NRSA Individual Predoctoral Fellowships to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research (F31)

Effective April 9th, 2024, NIGMS will no longer participate in the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research F31 (PA-23-271​).

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Effective April 9th, 2024, NIGMS will no longer participate in the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research F31 (PA-23-271) (see NOT-GM-24-013). NIGMS will accept Diversity F31 applications for one more deadline—April 8, 2024.

To replace our participation in the Diversity F31, we have spearheaded the Advancing Research Careers (ARC) (F99/K00), a new multi-Institute and Center (IC) effort to support promising, late-stage graduate students from diverse backgrounds, for example those from underrepresented groups (see Notice of NIH's Interest in Diversity), to transition into and succeed in mentored postdoctoral research positions. Graduate students who require at least 1-2 years of predoctoral research training and are interested in pursuing mentored postdoctoral research and career development activities are encouraged to apply to the new ARC program. Students who previously applied to NIGMS for funding through the Parent F31-Diversity Notice of Funding Opportunity may be eligible to apply. For more information about ARC, see PAR-23-222 and contact Dr. Laurie Stepanek for technical assistance.

Diversity F31

The purpose of the NRSA Individual Predoctoral Fellowship to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research (F31) fellowship award is to enhance the diversity of the health-related research workforce by supporting the research training of predoctoral students from population groups that have been shown to be underrepresented in the biomedical research workforce. Such individuals include those from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, those with disabilities, and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. For a detailed description of these underrepresented groups, see NOT-OD-20-031.

NIGMS expects all applications for the diversity fellowship to include a letter from the Institute certifying the candidate would be contributing to diversity in biomedical research. Applications that do not contain this letter may be withdrawn before review.

Applicants for the diversity fellowships must be advanced in their graduate study. Typically, at the time of application students are expected to be in their third or fourth year of graduate training and to have progressed to Ph.D. candidacy by the time of award. In addition, applicants must have identified a research sponsor and a dissertation project that must be in basic biomedical sciences relevant to the NIGMS mission, and includes a promising approach to the problem as well as strong training potential. This award provides an opportunity for promising predoctoral students to obtain individualized, mentored research training from outstanding faculty sponsors while conducting well-defined research projects in fundamental biomedical science. The proposed mentored research training is expected to clearly enhance the individual’s potential to develop into a productive, independent research scientist.

For information on various factors that are considered in making funding decisions, please see https://www.nigms.nih.gov/Training/IndivPredoc/Pages/default.aspx and https://www.nigms.nih.gov/research/pages/policies.aspx.​

For more information about this fellowship, see PA-23-271​, or contact Dr. Jeremy McIntyre or Dr. Joyce Stamm.

Predoctoral Fellowships FAQs