NIAID is committed to improving the availability and effectiveness of our training (T), fellowship (F), and career development (K) awards. Led by our Office of Research Training and Special Programs, we are taking a range of actions to enhance our extramural research training portfolio.
First, we will continue to implement a set of changes originally announced in our May 15, 2024 article “NIAID Adjusts Requirements for Some Career Development, Training Awards.” Most notably, NIAID is now paying increased salary levels under new career development awards—in fact, NIAID is now among the top-paying NIH institutes for career development award salary.
We introduced changes that will limit the size of Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Institutional Research Training (T32) awards so that, in turn, we can award more of them. We adjusted the eligibility criteria for Midcareer Investigator Awards in Patient-Oriented Research (K24) to focus on mid-career faculty at the associate professor level or equivalent. We also extended the research transition award (R00) phase of the Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) from 2 to 3 years.
Second, we switched to ordering fellowship applications by percentile, rather than overall impact score. As explained at Understand Paylines and Percentiles, this practice ranks applications relative to others scored by the same study section to guard against both score creep within a study section and scoring disparities among study sections. In an internal analysis, we recognized a level of scoring differentiation among study sections sufficient to merit this change.
Third, we now set paylines by activity code for most research training and career development funding opportunities. By differentiating between awards such as Mentored Research Scientist Career Development (K01) and Midcareer Investigator Awards in Patient-Oriented Research (K24), rather than grouping all K award types together into a single payline, we can respond more precisely to fluctuations in application counts and better maintain parity in success rates across activity codes.
Fourth, we intend to increase support for certain research training activity codes beyond their levels in recent years, specifically NRSA Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship (F32), Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Development (K08), and Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development (K23) awards. Granted, we do not know how many applications we will receive, how well those applications will score, or the Institute’s ultimate funding level for FY 2025; but still, we anticipate those applications will result in more awards this fiscal year.
Remember, too, that these changes are taking place against a backdrop in which NIH is Increasing Pay for Pre- and Postdoctoral Scholars and making Revisions to the NIH Fellowship Application and Review Process.
If your next step is to determine which extramural research training award best fits your needs, go to Choose an Award by Career Stage.