NIA Training Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Answers to common questions about training

NIA provides answers to common training-related questions. Please note that these answers are specific to NIAs procedures and activities.

For general information, please view the NIA Training and Career Development webpage .

Should I have multiple mentors?

Reviewers will criticize an application that has insufficient mentorship, but on the other hand, it is possible to have too many mentors! In short, you should have enough mentors to cover all areas of expertise in your research and career development plan, and when you have multiple mentors, you should explain how they will work together to support your career development.

For fellowship (F) awards, applicants must identify at least one sponsor. You may wish to identify an additional co-sponsor if your research is interdisciplinary, or if your primary sponsor has limited experience in mentoring researchers at your career stage. However, since fellows are typically quite early stage, reviewers want to see that you have one sponsor taking primary responsibility for your training and career advancement. So, if you have more than one sponsor, use your training plan and sponsor statements to reassure reviewers that you won’t fall through the cracks!

For a career development applicant, the K award is often your final award before reaching full independence as an investigator. Therefore, it is critical to identify a mentor who can advise you for each aspect of your research plan. Career development applicants typically have a team of three or more mentors, with one individual identified as the primary mentor. Reviewers want to see that you have developed relationships with each mentor, including a realistic plan to meet regularly. So, don’t pad your list of mentors with individuals that you haven’t or who don’t add clearly relevant expertise to your team or who can’t strongly convey a clear and specific plan to support your career development and pathway to independence. Some individuals may provide more limited technical support of your project, for instance, sharing data, reagents, or equipment, or providing technical advice on a limited portion of the research aims. These individuals should be listed as collaborators or consultants, rather than mentors, and should provide a letter of support.

Back to top

What should I consider while preparing a training or career development plan?

In addition to a detailed description of your research plan, fellowship and career development awards also require a training or career development plan. This plan is nearly as important as your research plan! Here are a few tips to craft an excellent career development plan:

1. Individualize it. Your career development plan should meet your personal career goals; it shouldn’t be a cookie cutter document that could apply to any trainee. For instance, getting teaching experience might be important for a grad student who plans to pursue an academic faculty job, but not for one who plans to pursue biotech research.
2. Integrate it with your research plan. Your career development plan should enable you to build all of the skills needed to complete your research plan. This will likely include both classroom or workshop participation and hands-on learning. Don’t neglect training in bioinformatics or statistics!
3. Coordinate with your mentors. Demonstrate to reviewers that your mentors support your career development. Are you learning a skill from a collaborator? Have that collaborator state in their letter that they are eager to teach you. Are you signing up for formal coursework? Have your mentor state in their letter that they support you taking time for formal courses.
4. Be specific. Which course will you sign up for? How frequently will you meet with mentors? Providing specific details demonstrates that you’ve thoughtfully considered the career development plan.

Back to top

Can I submit an application that overlaps with my mentor’s award(s)?

When you submit an application for a fellowship or mentored K award, your specific aims cannot be identical to or significantly overlapping with your mentor’s awards or applications. This policy is both to prevent the NIH from paying for the same research twice, and to ensure that fellowship and career development applicants develop their own research plans.

In addition to avoiding identical aims, beware of proposing “me-too” studies, where the applicant conducts a project that is a close repeat of the mentor’s earlier research, for instance conducting the same set of experiments in a new cell line. This type of repeat requires little intellectual input by the applicant and is therefore inappropriate for fellowship or career development awards.

This overlap policy creates a challenge for researchers – since fellowship and some career development awards provide very little research funding, where should the research funding come from for a fellowship or career development project? NIH expects that fellowship and career development projects will be highly related (but not identical) to the mentor’s research grants, such that those research grants can be used to fund research costs for the fellowship or career development project.

For more details, read the NINDS policy on project overlap for fellowship applications (PDF, 128K). NIA follows the same policy and applies it to mentored K awards as well.

Back to top

Can I have two applications with duplicate or overlapping aims?

