NIH Director’s Pioneer Award Program (DP1 Clinical Trial Optional)
Funding Agency:
- National Institutes of Health
The NIH Director's Pioneer Award supports individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose highly innovative and broadly impactful research towards the ultimate goal of enhancing human health.
In order to support the most innovative and impactful research, the NIH recognizes the need to foster a diverse research workforce across the nation. See, e.g., Notice of NIH's Interest in Diversity, NOT-OD-20-031. Applications to this award program should reflect the full diversity of potential PD/PIs, applicant institutions, and research areas relevant to the broad mission of NIH. Researchers from diverse backgrounds, including those from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, persons with disabilities, and women are strongly encouraged to work with their institutions to develop applications for this Funding Opportunity Announcement. See, Reminder: Notice of NIH's Encouragement of Applications Supporting Individuals from Underrepresented Ethnic and Racial Groups as well as Individuals with Disabilities, NOT-OD-22-019. Since outstanding research is conducted at a broad spectrum of institutions, it benefits the national scientific enterprise for NIH to support exceptionally innovative and impactful science that represents this breadth. Therefore, this Funding Opportunity Announcement encourages applications from the full range of eligible institutions, including minority serving institutions and those serving primarily underrepresented groups, those that may be less research-intensive, and from all domestic geographic locations. Applications are welcome in all research areas broadly relevant to the mission of NIH. These areas include, but are not limited to, the behavioral, medical, natural, social, applied, and formal sciences. Research may be basic, translational, or clinical. The primary requirements are that the research be highly innovative and have the potential for unusually broad impact.
In the Pioneer Award program, emphases are on the qualities of the investigator, the innovativeness, and potential impact of the proposed research. Preliminary data and detailed experimental plans are not requested. To be considered pioneering and as an aspect of innovativeness, the proposed research must reflect substantially different ideas from those being pursued in the investigator’s current research program or elsewhere. The Pioneer Award is not intended to expand a current research program into the area of the proposed project. While the research direction may rely on the applicant’s prior work and expertise as its foundation, it cannot be an obvious extension or scale-up of a current research enterprise. Rather, the proposed project must reflect a fundamental new insight which may involve exceptionally innovative approaches and/or radically unconventional hypotheses. Applications for projects that are straightforward extensions of ongoing research should not be submitted.
Pioneer awardees are required to commit the major portion (more than 6 person-months or at least 51%) to activities supported by the Pioneer Award research project in the first three years of the project period. Effort expended toward teaching, administrative, or clinical duties should not be included in this calculation. Awardees may reduce effort to a minimum of 4 person-months (33%) and a minimum of 3 person-months (25%) in the fourth and fifth years, respectively, to help them transition to other sources of support since Pioneer Awards cannot be renewed. Applicants with current research commitments equal to 6 person-months or more must adjust their effort on existing grants during the award period to devote the required minimum effort to the Pioneer Award project. Investigators who will not be able to meet this requirement should not submit applications. Given the scientifically risky nature of the proposed research, awardees will be given unusual flexibility to pivot their research direction as warranted to maximize scientific impact during the project period.
Awards will be for $700,000 in direct costs per year, plus applicable Facilities and Administrative (F&A) costs.
September 08, 2023
Patricia Labosky, Ph.D., Office of the Director (OD), Email: PioneerAwards@mail.nih.gov