National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

NIAID Specific Policies

• Grant cannot be in the first or last year of the competitive segment. Exceptions are orderly closeout of a clinical trial and, with Council approval, reinstatement of scientific review group reductions (except in the last year of the grant).
• Administrative supplements cannot pay for:
  • Increased costs due to a PI's transfer or promotion.
  • A PI to move in a new scientific direction or use new technology.
  • Cost of living adjustments/inflationary increases.
• Supplements are prorated based on time remaining in the budget period in accordance with NIAID policy.
• Cannot be issued for DP2 awards.
• Recipient must demonstrate bona fide need; therefore, all of the recipient's current support (including unobligated funds from the prior FY) must be designated for other purposes.
• For multiproject awards, the applicant must identify the subproject(s) receiving the additional funding (or the additional funds will be reported at the parent award level or evenly distributed to all projects).

[email protected]

NIAID encourages grant (R13) and cooperative agreement (U13) applications for scientific meetings, conferences, and workshops in areas related to our mission. 

NIAID gives priority to the following submissions:

• Applications for open meetings, including conferences that cover broad subject matter and for which the sponsoring institution invites anyone interested to attend but has uniform standards for selecting the final list of participants.
• Applications that provide funds to graduate students, postdoctoral trainees, and junior faculty members for the purpose of attending conferences.

NIAID may give priority to less visible scientific topics. NIAID must participate in the development of U13 meetings. For both R13 and U13, NIAID reserves the right to discuss how we will participate and make the final decision about our level of involvement.

• NIAID co-funds or accepts co-funding from other Institutes or Centers for $2,500 or higher.
• An award must be issued before the conference starts. In rare cases, an award will be issued after a conference has been held to cover post-conference costs, such as publishing the proceedings.

To be considered for an award, potential applicants should submit their application to a receipt date at least 7 months before the start date of the conference.

• NIAID funds scientific meetings through grants and cooperative agreements for up to 5 years. 
• A permanently sponsoring organization can receive a multi-year award for annual or biennial conferences on a recurring topic. The award is funded by budget period.

Scientific Contact: [email protected]

Financial/Grants Management Contact: [email protected]

• NIAID awards fellowships through the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) program.
• NIAID funds predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships. 
• NIAID does not fund Individual Senior Fellowships (e.g. F33).

• F30: Up to 6 years of support; non-renewable.
• F31: Up to 3 years of support; non-renewable. 
• F32: Up to 3 years of support; non-renewable. 

Current NRSA stipends, tuition/fees, and budgetary levels apply.

Program Contact
[email protected] 

Financial/Grants Management Contact
[email protected]

NIAID provides support for educational initiatives that enhance workforce training to address the nation’s biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research requirements. This is achieved through skills development courses, research experiences, and mentoring and networking programs. Through research education, NIAID: 

• Endorses advanced courses in a specific discipline or research area, clinical procedures for research, or specialized research techniques.
• Fosters research for undergraduate students to provide hands-on exposure to research, to reinforce their intent to graduate with a science degree, and/or to prepare them for graduate school admissions and/or careers in research.
• Funds integrated research experiences for graduate, medical, dental, nursing and other health professional students, as well as related training.
• Enhances postdoctorates, medical residents and early-career faculty research activities to extend their experiences and knowledge.
• Supports mentoring activities dedicated to providing not only technical expertise, but advice and professional career skills to college students, postdoctorates, and/or early-career faculty.
• Supports eligible institutions that may not have sufficient numbers of active researchers with extramural funding to foster on-campus research experiences. Such institutions could establish collaborative arrangements with institutions that have a significant number of faculty mentors with NIH/NIAID or other extramural research support to have their participants benefit from off-campus research experiences.

Allocates funding support for research education programs that complement ongoing research training and education occurring at the applicant institution, but the proposed experiences must be distinct from those programs currently receiving Federal support. NIAID R25s may augment research training programs but cannot be used to replace or circumvent Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award programs.

• Undergraduate
• Predoctoral
• Postdoctoral/Residency
• Early Career
• Established Investigator
• Other
  • Postbaccalaureate fellows
  • Masters level students
  • Medical, dental, nursing, and other allied health professionals

  High school students may not be supported as participants. 

