The NIH MERIT award (Method To Extend Research in Time) Award (R37) was created by the National Institutes of Health in 1986. It is a prestigious award designed to provide stable, long-term funding support to outstanding, experienced investigators whose productivity is distinctly superior and who are deemed highly likely to continue to perform their research activities in an outstanding manner. The MERIT award provided funding for 5 years and could be renewed for up to 10 years. Unlike most NIH grant awards, the MERIT award could not be applied for by the investigator. The OIA allows for up to $600,000 in direct costs for 7 years.
In 2014, NIH announced that it would be phasing out the MERIT award and replacing it with a similar Outstanding Investigator Award (R35).
Notable MERIT award recipients
| Susan Amara | National Institutes of Health | 2004 |
| Alexander Raikhel | University of California Riverside | |
| Arnold Berk | UCLA | 2003 |
| Gary Borisy | Northwestern University | |
| Joan Brugge | Harvard Medical School | |
| Joseph D. Brain | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health | 1987-1995 |
| Donald S. Coffey | Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine | |
| Chris Q. Doe | University of Oregon | 2013 |
| John Engelhardt | University of Iowa | 2005 |
| David L. Felten | Oakland University | |
| Andrew Feinberg | Johns Hopkins University | 2001 |
| Catherine Clarke Fenselau | Johns Hopkins University | 1991 |
| Ethel Gilbert | National Cancer Institute | 2003 |
| Patricia A. Grady | NIH | |
| Shiv I.S. Grewal | National Cancer Institute | |
| Alan Grodzinsky | MIT | 1994 |
| Curtis C. Harris | National Cancer Institute | 2009 |
| Eric Jacobsen | Harvard University | 2002 |
| Lily Jan | UCSF | 2006 |
| Kenneth W. Kinzler | Johns Hopkins University | 2002 |
| Leonid Kruglyak | Princeton University | 2002 |
| M. Daniel Lane | Johns Hopkins School of Medicine | 1990 |
| Mitchell Lazar | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Xihong Lin | Harvard University | 2007 |
| Andrew D. Luster | Massachusetts General Hospital | |
| James L. Manley | Columbia University | |
| Sean J. Morrison | UT Southwestern | 2009 |
| Eric N. Olson | UT Southwestern | 2000 |
| Pier Paolo Pandolfi | Harvard Medical School | 2005 |
| Carol Prives | Columbia University | 1996 |
| Julius Rebek | Scripps Research Institute | 1996 |
| Clarice Reid | NHLBI | |
| Sandra Schmid | UT Southwestern | 2000 |
| John M. Sedivy | Brown University | 2009 |
| Edward I. Solomon | Stanford University | 1995, 2002 |
| Suresh Subramani | UC San Diego | |
| Inder Verma | Salk Institute for Biological Studies | 1987 |
| William T. Wickner | Dartmouth Medical School | |
| Charles R. Wira | Dartmouth College | |
| George Woude | Van Andel Research Institute | 1982 |
| Hao Wu | Harvard Medical School | |
| Nancy Zahniser | University of Colorado |