The National Health and Medical Research Council released $437m in research funding on Saturday – maybe they hoped nobody would notice the 11 per cent success rate for the $240m Ideas Grants programme.

Saturday’s figures likely complete 2019 funding (unless the NHMRC is gift-wrapping an announcement for Christmas Eve).  So, the YTD figures show how universities and research institutes did this year.

Where the money will go: All up, the NHMRC allocated $884m in competitive grants this year, supporting research at 48 of 71 applying institutions. Universities and MRIs collecting $10m plus (rounded) are;

* Monash U $148m * Uni Melbourne $135m * Uni Sydney $81.3m * UNSW $82.5m * Uni Queensland $64m * Walter and Eliza Hall $37m * UWA $33m *QMIR Berghofer MRI $24m * Uni Newcastle $23m * Uni Adelaide $21m * Murdoch Children’s RI $17m * Flinders U $15m * Menzies School of HR $15m * Deakin U $14m * Macquarie U $14m * Uni SA $13m* Uni Tas $13m * ANU $12m * Griffith U $12m * James Cook U $11m * Curtin U $10m.

The top five institutions received just under 60 per cent of funding.

Best return on application investment: Success rates for institutions winning more than ten grants success rates are; * Menzies School of Health Research 44 per cent * Walter and Eliza Hall 20 per cent * Deakin U 17 per cent * Monash U 15 per cent * ANU 14 per cent * Flinders U 14 per cent * Murdoch Children’s Research Institute 14 per cent * QIMR Berghofer MI 15 per cent * Uni Adelaide 9 per cent * Uni Melbourne 16 per cent * Uni Newcastle 14 per cent * UNSW 13 per cent * Uni Sydney 12 per cent      * Uni Queensland 13 per cent * Uni SA 12 per cent * Uni WA 12 per cent

How this translates for researchers: Not real well, the success rate for all 2019 competitive grant applications is 13.2 per cent. Some 13.1 per cent of projects with women as chief investigators were funded, 13.3 per cent for men.