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Program Information

The Common Fund's NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award supports exceptionally innovative and/or unconventional research projects with the potential to create or overturn fundamental paradigms. These projects tend to be inherently risky and may not fare well in conventional NIH review. As compared to the other High-Risk, High-Reward Awards (the Pioneer, New Innovator, and Early Independence Awards), the primary emphasis of the Transformative Research Award is to support research on bold, paradigm-shifting but untested ideas. Applicants are instructed to focus their research strategies on significance and innovation without the expectation of providing preliminary data. Applications from investigators in all disciplines relevant to the NIH mission, including the biological, behavioral, clinical, social, physical, chemical, computational, engineering, and mathematical sciences are welcome. Individual investigators or teams of investigators may apply, and large budget requests are permissible (up to the entire funds set aside for the initiative).

Application Information

	Transformative Research Award
Target Group	Individuals or teams proposing transformative research with perhaps very large budgets
Eligibility	Open to all career stages Foreign (non-U.S.) institutions eligible
Preliminary Data	Not required; may be included
Research Strategy	10-page recommended limit; respond to questions about the challenge, potential impact, and appropriateness for the Transformative Research Awards program
Reference Letters	None accepted
Effort	Effort should be commensurate with project needs, and follow general guidelines for other NIH projects of similar size, complexity, and duration
Budget	No limits up to maximum funds available for the program as a whole No prior approvals required for budgets over $500K (DC) per year
Multiple PIs	More than one PD/PI allowed
Review Format	Three-phases, “editorial board"

Review Process

HRHR TRA Review process