Use this tool when the user asks which institutions get the most NIH money — 'top NIH-funded universities', 'where does NCI money go', 'rank research hospitals by R01 funding'. It also yields the entity_id that get_institution_profile, mechanism_mix and funding_growth take. Ranks institutions by competitive RPG-research NIH funding (R01 baseline), excluding intramural/contracts/centers/career/training, de-duplicated on core_project_num; NULL total_funding is not reported, never $0. Its total_funding is RPG-research-only and is NOT comparable to funding_trend's all-mechanism total. Bounds: limit 1-50 (default 20), offset 0-100000, fiscal years 1985-2100, ic 2-64 chars (NIH abbreviation or code, e.g. NCI or CA), sort_by one of composite | funding_scale | portfolio_breadth | new_grant_activity | avg_award_size.