You may not have two applications with duplicate or highly overlapping aims under review at the NIH at the same time. This means:

• You may not submit applications with highly overlapping aims to two different funding opportunities or for different activity codes at the same time (for instance, the K22 and K99, or the R36 and F31).
• You may not resubmit an application for the same funding opportunity while the original application is still under review.
• You may not submit a new application to any funding opportunity if that application has duplicate or highly overlapping aims to another application you have under review.

But what does “under review” really mean? Your application is considered under review up until a reviewer summary statement is posted to your eRA commons account. Once you receive that score and summary statement, reach out to your assigned program officer and ask their advice about resubmission.

Back to top

How do I contact NIA with training and development application questions?

If you have general or policy questions (e.g., am I eligible for this award? What award is right for me? What’s the best timing to apply?), - email NIATraining@mail.nih.gov with an overview of your questions and a recent copy of your biosketch. If you have scientific questions or want general scientific feedback, e-mail NIATraining@mail.nih.gov , tell us which notice of funding opportunity you’re interested in, and include a one-page overview of your specific aims. We’ll identify the right program officer for your project and forward your aims. We recommend that all applicants seek program officer feedback on their aims! A rough draft is fine, it’s better to get feedback early in the process.

If you run into technical challenges while submitting an application, visit the eRA Service Desk where you can read FAQs, submit a web ticket for support, or call a toll-free hotline.

If you have questions after submitting an application, such as needing clarification on a Summary Statement or wondering whether to prepare a resubmission, contact the assigned Program Officer on your application. Be sure to include your application number.

Back to top

How do re-entry supplements work?

It’s not unusual for researchers to step away from the bench or clinic for a variety of reasons, including to raise children or to recover from an illness or injury. Re-entry supplements can help these individuals return to research by funding the first year of salary upon their return.

Re-entry Supplements are supplemental awards that can be added onto existing, funded NIH research grants to cover salary and fringe benefits, supplies, travel, and publication costs for a new lab member conducting full time or part-time research for one year. To be funded under a re-entry supplement, you will need to identify a new lab that already holds NIH funding, and work with the PI of that lab to submit an application on your behalf. If you are still looking for a new lab, you can search the NIH Reporter to find NIH and NIA-funded researchers in your institution or your region.

Am I eligible for a Katz Early Stage Investigator R01 research grant?

For new faculty members, successfully applying for an R01 award is a major milestone. This can be especially challenging when striking out in a new research direction. NIH developed the Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator R01 as a research grant that is reserved for early stage investigators (ESIs) who are pivoting to a new research area for which no preliminary data exist. The Katz has two active funding opportunities, one for basic experimental studies in humans , and one for non-clinical trials research .

When and how can I start building relationships with NIA Program Officers?

Many early career researchers don’t realize that NIH program officers (POs) are an accessible resource to grant applicants and awardees. A PO plays a critical role in overseeing and managing research grants within their scientific area of expertise. They are also excited to get to know the researcher community and provide guidance on funding opportunities. So, when and how should you contact a program officer?

Who oversees the peer review process?

Many NIH applicants are familiar with the idea of a study section – a group of experts in a scientific health-related field who read and review a set of applications. Every NIH study section is guided by an important NIH staff member: the scientific review officer.

A scientific review officer (SRO) at the NIH is responsible for coordinating the peer review process. They assemble a panel of experts to evaluate the applications, manage the review meetings, and ensure the fairness and integrity of the process. When you receive reviewer comments from the three assigned reviewers of your application, it is the SRO who combines their feedback into a single Summary Statement and for discussed applications, provides a summary of the discussion.

Back to top

When should I contact my Scientific Review Officer (SRO) about a peer review?

From the time an application is submitted through the review meeting, your SRO is your primary contact for any questions related to the review process or your application status. There are a few specific occasions when you should definitely reach out to your SRO. If you would like to share post-submission materials with your reviewers, you should submit those via your SRO. For instance, if you had a paper published after you submitted your application, but before reviewers have met to discuss your application, you can provide a citation to that paper as post-submission materials. Your SRO will guide you regarding allowed materials, formatting, and deadlines. An SRO will be assigned to your application within a couple of weeks after you submit; you can find that person’s name and contact information on your eRA commons account.

