NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant (S10)

The NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG), along with its higher-cost companion the High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant, is funded under NIH’s S10 activity code and pays for a single piece of shared, high-cost scientific equipment for use by a defined group of NIH-supported investigators at one institution. Both programs are administered by NIH’s Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP), within the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI). Unlike a standard NIH research project grant, S10 does not fund a research question — it funds the acquisition of an instrument that a group of already-funded investigators needs in order to carry out research they are separately funded to do.

SIG vs. HEI: The Two Cost Tiers

NIH splits shared-instrumentation funding into two parallel programs by requested award amount, both under the S10 activity code:

• Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) — requests from $50,000 to $750,000. This is the more commonly used of the two mechanisms and covers instruments such as confocal and light microscopes, flow cytometers, DNA/RNA sequencers, mass spectrometers, and X-ray diffractometers.
• High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant — requests from $750,001 to $2,000,000, for larger, more specialized systems such as high-field NMR spectrometers or advanced imaging platforms.

A separate, smaller Basic Instrumentation Grant (BIG) program, run as a limited competition, also exists under related program guidance for lower-cost, multi-user instrument needs at institutions with a documented history of NIH funding; research administrators should treat SIG, HEI, and BIG as related but distinct funding opportunity announcements with their own eligibility rules, and always confirm current thresholds and deadlines directly against the live NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts notice for the relevant fiscal year, since NIH periodically reissues these solicitations and adjusts wording to reflect current agency priorities.

Who Qualifies: The Group of Major Users Requirement

S10 is built around a group-application model, not an individual-PI model:

• The institution is the formal applicant — not an individual investigator. A single PI cannot apply for an S10 award in their own name.
• At least three "Major Users" are required. A Major User must be the PD/PI on a distinct, active NIH research award (a grant or cooperative agreement) in basic, translational, or clinical research with a substantiated need for the requested instrument. Once that three-Major-User threshold is met, additional users — including those funded by other federal agencies, foundations, or industry — may be added to the application as "Other Users."
• Usage-time thresholds apply. NIH expects the projects supported by NIH research awards to collectively account for a substantial share of the instrument’s Accessible Usage Time (AUT), with Major Users’ NIH-funded projects specifically required to meet a defined minimum share of that time — applicants should verify the exact current percentages in the active funding opportunity announcement before submitting, as NIH periodically revises these figures.

What S10 Does Not Cover

• Indirect (F&A) costs. S10 awards do not permit facilities-and-administrative costs to be charged against the grant, consistent with its treatment as a capital equipment award rather than a full research project.
• Instruments below the SIG minimum. A request under $50,000 does not qualify for SIG; it is ordinarily purchased through a project grant’s own equipment budget line or an institutional fund instead.
• Facility operating costs. S10 pays for the instrument itself — it does not fund the ongoing staffing, maintenance contracts, service fees, or space costs of running the shared facility the instrument lives in afterward. Those recurring costs are typically recovered through the core facility’s own recharge/user-fee rate, governed separately under 2 CFR Part 200 cost-accounting rules. See CASRAI’s Core Facility (Research Core) guide for how a funded instrument becomes an operating, self-sustaining shared resource after the S10 award closes out.

How S10 Fits Among Research Infrastructure Mechanisms

S10 is one of several major national instrumentation/infrastructure funding mechanisms a research administrator may encounter — alongside NSF’s Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program, Canada’s Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), Australia’s LIEF scheme, and UKRI’s capital investment mechanisms. CASRAI’s Research Infrastructure Funding guide places S10 in that broader comparative context; this entry is the dedicated operational definition of the S10/SIG/HEI mechanism specifically — its eligibility model, cost tiers, and Major User requirements.

A Note on the 2026 Program Cycle

Some secondary sources circulating in 2025-2026 describe a consolidation of the SIG, HEI, and BIG programs into a single restructured mechanism with a substantially different award range. CASRAI was not able to independently verify that consolidation against NIH’s own program materials as of this writing — a direct check of an active institutional research-office summary of the 2026 SIG cycle instead confirmed the traditional $50,000-$750,000 SIG range unchanged. Research administrators should treat any claim of a 2026 SIG/HEI/BIG restructuring as unconfirmed and verify current award ranges and eligibility directly against the live Notice of Funding Opportunity on grants.nih.gov or ORIP’s own program page before relying on it.

Related CASRAI Content

• Research Infrastructure Funding — the broader landscape of national equipment/facilities funding programs, including S10 alongside NSF MRI, CFI, LIEF, and UKRI mechanisms.
• Core Facility (Research Core) — how an S10-funded instrument is organized, staffed, and cost-recovered as an ongoing shared resource.
• ABRF — the professional association for the core-facility staff who typically operate S10-funded instrumentation day to day.