NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya announced plans to reform grant review and institutional funding, emphasizing streamlined peer review with fewer key questions, a push to fund higher‑risk research, and new mechanisms to broaden the geographic distribution of top‑tier research institutions. He also prioritized replication and reproducibility studies and signaled changes to administrative burden and summary statements. Bhattacharya framed the updates as part of a broader modernization after Congress set the NIH budget at $48.7 billion. The proposals aim to accelerate pipeline‑building science while changing incentives across academia; details on implementation and timelines were not fully specified and will be watched closely by grant applicants and institutions.