If you find a serious problem with your Summary Statement, for instance a clearly biased statement from a reviewer, you should bring that up with your SRO, and your program officer may be able to provide additional insight. If you want to have a general scientific discussion about the summary statement, or get advice about how best to address the reviewer comments, your program officer is the best point of contact.

Another great reason to reach out to an SRO is if you are a faculty member who is interested in serving as a reviewer! The NIH Center for Scientific Review is always looking for qualified reviewers, and talking to your own SRO is a great way to get started.

As always, if you’re not sure who to reach out to with a question related to NIA training and career development awards, feel free to contact NIATraining@mail.nih.gov .

Back to top

What is the role of a Grants Management Specialist?

Grants managements specialists (GMS) are the budget and administrative experts who help with the day-to-day management and administration of the financial aspects of the award and ensure that the NIH and awardees fulfill requirements of laws, regulations, and administrative policies. The GMS is the official who sends your Notice of Grant Award; you can find their name and contact information there.

One of the first points of interaction you will have with a GMS may be before your grant is even awarded. The GMS will reach out to you for JIT (Just in Time Information). This is typically time-sensitive information that was not submitted as part of the application and is often requested when your application is being considered for funding. Depending on the nature of your grant, JIT typically requested might include: confirmation of approvals of your Institutional Review Board and Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee as well as compliance with federal regulations for the protection of Human Subjects. As part of JIT, the GMS will also request Other Support for any senior/key personnel in the application. Other support includes existing grant funding and all other resources made available to the senior/key personnel in support of their research endeavors.

Once an award is made, the GMS helps with the day-to-day management and administration of the financial aspects of the award and ensures that the NIH and awardees fulfill the requirements of laws, regulations, and administrative policies. If you have budget-related questions that arise for your awarded grant, you can reach out to your GMS. The GMS should also be consulted if there are any significant changes or unexpected events that occur during the project grant period. For example, perhaps you and your mentor are moving to a new institution, and you’d like to bring your fellowship with you. Alternatively, you may be eligible to reduce the effort on your K award after you’ve been awarded an R01. In addition, it is possible you may have experienced significant delays in recruiting individuals to a study and have accrued an unobligated balance that you want to be able to use in future years of the grant.

Along with reviewing the Annual Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR), the GMS also reviews the awardees’ budget spending for any pattern of accelerated or delayed expenditures, which will inform decisions about funding the additional outyears of the grant. NIH Policy allows grantees a level of discretion when making changes to budgeting or grant-related activities. However, some changes require written Prior Approval . The eRA Prior Approval Module can be used to request the following prior approval requests: Carryover, Change of PD/PI, and No Cost Extensions. All requests that require prior NIH approval must be made in writing to GMS at least 30 days before the proposed change.

Finally, once your award has ended, the GMS will close out the award within the NIH system, confirming that all required administrative actions and work on an award has been completed by the recipient and by NIH. This is especially important for transition awards such as the K99/R00 and F99/R00, where the initial phase must be terminated before the second phase can begin.

Back to top

How do I choose the right NIA Postdoc to Faculty Transition Award?

The NIA offers several different career development (K) awards that are applicable to postdocs who intend to transition into a faculty position. The K99/R00 is for postdocs seeking 1-2 additional years of postdoctoral training before moving into a tenure-track position. The K22 is for postdocs who are nearly ready to transition to a tenure-track faculty position, with no additional postdoctoral training needed. The K01 is typically a career development award for faculty members, but if you’re a postdoc who has already negotiated a faculty position, the K01 might be a good fit for you as well.

Here are a few typical profiles of postdocs who might fit these different awards:

• If you are a postdoc with a vision for research in your own lab, but you still have quite a bit to learn before you’re ready to embark on that research independently, you should consider the K99.
• If you are a postdoc with a strong plan for independent research in your own lab, and ready to enter the tenure-track faculty job market, you should consider the K22.
• If you are still a postdoc right now, but you are considering or have accepted a faculty job offer, and you expect to start that faculty job in less than a year, you should consider the K01.
• If you are a postdoc who has been promoted to a non-tenure track faculty level position such as ‘research scientist’ or ‘instructor,’ and you want to continue mentored career development at your current institution, you should also consider the K01.
• If you are an international postdoc, but you’ve had more than four years of postdoctoral experience so you are no longer eligible to apply for the K99/R00, you should consider research grants for early career researchers .

