NIH Extramural Nexus (News)

We invite you to join a conversation between NIH leadership on NIH’s Unified Funding Strategy. Our Unified Funding Strategy is designed to support NIH Institutes and Centers to make informed, transparent, and flexible funding decisions. During their conversation, NIH leadership will clarify the approach’s rationale, goals, and implementation across NIH; address misconceptions; and help foster communication between NIH staff and research community.

NIH (including help desks) will be closed on Monday, September 7, 2026 for the federal holiday (Labor Day).

As we celebrate our nation’s birthday and in the spirit of charting new paths, NIH is pleased to announce a new parent funding opportunity designed to help promising Ph.D. students take an important step toward research independence.

The primary method to find contract solicitations is the federal-wide System for Award Management website (SAM.gov), which lists federal contracting opportunities higher than $20,000.

A ClinicalTrials.gov study record is intended to summarize key information from a study’s protocol and the study’s findings. The study sponsor or investigator is responsible for ensuring that their studies follow all applicable laws and regulations and for submitting complete, accurate, and up-to-date information about their study.

NIH recently updated its annual categorical information with actual spending data for fiscal year (FY) 2025. Available on the Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) page, you will find the annual support level for various research, condition, and disease categories. 

The definition of early stage investigator (ESI) states that the individual must not have "previously competed successfully" as program director/principal investigator (PD/PI) for a substantial NIH independent research award. Therefore, the individual may still qualify if all other aspects of the ESI definition are met.

What does scientific impact look like today? For decades, measures such as publication counts, citation rates, and grant funding have been primarily used to assess the success of researchers. Yet biomedical research has become increasingly collaborative, interdisciplinary, and data-intensive. Progress often depends on teams of investigators, shared datasets and software, rigorous validation of findings, and sustained mentorship and training efforts.

A “person month” is the metric for expressing the effort (amount of time) program directors/principal investigators (PD/PIs), faculty, and other senior personnel devote to a specific project. 

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., announced the selection of Raymond H. Jacobson, Ph.D., as the director of NIH’s Center for Scientific Review (CSR), which ensures expert and fair review of the tens of thousands of grant applications received by the agency each year.