I make note of this particular grant opportunity because it’s supported by the National Institutes of Health.  When thinking about research on modeling the scientific workforce, the NIH would not necessarily be the first agency that comes to mind.  But the NIH has significantly more resources than most other federal research agencies – at one point its budget for physical sciences research was larger than the physical sciences research budget of the National Science Foundation.

You can read the Request For Applications for detailed information, but here are some important points.

Purpose of the grant program:

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institutes of Health, solicits grant applications that propose to develop computational models of the dynamics of the scientific workforce in the United States.  These models may be used to inform program development and management, identify questions that need additional research, and guide the collection and analysis of the data to answer these questions.

Application Receipt Date: October 8, 2009
Peer Review Date(s): February – March 2010
Council Review Date: May 2010
Earliest Anticipated Start Date: July 2, 2010
Expiration Date: October 9, 2009

This will be a cooperative agreement research program, with each Principal Investigator taking lead research and administrative responsibilities with NIH staff assisting (this may seem odd to those not familiar with the amount of in-house/intramural research supported at NIH compared to non-biomedical agencies).