Explore our new Postdoc to Faculty Transition Award webpage to understand all of the major differences between the K99/R00, K22, and K01. If you have questions about which award is right for you, or you’d like to receive feedback on your aims, reach out to NIATraining@mail.nih.gov .

Back to top

What is a letter of support?

Letters of support are a space for collaborators, consultants, or other contributors to your proposed research project to convey their enthusiasm for your project, confirm their participation, and discuss the tangible support they will provide toward the execution of the project. Letters of support should be project-focused and detailed, highlighting the exact type of support that each contributor will provide and briefly outlining their background that makes them qualified to give this support. This support may include: allowing you to access equipment, datasets, or other research resources; training you on a technique that is not a specialty in your lab; or even completing portions of your project as a full collaborator. They should indicate whether this support is available to anyone on request or if they will provide it only to you. Letters of support are not required; however, if you are working with anyone outside of your lab to complete your proposed research, these letters are important for demonstrating to reviewers that you will have the support you need to complete your planned research. A typical letter is less than one page long, and all of your letters together cannot be more than six pages long. Your letter of support writers will need to share their letters with you so you can attach them to the application.

Back to top

What is a letter of reference?

Rather than project-focused, letters of reference are person-focused, highlighting your experience and potential as a researcher and your qualifications to carry out the proposed research. Unlike letters of support, letters of reference should come from individuals who will not be directly involved in the project proposed in your application. However, these letters should come from people who are very familiar with your qualifications as a researcher. Common letter-writers include past mentors and advisors, former collaborators, or even course professors that you know well. Current mentors should not write a letter of reference, as they are invested in your proposed research project. They should instead contribute to the Plans and Statements of Mentors and Co-Mentors. Talk to your reference letter writers ahead of time to discuss what should be included in the letter. They should discuss your skills, experience, and potential as a researcher. Letter writers can also include personal anecdotes that highlight your abilities or passion for your field of study. For fellowships and career development applications, 3-5 letters of reference are required. Your reference letter writers should submit their letters directly via the reference letter portal in eRA commons . Check on the status of your reference letters and send your referees reminders as needed; if your reference letters are not received by the due date, your application will be considered incomplete.

Back to top

What are the different types of funding opportunities?

You likely already know that all NIH applications need to be submitted through a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). In fact, one of our top tips to prospective applicants is to carefully read NOFOs before applying because they include background information, application requirements, review questions, and other essential information to guide applicants. However, many applicants do not realize that there are different types of NOFOs, which can have implications for the review and funding of your application. NOFO types include program announcements and requests for applications. Every NOFO number indicates what kind of NOFO an announcement is in the first part of the number.

Where can I find historical data on NIH application success rates?

NIH defines “success rate” as the percentage of reviewed grant applications that eventually receive funding. NIH provides two public sources of data on success rates: the NIH Data Book for quick visualizations of overall trends, and NIH Success Rates for detailed break downs of funding over the last 10 years.

The NIH Data Book provides a wealth of data on funding trends across NIH. If you are interested in success rates for fellowship (F) or career development award (K) applications, you’ll want to look under Success and Funding Rates for Non-Research Project Grants. Here you can see, for instance, that across the whole NIH, 32% of the reviewed Career Development Award applications were funded in fiscal year 2023, and that percentage has been approximately steady for the last 10 years. You can even export the data if you’d like to see more detail, like the difference in success rates between different K award types.

However, budgets and funding policies can vary quite significantly across NIH institutes and centers. If you would like to know success rates at the National Institute on Aging, in particular (or any other individual institute), you’ll have to wade through the data provided for download on the NIH Success Rates page. Expand the “Training and Research Career Development Programs” bar if you are interested in F and K success rates. In the provided Excel spreadsheets you can see, for instance, that NIA funded 34% of reviewed K99 applications in 2023.

