NIH Extramural Nexus (News)

NIH (including help desks) will be closed on Friday, June 19, 2026 for the federal holiday.

For most career development (K) award programs, the K award recipient must commit at the minimum 9 person months, equivalent to 75% full-time professional effort, directly to their research project and career development activities. The recipient can devote the remaining effort (up to 25%) to additional research, teaching, clinical work, or other efforts complementary to their career development.

NIH’s Seed Fund is back, with new Small Business program funding available and several upcoming opportunities to help applicants develop strong applications. We also encourage you join us for a live event on June 9 to hear from NIH experts and become familiar with the new opportunities and more.

NIH supports international scientific collaboration when conducted transparently and in accordance with NIH requirements. The key expectation is timely and accurate disclosure of foreign components and related activities. Here we share reminders about how to properly acknowledge foreign components in NIH grant applications, progress reports, and manuscripts resulting from NIH awards.

As part of NIH’s continued efforts to increase the transparency of the NIH research portfolio, data on the sex, race, ethnicity, and age of participants in fiscal year (FY) 2025 NIH-supported clinical research are now available. 

NIH (including help desks) will be closed on Friday, July 3, 2026 for the federal holiday (Independence Day).

Information and other web resources from the NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) have recently migrated to the NIH Grants and Funding hub.

NIH has released its first Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) under the new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) SimplerNOFO initiative, which aims to make funding opportunities more accessible, understandable, and actionable for applicants.

NIH’s policies and funding approaches are designed to maintain strong support for investigator-initiated fundamental research. NIH’s Gold Standard Science plan explains that our priority-setting processes provide strong support for hypothesis-driven research while balancing opportunities to support other forms of research. Advancing foundational knowledge of human health and disease is a stated goal for the next NIH-wide strategic plan. Here we discuss NIH’s continued commitment in this area.

The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to powerful new advances in biomedical research. Alongside these NIH-supported scientific advances and priority research areas involving AI, we have also occasionally observed challenges with the use of these tools that affect the integrity of the science we support. Today, we are sharing some helpful reminders on the appropriate use of AI tools when applying, managing awards, and conducting the research process itself.