• The maximum project period is 5 years.

Program Contact
[email protected]

Financial/Grants Management Contact
[email protected]

The NIAID Small Business portfolio supports product development and commercialization in the areas of: 

• The immune system, microbe biology, and host-microbe interactions, 
• Diagnostic and prevention strategies 
• Treatment and cure strategies 

A. Asthma & allergy: Asthma, rhinitis, rhinosinusitis, IgE-mediated food allergy, eosinophilic gastrointestinal disorders, Food Protein-Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome, atopic dermatitis, urticaria & drug allergy. Diagnostic, prognostic, predictive, monitoring & response biomarkers, particularly in relation to immunologic interventions & approaches for detecting infants at risk for allergic diseases.
B. Basic immunology: Immune system development/function in humans & animal models, including computational/emerging technologies. Novel adjuvants. Preventative/therapeutic antibodies against pathogens; Biomarkers of immune protection/pathogenesis; Sample-sparing assays or organoids to study human immunity across the lifespan; Immunologic reagents for non-mammalian (e.g. Xenopus) & under-represented mammalian (e.g. ferret, bat) models. 
C. Autoimmunity, inborn errors of immunity (not HIV) & mucosal immunity: Mechanisms, diagnosis & treatment in animals/humans. Treatments, standardized diagnostic criteria, outcome measures, high throughput assays of immune cell activity. Prognostic, predictive, monitoring & response biomarkers.
D. Transplantation: Clinical research & translationally relevant animal/non-animal model research in organ, pancreatic islet allogenic, xenogeneic transplantation & vascularized composite allotransplantation. Immunomodulatory strategies promoting tolerance, graft survival, facilitating immunosuppression minimization; Non-invasive immune biomarkers/assays for subclinical graft rejection or predicting tolerance; Genetic approaches, analytical tools predicting transplant outcomes & improving donor/recipient matching.
E. Mitigation/treatment of radiation injuries: Preclinical research for radiation medical countermeasures (MCMs) & biodosimetry devices to generate data for FDA submission packages, focusing on diagnosing, mitigating or treating radiation injuries post-incident. Includes safety/efficacy studies, formulation optimization & biomarker development.
F. Chemical countermeasures: Preclinical MCM research to mitigate the acute and long-term health effects after exposure to Department of Homeland Security-designated Chemicals of Concern, including predictive disease models, response biomarkers and treatments.
G. Biomarkers: Infectious disease-related biomarkers. May utilize emerging data science technologies, computational methods or AI.
H. Diagnostics: Sensitive, specific & cost-effective clinical diagnostics including user-friendly point-of-care tools for detecting infections, such as HIV or toxin exposure. Assays for drug detection in human samples to monitor adherence. At-home self-testing tools for the detection/monitoring of infectious diseases.
I. Immunoprophylaxis: Developing/evaluating vaccine or immunoprophylaxis strategies/tools for infectious diseases.
J. Vector-borne pathogens: Arthropod monitoring, management/control to prevent transmission of vector-borne pathogens to humans.
K. Chemical prophylaxis: Long-acting (min. 30 days) sustained or extended-release pre-exposure prophylaxis, post-exposure prophylaxis & multipurpose prevention technologies for systemic protection from infection.
L. Therapeutics: Next-gen therapeutics (e.g. immunotherapeutics/biologics) to prevent infection/transmission or for infectious diseases treatment, including HIV. May utilize novel computational approaches to support development/evaluation.
M. Cure of persistent infections: Strategies to cure HIV & hepatitis B virus infections or achieve sustained remission w/o daily drug therapy. Detecting/quantifying persistent reservoirs of replication-competent latent virus in blood/tissues, including bioimaging techniques.
N. Formulation: Improved formulation/dosage technologies (e.g. less toxic, longer lasting) to prevent or treat infectious diseases, including HIV.
O. Implementation science: Behavioral/social sciences, epidemiology, implementation science & information dissemination related to infectious diseases.    

NIAID Small Business Team

[email protected]