You won’t find any more detailed breakdowns of application success rates besides the ones provided in the NIH Success Rates page, however it’s important to remember that these aggregate numbers don’t tell the whole story. If you are applying for research project grants including R01s, remember that an early stage investigator or new investigator status can improve your chance of success. At the NIA, it’s also important to remember that we have separate budgets for applications related to Alzheimer’s Disease and its Related Dementias (AD/ADRD), and for all other aging-related applications (General). Typically, AD/ADRD applications have much higher success rates.

It might be tempting to shop around for the NIH institute, or the award mechanism, that has the highest success rate. Remember, though, that these are generalized success rates. Your individual application will have its best chance of success if you submit it to the NIH institute and to the award that is the best fit for your research project. If you have questions about which award is right for you, and whether the NIA is the best institute for your research, reach out to us at NIATraining@mail.nih.gov .

Back to top

How can I tell if my application is a clinical trial?

Correctly classifying your application as a clinical trial (CT) is important because the failure to do may result in your application being withdrawn. CTs have additional regulatory and policy requirements, meaning that, if your application includes a CT and you don’t identify it as such, you are missing components of your application.

Many career development (K) programs have different funding opportunity announcements that allow or disallow CTs, and it is especially important you review the NOFO to which you are applying. Additionally, fellowship (F) programs do not allow applicants to lead independent CTs but will allow applicants to gain research experience in an established CT being led by a sponsor or co-sponsor. Submitting a fellowship application that includes an independent CT could result in your application being withdrawn. Lastly, institutional training (T) programs do not allow trainees to lead independent clinical trials but do allow clinical trial research experiences.

To help applicants to determine whether their project includes a CT, the PHS Human Subjects and Clinical Trials Information form includes the following four questions:

• Does the study involve human participants?
• Are the participants prospectively assigned to an intervention?
• Is the study designed to evaluate the effect of the intervention on the participants?
• Is the effect being evaluated a health-related biomedical or behavioral outcome?

If the answer to all four of these questions is yes, even if for only one aim or sub-aim, the project is classified as a CT. However, many applicants can get tripped up while answering the questions, so let’s take a closer look at some key elements.

Prospective assignment is “a pre-defined process (e.g., randomization) specified in an approved protocol that stipulates the assignment of research subjects (individually or in clusters) to one or more arms (e.g., intervention, placebo, or other control) of a CT.” Importantly, participants are considered prospectively assigned even if there is only a single treatment group, meaning that all participants receive the same intervention. In other words, a project can meet the definition of a CT even if there is not a comparison group.

An intervention is defined as “manipulation of the subject or subject’s environment for the purpose of modifying one or more health-related biomedical or behavioral processes and/or endpoints.” This definition includes drugs, biologics, delivery systems (e.g., face to face or virtual), strategies to change health behavior, diagnostic strategies, and more. As you can see, the definition is quite broad, meaning that most manipulations to human participants count as interventions, with the exception of manipulations or tasks used expressly for measurement and not to modify health or behavior.

The last question asks whether you plan to evaluate the effect of the intervention on a health-related biomedical or behavioral outcome. The question does not just mean whether measuring the effect of an intervention on a health outcome is the main or primary purpose of the study – the question applies to any aim or sub-aim of the project. Most NIH-funded studies are health-related, but there are some exceptions. An example is a feasibility and acceptability study that only assesses participants’ opinions and preferences about an intervention without measuring efficacy or effectiveness of the intervention on health-related biomedical or behavioral outcomes. Please note that even preliminary efficacy testing could lead a study to be classified as a CT.

