Why does NIH allow multiple Principal Investigators on individual research awards?
This effort represents an NIH Roadmap initiative (see http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/interdisciplinary/) as well as a response to a Federal-wide directive to formally allow more than one Principal Investigator (PI) on individual research awards. In addition, a major recommendation from the 2003 “NIH Bioengineering Consortium Symposium on Catalyzing Team Science” (http://www.becon.nih.gov/becon_symposia.htm) was to allow more than one PI on individual grants. The policy offers new approaches to maximize the potential of “team science” efforts. The multiple PI model supplements, and does not replace, the traditional single Principal Investigator (PI) model. Although the single-PI model clearly continues to work well and encourages creativity and productivity, it does not always encourage multidisciplinary efforts and collaboration. Increasingly, health-related research involves teams that vary in terms of size, hierarchy, location of participants, goals, disciplines, and structure. The select
