Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA RM 17 005
The NIH Director's Pioneer Award Program (DP1) is a discretionary grant opportunity from the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health (NIH), designed to back individual scientists who have a track record of exceptional creativity and who are ready to pursue bold, unconventional ideas. The central purpose of the program is to complement NIH's standard investigator-initiated funding by explicitly making room for research that may look risky on paper but has a credible chance of producing a transformative leap in biomedicine or behavioral science. NIH is looking for projects aimed at major biomedical or behavioral challenges where the payoff could be unusually high in terms of improving health, extending life, and reducing illness and disability.
A defining feature of this award is the emphasis on "pioneering" work. In practical terms, that means the proposed research should represent a substantially different scientific direction compared with what the applicant is already doing in their established research program, and it should also stand apart from what is commonly being pursued elsewhere in the field. The intent is not to provide incremental support for an existing line of work, but to enable a sharp pivot, a new conceptual framework, or an approach that changes how a problem is understood or tackled. Because of that, the award is positioned for ideas that might not fit comfortably within conventional peer review expectations for preliminary data or predictable outcomes, yet still have a compelling rationale and a plausible path to major impact.
The Pioneer Award is part of NIH's High-Risk, High-Reward Research program housed within the NIH Common Fund. That placement signals the program's cross-cutting nature: it is not limited to a narrow disease area or a single institute mission, but is intended to surface and accelerate big, field-shifting concepts that could influence multiple areas of science and health. The funding activity category is Health, and the listed CFDA number for this opportunity is 93.310.
For this specific opportunity announcement (Funding Opportunity Number RFA-RM-17-005; title NIH Director's Pioneer Award Program (DP1)), the grant instrument is a DP1 award. The posted award ceiling is $700,000, and NIH anticipated making about 7 awards. The opportunity was created on April 19, 2017, with an original closing date of September 1, 2017. While the detailed budget structure and project period are not provided in the text you shared, the ceiling indicates the maximum award level expected under the announcement and helps applicants gauge the scale of work NIH intends to support.
Eligibility is broad and includes many types of domestic organizations that could serve as applicant institutions on behalf of the pioneering investigator. Eligible applicants listed include state, county, and city or township governments; special district governments; independent school districts; public and state-controlled institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; federally recognized Native American tribal governments and other tribal organizations; public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofit organizations with or without 501(c)(3) status (excluding institutions of higher education in those nonprofit categories); for-profit organizations other than small businesses; small businesses; and other entities as further clarified in the additional eligibility text referenced in the full announcement. In short, NIH structured eligibility to avoid excluding creative researchers based solely on institutional type, as long as the organization can appropriately administer a federal grant.
Overall, the NIH Director's Pioneer Award is meant for rare proposals that are both ambitious and genuinely different: projects that push into new scientific territory and could meaningfully change what is possible in biomedical or behavioral research. It is best understood as a mechanism for enabling a single investigator's high-conviction leap into an idea that might be too novel, too cross-disciplinary, or too unproven for more traditional NIH funding pathways, but that could produce outsized benefits for human health if it succeeds.Apply for RFA RM 17 005
- The Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "NIH Director's Pioneer Award Program (DP1)" and is now available to receive applicants.
- Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.310.
- This funding opportunity was created on Apr 19, 2017.
- Applicants must submit their applications by Sep 01, 2017. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
- Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $700,000.00 in funding.
- The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 7 candidate(s).
- Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).
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