Another important factor to consider is that some notices of funding opportunities call for Basic Experimental Studies involving Humans , or BESH. BESH sit at the intersection of basic science and CTs. All BESH are CTs, however BESH serve the purpose of understanding fundamental aspects of phenomena without specific application towards processes or products in mind. A BESH intervention is often an experimental manipulation being used as a probe to understand a basic phenomenon, process, or the mechanism of action of the manipulation. BESH health-related outcomes are often biomedical or behavioral phenomenon or processes, or the mechanism of action of a biomedical or behavioral manipulation. Note that outcomes do not have to be, for example, long-term improvements in health to be considered health-related and can include benign, transitory endpoints, which is often the case for BESH.

Back to top

How do I interpret NIA funding policies?

NIA publishes its funding line policies on its website for each fiscal year. These policies include paylines for different types of funding announcements. In order to use the published payline tables you will need 1) to confirm your application has been assigned to NIA, 2) know the type of funding opportunity used, and 3) have your Summary Statement or eRA Commons account available.

Your application ID will have two letters in the fourth and fifth position which denotes the Institute or Center (IC) organizational code that is assigned your application. NIA’s organizational code is “AG”. The paylines published are specific to applications assigned and coded to NIA.

The type of funding opportunity can be determined by looking at the notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) number that you applied through. There are three major types of funding opportunities. Parent announcements are broad funding announcements that are unsolicited, investigator-initiated research whose NOFO number begins with “PA-”and usually have the word “Parent” in the NOFO title. Program Announcements are unsolicited requests for applications from an IC (e.g., NIA) or several ICs and either have set-aside funds “PAS-”, or special receipt, referral, or review considerations “PAR-”. PA, PAR and PAS usually have three receipt dates per year for three years. Finally, there are Request for Applications which are solicited requests by an IC for a specific, well-defined area of scientific interest and the NOFO number will begin with “RFA-”. RFAs usually have only one receipt date.

You will notice that under the second payline table (those Priority Score-based paylines) NIA publishes the payline for “Parent career development awards” and “Parent fellowship awards”. If you applied to a Parent Announcement with a NOFO beginning with “PA-” and the word “parent” in the funding opportunity title, these rows will apply to your application. After initial scientific review has occurred you can view your impact score on your Summary Statement or under the application’s Review tab in your eRA Commons. You should compare this number to NIA’s published payline. Impact Scores begin at 10, being the best possible score, and increase from there. Your score will need to be at or below the number published in the payline to be recommended for funding. Please read this NIA blog post for more detail on how your impact score affects your likelihood of funding.

However, if your application was in response to a solicited NOFO (e.g., PAS, PAR, or RFA) the NOFO may have reserved funds, called allocations stated within the NOFO text (see Section II. Award Information). NIA funds solicited research mostly in overall impact score order until we deplete the money set aside. We say “mostly” because we may, with justification, skip over some applications to fund others that better meet a priority or programmatic need.

Back to top

What is NIH RePORTER and how can I use it while preparing my grant application?

NIH RePORTER is a publicly available database of grants funded by NIH, going back to 1985. There are two main ways that RePORTER can help applicants at all career stages in preparing their applications: 1) searching funded projects for a variety of purposes and 2) using NIH Matchmaker to find Program Officers and similar projects.

The search features of RePORTER are robust, allowing queries on a variety of different grant elements. You can search by institute to see the kinds of research NIA funds to help get a sense for our research priorities. You can also search by notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) to identify grants that have been funded through a specific call, which can help identify collaborators or individuals to potentially contact to discuss their experiences. For example, if you’re curious about investigators who have received K02 funding to for "protected time" as a newly independent scientist, you can search on the current K02 NOFO, PA-24-179 . Lastly, you may want to search by activity code (e.g., K99, R36, T32) to find investigators who were successful in getting funding to ask them for advice, particularly if they’re at your institution. For T32s specifically, applicants are advised to avoid duplication of T32 programs at their own institution as well as at other institutions, so searching for currently active T32s can be a great way to see the landscape of training programs.

NIH Matchmaker is another useful component of RePORTER. It is a free text field where you can input your abstract and aims and view similar projects or program officers. Viewing similar projects can be another way to find potential collaborators while viewing similar program officers will let you see which NIH institutes are funding research in your area as well as the program officer with the most relevant grant portfolio. As we highly recommend speaking to a program officer before submitting your grant application and it can be difficult navigating NIH’s website to find the appropriate person, NIH Matchmaker is a great resource for applicants.

