NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Neuroscience Development for Advancing the Careers of a Diverse Workforce (R25): Limited Submission Opportunity

Internal Limited Submission Deadline to the Office of Research Administration: Wednesday, July 17, 2019

NIH Proposal Due Date: September 25, 2019

Funding Opportunity Description

The NIH Research Education Program (R25) supports research educational activities that complement other formal training programs in the mission areas of the NIH Institutes and Centers. The over-arching goals of the NIH R25 program are to: (1) complement and/or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs; (2) enhance the diversity of the biomedical, behavioral and clinical research workforce; (3) help recruit individuals with specific specialty or disciplinary backgrounds to research careers in biomedical, behavioral and clinical sciences; and (4) foster a better understanding of biomedical, behavioral and clinical research and its implications.

The over-arching goal of this  NINDS Neuroscience Development for Advancing the Careers of a Diverse Research Workforce R25 program is to support educational activities that    enhance the pool of neuroscience researchers from underrepresented backgrounds who are available to participate in NIH-supported neuroscience research. The mission of NINDS is to seek fundamental knowledge about the brain and nervous system and to use that knowledge to reduce the burden of neurological disease. The NINDS is committed to the development of a biomedical research workforce that is representative of the diversity in American society. NINDS seeks to promote diversity in all of its training and research programs and to increase the participation of underrepresented groups. As the US population becomes increasingly diverse, reflection of that diversity among the biomedical research workforce is vital to our science enterprise and the NIH research mission. Evidence from several reports demonstrates that an intervention designed to facilitate successful transitions along this pathway would benefit the research community (Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America’s Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine 2011 and Advancing the Nation’s Health Needs: NIH Research Training Programs). Specifically for neuroscience early career researchers, there is a decrease in the proportion of underrepresented trainees from predoctoral (12%) to tenure-stream neuroscience faculty (5%); 2011 Survey Report of Neuroscience Departments and Programs. Active interventions are necessary to prevent the loss of talent at each level of educational advancement (PCAST, 2012).

This NINDS Neuroscience Development for Advancing the Careers of a Diverse Research Workforce (R25) is a flexible and specialized program designed to foster the development of neuroscience researchers from underrepresented backgrounds across career stages. Thus, it encourages applications from applicant organizations that propose innovative mentoring and professional development activities in the mission area(s) of the NINDS. The NINDS Diversity R25 initiative will focus on factors that have been shown to affect retention of underrepresented undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral trainees, and junior faculty in neuroscience research such as mentoring, scientific networks and professional development (http://www.nigms.nih.gov/Training/Reports; http://acd.od.nih.gov/dbr.htm). The NINDS expects applicant institutions to propose programs that will lead to an improvement in the professional development, mentoring and technical expertise of individuals who are nationally underrepresented in neuroscience research.

Programs that target transitions and/or more than one career stage for neuroscience career advancement and progression are strongly encouraged. This initiative will support the development of collaborative research education partnerships that will increase participants’ awareness and interest in the neurosciences, develop participants’ scientific knowledge and research skills that will allow them to progress and transition to more advanced neuroscience-related research education and training activities. Proposed program interventions to increase workforce diversity in response to this FOA should also focus on asset models and leadership opportunities, rather than solely deficit models and remediation (recommendations from 2017 NINDS Activating a Neural Network and 2016 NINDS Forming a Neural Network Workshops).

Investigators with creative, innovative ideas for new programs are encouraged to discuss these with NINDS program officials.     To accomplish the stated over-arching goal, this FOA will support creative educational activities with a primary focus on:

• Courses for Skills Development
• Research Experiences
• Mentoring Activities

Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization:

Only one application per institution is allowed.

For full program details visit NINDS’s funding webpage or the solicitation PAR-17-312.

For details regarding The University of Akron’s limited submission process, visit the ORA Limited Submission webpage.