One of the NIH's most prominent grants is the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award. Kirschstein was a key developer for the polio vaccine and the first female director of an NIH organization, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. She believed in representing the underrepresented in the scientific workforce, according to NIH, which is a belief the NRSA programs try to represent. The NIH award grants through two programs: institutional research training grants and individual fellowships. The grants are open to graduate students, as well as undergraduates and post-doctoral researchers.
Graduate students who are part of institutional research teams can participate in the NIH's Short-Term Courses in Research Ethics program. The grants are awarded for the development, conduct and evaluation of courses that are especially targeted toward the ethics involved with the use of human subjects in research. The grants are open to nonprofit and for-profit organizations, universities, colleges, hospitals, laboratories, and government agencies. The NIH encourages applicants to list principal investigators who are minorities, women or disabled.
Gradate students can seek one of 18 grants that are available directly from member organizations of the NIH. Some programs address specific areas of research that fall under an organization's objective, such as the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's Alcohol Research Education Project Grants. Other programs have more sociological goals, such as the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke's NINDS Diversity Research Education Grants in Neuroscience, which intends to encourage Ph.D.-level research among underrepresented demographics.
Graduate students who have recently completed degrees could receive special consideration for grants and funding under a set of NIH policies developed in 2009. The NIH describes new researchers as "the innovators of the future," but it notes that the average age of researchers has grown older since 1980. To attract more new researchers, the NIH developed Early Stage Investigators policies. A few of the requirements defining new researchers includes people who are within 10 years of completing their schooling and people who have never received a significant NIH research award.
The NIH provides application forms for its research grants and fellowships on its website. The agency also provides applications for its other grant programs, such as the Small Business Innovation Research grant program, online. The NIH awards grants in three cycles every year. Most research grant applications are due first in February, with the second cycle due in June or July and third cycle in October or November.
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