3.6 billion in “emergency” funding for the NIH in four stimulus bills passed between March and April, and signed into law by Trump.

On July 31, the Democratic-majority U.S. House of Representatives passed largely along party lines (217–197) a spending plan for NIH, its parent agency the Department of Health and Human Services, and nine other federal departments. The spending plan followed the recommendation of the House Committee on Appropriations, which approved a 13% or approximately $5.5 billion increase in NIH funding, to just under $47 billion, with every institute and center approved for budget increases of at least 7%.

Among institutes and centers:

• The National Cancer Institute was approved for $6.9 billion, up just over $1 billion or 7.3% from $6.4 billion this fiscal year. Trump had proposed $5.9 billion an 8.7% reduction.
• The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the institute led by Anthony S. Fauci, MD, fared even better, receiving an 8.6% budget boost to about $6.4 billion, up from $5.9 billion in FY 2020. Trump’s proposal would have shrunk NIAID’s budget by 7.5%.
• The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute was approved for about $3.9 billion from $3.6 billion in FY 2020, also up 7.3%. Trump’s spending plan called for a 9% reduction.
• The National Human Genome Research Institute was approved for $650.6 million from $606.3 million, another 7.3% increase. Trump had proposed $550.1 million, a 9.3% cut.

The U.S. Senate’s Committee on Appropriations at deadline had yet to come out with its own budget proposal for the agency, which would be within a spending bill covering the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.

As Michael Lauer, MD, NIH’s Deputy Director for Extramural Research, wrote on the agency’s website in May, about 75% of the agency’s FY 2019 budget supported extramural research. That fiscal year, NIH issued 55,012 competing and non-competing extramural research awards totaling about $29.466 billion— up $2.354 billion from FY 2018 (an 8.68% increase), with 2,369 more grants funded. NIH extramural dollars supported research conducted at 2,738 organizations—including universities, medical schools, and other research institutions in every U.S. state and worldwide.

About 10% of the NIH’s budget supports projects conducted by approximately 1,200 Principal Investigators and more than 4,000 Postdoctoral Fellows in its own laboratories, most of which are on the NIH campus in Bethesda, MD.

Below is a list of 50 universities (including medical schools), research institutions, and teaching hospitals ranked by how much in NIH funding they have received during the current 2020 federal fiscal year, through September. FY 2020 ends on September 30. Also included for each NIH grant recipient is the number of grant awards funded in FY 2020, which was not a factor in the ranking.

Among the 25 states with at least one institution among the top 50 listed here, California leads the nation with seven institutions in each state receiving NIH grant funding. Next-highest are Massachusetts and New York, each with six NIH-funded institutions, followed by North Carolina with four. These four states combined accounted for nearly half (23) of the top 50 NIH-funded institutions in the current 2020 federal fiscal year.

Of the remaining states in the top 50, seven received NIH grants for two institutions each (Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington state). Another 13 states have a single NIH-funded institution among the top 50 listed here—most notably the University of Florida, which just missed the top 50 in last year’s GEN A-List.

Some notable institutions ranked 55 through 51 this current fiscal year: Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, University of Virginia, Harvard Medical School, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and University of Rochester (NY), just missed the top 50 with $166,132,138 through 370 awards.