Applying for NIH funding, Part 1
This summer I am applying for my first NIH grant, an F31 fellowship1. The F31 is one of the smallest NIH grants, intended to support a single PhD student. Still, the application process shares many similarities with larger grants. I think it will be interesting to document my experience so that people can learn what it’s like for a novice grant writer.
F31 applications are evaluated 3 times per year, with the next deadline being August 8. At the beginning of June, I decided to apply for the summer deadline. The first step was to determine if I was applying to the normal F31, or the F31 Diversity fellowship, which is a special fellowship for “underrepresented minorities” (i.e., Asians and Whites need not apply). Since I’m not “underrepresented”, I am applying for the normal F31.
Next I had to decide which NIH Institute2 I wanted to apply to. I had a look through the call for applications and the various institute websites, and I decided that the NICHD was the best fit for my proposed research.
