In the nation’s National Institutes of Health grant application, a professor from the UG Medical School received a remarkably high perfect score

After receiving a remarkable flawless score on his grant proposal for the National Institute of Health, Professor Eric Sampane-Donkor of the University of Ghana Medical School (UGMS) has the academic world buzzing.

A flawless score on an NIH project, according to the Institute, is extremely rare and denotes a grant that is without flaws and has a huge impact.

This grant proposal from the University of Ghana achieved the perfect effect score of 10 (the maximum score that can be given), placing it in the top one percentile of all grants ever submitted to the NIH.

Leading researchers from the US and other nations submit hundreds of applications for National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds, which are among the most competitive research awards in the world.

This grant application (The ZOOFOOD Project), which uses bioinformatics and disease modelling to address important aspects of zoonoses and foodborne infections in West Africa, received the extremely uncommon perfect score because it was deemed “exceptional” by the NIH’s Centre for Scientific Review Special Emphasis Panel.

Professor Eric Sampane-Donkor not only achieved the highest possible score on the UE5 application, but also two further NIH awards within a year, including a RO1 and a D43.

The RO1 funding is for a 5-year study called “Invasive Pneumococcal Disease and Carriage among Children with Sickle Cell Disease in Ghana: A Post-Vaccination Study”- The Pneumosic Study.

This investigation aims to clarify the effects of immunisation on the pneumococcus population biology in Ghanaian children with sickle cell illness and to identify potential candidates for a better pneumococcus vaccine.

“Research and Capacity Building in Antimicrobial Resistance in West Africa”-The RECABAW Training project-is the name of the 5-year research training project funded by the D43 grant.

In order to promote the study and control of antimicrobial resistance in the subregion, this programme will aid in the establishment of a core of West African scientists through PhD and postdoctoral training.

In order to combat infectious illnesses in West Africa, the three concurrent programmes will teach 52 master’s, PhD, and postdoctoral associates. They will also foster cooperation between the University of Ghana and numerous institutions in West Africa, the United States, Israel, and the United Kingdom.

In order to emphasise how unusual and difficult it is to accomplish, the NIH Perfect Score is compared to “being a Major League Baseball pitcher who pitches a perfect game, an amateur bowler who scores 300, or an NFL running back who rushes for 200 yards in a single game” in a University of Mississippi article. Even though the game has been played more than 235,000 times, this has only happened 23 times in the 140 years that it has been available.

The article also notes that “only the best of the best frequently achieve this score, as each of the dozens or more members of the NIH review panel must be in agreement to allow for such an outcome.”

Professor Eric Sampane-Donkor’s Unicorn Score confirms the significant effect of his study at the University of Ghana Medical School, especially considering that it was his first submission.

Bacteriology and global health are two of the fields that Professor Eric Sampane-Donkor (BSc-Hons, Grad Dip, MSc, PhD, MBA, MPhil, PhD, FGA, FIBMS, FRCPath) specialises in.

He has written 132 journal papers, most of which were published in foreign publications. He also has 20 publications under his belt, including technical papers, books, and book chapters.

He is currently the department head of the University of Ghana Medical School’s Department of Medical Microbiology, where he has been enacting a transformational leadership agenda since 2020, including fundraising, modern facilities, faculty promotion and development, internationalisation, and department rebranding.

In response to Professor Sampane-Donkor’s recent success with NIH grants, Professor Kofi Owusu Boahene, Director of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the United States, stated that “It is remarkable by itself to be awarded multiple NIH grants in any given year; to top that off with a perfect score is an outstanding achievement. This is in fact confirmation of the value of his study and a compliment to his school.

Prof. Sampane-Donkor expressed her gratitude to God for this distinction in reaction to the perfect score she had got, saying, “I am humbled that an application from the University of Ghana was counted as the finest by the United States’ most prominent research funding organisation.