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Dr. Antonio Scarpa is director of the Center for Scientific Review (CSR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He joined the CSR in July 2005 after 19 years at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Scarpa earned his medical degree and PhD in general pathology from the University of Padua School of Medicine and continued his training at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, the University of Bristol in England, and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He was appointed to the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and continued his research there for 17 years. In 1986, Scarpa joined Case Western, where he was the David and Inez Myers Professor and chair of the Department of Physiology.
Tasked with overseeing the receipt and peer review of NIH grant applications, Scarpa brings with him more than 20 years of experience on three NIH peer review committees, as well as membership on American Heart Association peer review committees. His research has been supported by grants from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the American Heart Association.
JIM: Although most researchers have considerable interactions with the Center for Scientific Review, not all have an appreciation for how the Center functions. Can you give us a sense of the scope of activities that the CSR organizes?
Dr. Scarpa: The Center receives all the grant applications submitted to NIH. The number of applications has been growing quite significantly, from 40,000 per year 3 or 4 years ago to about 80,000 this past year. We refer these applications to the different study sections or to integrated review groups and also assign each application to the appropriate institute or center (IC). In addition, we organize the reviews through study sections or other mechanisms for about 52,000 of the applications. To do this, every year CSR uses between 15,000 and 18,000 reviewers. After we finish the review, we submit the priority score, the percentile, the critique, and-most of the time-a resume of the discussion. With this, our work is finished. Applications then go to the respective IC, which will have its...