Back to top

Does NIH have any family friendly policies?

Yes. If you are a National Research Service Award (NRSA) fellowship (F) recipient or institutional training (T) appointee, you can receive your regular stipend for up to 60 calendar days (equivalent to 8 work weeks) of parental leave per year for the adoption or the birth of a child. Either parent is eligible for parental leave, and parental leave is only one of the leave, part-time, and extension policies available to NRSA-supported investigators. In addition, NRSA-supported investigators are eligible to receive $3,000 per budget period for costs for childcare provided by a licensed childcare provider. See the NRSA childcare costs FAQs for more details.

Career development (K) awards typically require you to maintain a full-time appointment and to devote 75% effort to the K award activities. However, you may request adjustments to your appointment status or percent effort for personal or family situations such as parental leave, childcare, elder care, medical conditions, or a disability, for a period not to exceed 12 continuous months. In addition, when faced with a critical life event such as the birth of a child, K award recipients and first-time recipients of NIH research project grants can apply for administrative supplements of up to $70,000 in direct costs to sustain the investigator’s research during the critical life event. You can use this funding for additional personnel, computational services, supplies, or equipment.

If you are a postdoc or faculty member who has taken up to 8 years away from research to care for children or other responsibilities, you can apply for a re-entry supplement. This supplement is meant to fund your salary as you return to health-related research through a mentored research experience within an NIH-funded research group. Additionally, if you are an early stage investigator (ESI) who has experienced a lapse in their research or research training or have experienced periods of less than full-time effort during the 10-year ESI period, you can request an extension of your ESI eligibility. Generally, the period of extension will be equivalent to the time away.

Wondering how to communicate the impact of life events on your scientific productivity in your next NIH grant application? Biosketch guidelines now allow explanations of how personal circumstances may have delayed an individual’s transition to an independent career or reduced their scientific productivity.

Back to top

What do I need to know about fellowship application reviews at NIH?

The review criteria for F30, F31, F32, and F99 focus on three topics. Reviewers will score “Candidate preparedness and potential” from 1 to 9, considering the candidate’s preparedness to undertake the proposed research and their potential for successfully completing their research and career goals. Reviewers will also score “Research Training Plan” from 1 to 9, focusing on the innovation and rigor of the proposed research, as well as the suitability of the proposed research and training plans to advance the candidate’s career goals. Finally, reviewers will assess “Commitment to Candidate” as either adequate or inadequate. Here, reviewers will evaluate the commitment of the mentor and the institution to supporting the candidate’s research training plan, focusing on contributions to the current plan, rather than on past track record. As a reminder, in the NIH 9-point scoring scale, 1 is exceptional and 9 is poor.

How can you best make sure your application fits the new review criteria?

1. Review the Revisions to the NIH Fellowship Application and Review Process website to learn more about the changes.
2. Check the specific review criteria in the notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) to which you are applying. All NOFO’s list the full review criteria in Section V, this will include the updated criteria!
3. Be sure to follow the Fellowship Application Instructions. These are available on the NIH How to Apply website .
4. Provide updated instructions to your Reference Letter writers. NIH is updating instructions for referees, so that they focus their letters on the new criteria that reviewers will be evaluating. Updated instructions will be available soon on NIH’s Reference Letter website .
5. Use caution when working from past, sample fellowship applications. Past, successful applications are still a great resource as you develop your own application. However, these past applications were written to satisfy the prior review criteria and developed according to the prior instructions – your application will look different! This includes fellowship sample applications available from NIH .

Back to top

What is the benefit of having an ESI status?

ESI applications with meritorious scores are typically prioritized for funding by NIA. For example, in fiscal year 2024 , NIA funded the top 25% of ESI general aging-focused R01 applications compared to only the top 16% of R01 applications from established investigators. In fiscal year 2023, NIA received 478 R01 or equivalent applications from ESIs and funded 126 (26.5%) of those applications, compared to 20,575 R01 or equivalent applications from established investigators and funded 4,110 (20%) of those applications.

