We are a week away from January 25, a key date in the world of NIH grants as it is the first standard Cycle I application due date for certain activity codes. The deadline for investigator-initiated R01 applications is about 10 days later, on February 5.
Suppose you submitted an investigator-initiated R01 application today, January 17, 2024, and, ultimately, NIAID chooses to issue an award. When should you expect to receive project funding and begin your research?
The answer is December 2024. In a nutshell, your application will undergo peer review in June or July 2024, then it will proceed to second-level review at the October Advisory Council meeting. About 6 to 8 weeks later, assuming your application received a score within NIAID’s payline and there are no delays due to a bar to award or similar administrative issue, you will receive your award and be able to start your project.
Learn Our Cycles
Knowing when NIAID will begin funding your project is essential—it’s necessary for hiring support staff or arranging subcontracts or even timing a renewal application. Thus, as you prepare an application, you’ll want to determine your likely project start date.
Many notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs) list the application due date, peer review date, Advisory Council round, and earliest project start date in the “Key Dates” section of Part 1. Overview Information, which you can use for planning purposes.
For example, if your application for Bat Immunology Network Research Projects (R01, Clinical Trial Not Allowed) is successful, you can expect an earliest project start date of April 2025.
However, many other NOFOs simply say “standard dates apply,” so you’ll want to determine the cycle to which you’re applying—Cycle I, Cycle II, or Cycle III—by referencing the next due date listed at Standard Due Dates for competing applications.
Now, suppose you already have an investigator-initiated R01 award with a 5-year project period, set to end in July 2026. If you want to renew the grant, what’s the latest you should submit a competing renewal application so that, if successful, you’ll receive a renewed award before the current award expires? The answer is November 25, 2025—applications sent for that Cycle III deadline for R01 renewal applications would undergo peer review in February or March 2026, then proceed to the May 2026 Advisory Council round, and have a start date in July 2026.
Exact Timelines Will Vary
The timeline from application submission to project start date is usually 10 to 12 months. However, several variables can impact the timeline within a cycle, such as application type (e.g., new, renewal, or resubmission) and peer review outcome.
Relative to the investigator-initiated new R01 application due date, a renewal or resubmission R01 application isn’t due until 1 month later but is still part of the same application cycle.
Likewise, AIDS-related R01 applications aren’t due for an additional 3 months beyond the non-AIDS investigator-initiated new R01 application due date but are still considered for funding within the same cycle. Our expedited process for AIDS-related applications allows us to shorten the timeline from application submission to Council review to 6 months.
Small business grant applications also progress through review and preaward processes on an expedited timeline, akin to AIDS-related applications. Note, unlike some NIH institutes and centers, NIAID does not hold a special August Council meeting for Cycle III small business grant applications.
The best-scoring applications, if they don’t have any special issues that need Council approval, will go to expedited Council for second-level review, which allows us to fund them faster. Some applications that miss the payline may be chosen for selective pay or an R56-Bridge award at the end of the fiscal year.
Continuous Submission can also provide an abbreviated timeline to appointed members of NIH advisory groups and chartered standing study sections.
Presubmission Requirements Take Time
When you’re planning to apply, be sure to account for the presubmission process, which itself can be time consuming.
You may need to meet conditional deadlines before your application submission date, such as the 6-week prior approval process for big grants or the 10-week prior consultation process for investigator-initiated clinical trials.
Plus, you’ll need to add plenty of time for any collaborators, whom you’re counting on for letters of support, biographical sketches for key personnel, and budget information for subawards, to provide that information.
Your institution likely has an internal deadline as well. So you may need to begin your application earlier than you'd expected to meet your target project start date.
Cycle I Calendar Placement
Think of Cycle I as being the first review and award cycle not because the January 25 due date for certain application types is near the start of the calendar year, but instead because Cycle I awards are paid at the start of our fiscal year. Cycle II and Cycle III awards are paid within that same fiscal year.
Often, NIH plans major policy changes to take effect beginning with applications submitted for Cycle I due dates. As it happens, there are no major changes coming on January 25, 2024, but already we know that January 25, 2025, will include implementation of NIH’s Simplified Peer Review Framework.
Thinking Strategically
This article might complicate how you think of NIAID Paylines, which are funding cut-off points for grant applications. Specifically, the payline posted when you apply for a grant may well shift by the time NIAID is ready to issue an award, as the next fiscal year’s appropriation and the volume of incoming applications can impact our paylines in the meantime.
However, it is not true that applications submitted for different review and award cycles within a fiscal year are held against different paylines. If NIAID increases a payline during the fiscal year, we circle back to pay any applications from earlier cycles that are within the newly raised fiscal year payline.
Another common misconception is that applications in Cycle III receive awards more quickly, given the looming end-of-fiscal-year deadline for NIAID to spend its appropriation from Congress. However, at NIAID, there is no significant correlation between Advisory Council round and time to award. We monitor that metric, and strive to issue awards at the same pace, regardless of cycle.
Lastly, returning to the earlier scenario of an R01 award that will end in July 2026, you could apply even earlier to allow yourself time to complete a resubmission application should the initial renewal application not score well in review. In that case, you’d try to submit your application by March 5, 2025. If the application scored outside of our payline, you would still have sufficient time to revise and resubmit by November 5, 2025.