Additionally, certain funding opportunities are targeted specifically towards ESIs, including:

• Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Project Grant R01 supports an innovative project in an area of science that represents a change in the ESI’s research direction and for which no preliminary data exist.
• Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award in Aging K76 is for ESIs who have begun to establish research programs and are ready to assume leadership roles.
• NIBIB Trailblazer Award for New and Early Stage Investigators R21 supports exploratory research that integrates engineering and the physical sciences with the life or biomedical sciences.

See NIH Funding Policies and Paylines for more funding and payline details.

Back to top

Am I eligible for an ESI extension?

You may be eligible for an extension of your ESI status period if you have a lapse in your research or research training or were not able to work on your research full-time. NIH considers ESI extension requests for childbirth, medical concerns, disability, family care responsibilities, natural disasters, or active-duty military service.

You may apply for an extension any time after the eRA Commons has calculated and displayed your ESI status. Requests for extensions should be made in whole months (for instance, if you spent 6 months and 3 weeks away from research, an extension request of 7 months is appropriate). Please note that the processes for requesting an ESI extension and an extension on K99 eligibility are different.

Back to top

How do I make an ESI extension request?

To request an ESI extension, look for the ESI Extension Request link found in the Education section of your Personal Profile in eRA Commons .

For step-by-step instructions, see the ESI Extension Request online help and the ESI Status Extension Request video tutorial .

Most decisions are made within a few weeks, although it may take longer if there are large numbers of requests or if there are unanswered questions after the first request. If your ESI extension request has been granted, you will receive an email response at the email address designated in your eRA Commons account. In addition, the ESI indicator in your eRA Commons Account will change and the end date of your ESI status period will be modified to reflect the extension granted.

If you have any questions about ESI status or extensions, please review the Frequently Asked Questions page or reach out to esi_extensions@od.nih.gov .

Back to top

What are the differences between various NIH team roles and how do team roles affect eligibility for grants?

PrincipaI Investigators (PI) lead the research team and are responsible for all project activities from development to analysis and reporting. Typically, eligibility requirements for specific programs apply only to the PI. For example, some awards, like the K76 , require the candidate to have received independent funding at the faculty level and have early-stage investigator (ESI) status. As long as the PI meets those criteria, it does not matter whether other senior/key personnel on the project do.

However, NIH does allow for multiple PIs on some grant programs, which means that there is more than one person designated as PI. Note: To avoid confusion with the term co-investigator, described below, NIH does not use the term co-PI; instead, Multiple Principal Investigator (MPI) is used to describe a PI on an application with more than one PI. For an MPI application, eligibility criteria apply to all PIs. For example, the Katz R01 program requires that PIs have ESI status and that the proposed project represents a change in research direction. MPI applications for a Katz award require that all PIs are ESIs and changing their research direction.

Co-investigators are not to be confused with MPIs. While co-investigators often have significant scientific contributions to the design and implementation of a research study and are listed as senior/key personnel, they do not have overall leadership of the project the way that a PI does. Please note that researchers with ESI status can be listed on a project as a co-investigator and retain their ESI status. For early career researchers, being listed as a co-investigator is a way to get some credit for your contribution to a grant without having your role on the grant impact your future ESI or new investigator status. For instance, a postdoc who assists their mentor in crafting an R01 may be listed as a co-investigator on that grant. That postdoc could still later submit their own R01 as a PI with ESI status.

NIH research grants also frequently include collaborators, consultants, and other significant contributors. Collaborators are typically researchers with different expertise from the PIs and/or co-investigators who bring their unique skillset to a project. Consultants typically serve specific and discrete purposes on a project, such as providing technical assistance or advice. Other significant contributors (OSC) are those who participate in the overall design and implementation of a project but who don’t devote effort to a project. A common example of an OSC are mentors on career development (K) awards. Lastly, fellowship (F) awards also include sponsors, who are responsible for the mentorship and training of fellows.

Back to top