NIH F32 (PA-23-262) Application
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Is there a specific reason that this needs to be hosted on Github? No. There's very little code in here, but cloud storage platforms (e.g., Dropbox) can often times be inaccessible to people without accounts. Github seemed to me to be a means of making this publicly accessible while allowing me to update as needed and maintain version control pretty easily.
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Any private or sensitive information contained within these documents (user IDs, addresses, signatures, etc.) has been removed for security concerns. If you see some section in which it looks like I forgot to include one of those things, it's probably because I removed it so use your best judgement.
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If this repository helped or helps you to succesfully receive an NIH F32 grant and you'd be willing to share your materials to help others, please let me know! I'd be happy to incorporate them to provide other examples of routes to a successful application.
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Lastly, the conventions and templates are changing not infrequently, so please consult with and trust official NIH resources (which this is not) when working on any of these documents moreso than anything I say. The purpose of this repository is to give people a starting point and reduce uncertainty about some of the unofficial or subjective aspects of the process (e.g., "How long do I have to wait to hear back?", "Will I have enough time to turn around a resubmission if I don't get it the first time?", "How can I frame this tangetially related experience?", etc.)
This directory contains almost all, if not all, of the documents related to my application to the NIH NRSA F32 Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, which provides up to three years of postdoctoral funding to eligible applicants.
I was a former NIH NINDS D-SPAN F99/K00 awardee, which was an incredible award mechanism that provided up to six years of funding for pre- and post-doctoral studies to individuals from underrepresented backgrounds in neuroscience, but the award has since been all but prematurely terminated by fascists whom the fires of hell could not burn hot enough. I planned to start my F to K transition in February but personal and political events made this untenable. I prepared the K application throughout March 2025, but learned on March 25th, 2025 that the NIH would continue to accept but would quietly no longer be considering K applications. At that time, my sponsor and I made the difficult decision to switch to the F32.
My first time applying for the F32 was submitted for the April 8th 2025 deadline. I did not recieve a Notice of Award until February 20th, 2026. This process is not typically this slow and was delayed due to many political events. The deadlines typically fall on the 8th day of the 4th (April), 8th (August), and 12th (December) months of the year. My internal deadline was approximately two days prior to this external date. Our grant specialist handled most of this and submitted it through the NIH Commons portal. Here, you can see your application as well as any updates on the status of it. Reach out to your internal grant specialist early, at least a month in advance to your submission, so that they can find you more information on forms, internal deadlines, getting an NIH commons account, etc.; all of which take a lot longer than you think they would. For example, I nearly missed the first deadline for my F99 because, although I was positive I had an NIH Commons account, the username I thought I registered with was associated with someone at the University of Indiana and it was a massive debacle to clear that up. This is true of any grant and not just this one, but give yourself and the folks helping you plenty of time for hiccups like this.
This section may eventually help you plan when to expect certain stages or events in the process to occur and to prepare for what may come next. I created a similar timeline for my F99 and I will update this one as events unfold.
The first submission was submitted April 8th, 2025. The proposal was assigned to NIDA as the primary IC and NIMH as the secondary IC on April 30th. I received an email from (John) Drake Morgan, the Scientific Review Officer heading the study section I was assigned to (ZRG1 F02A-D (20)), letting me know that it was assigned along with helpful dates and timelines. On July 5th, 2025, I received an email from the NIDA program director, Yu (Woody) Lin, which was a template email sent to all applicants denoting that my application will be reviewed soon, the summary statement would follow within 30 days, that the review process would not conclude until a NIDA Advisory Council reviewed the submission on September 9th, 2025, and, even then, funding decisions wouldn't be decided until February 2026. He also noted what he believed what competitive priority scores would be for this application round (between 30 and 35), but these do change frequently. On July 7th, I received by summary score (34) and percentile ranking (23.0). The study section met to discuss this submission on July 1st, 2025 and I received my summary statement, which includes detailed feedback on every section, on July 16th, 2025 at which point, I was invited to respond to the criticisms. I emailed my feedback to Woody Lin on August 18th, 2025, though, I could have submitted up to a few days prior to the Advisory Council. I received a Just-In-Time Information request from Grants Management Officer Christina Rinaldi on December 18th, 2025, which I assembled and submitted through our grants management office on January 12th. On January 14th, I received notice that my Just In Time documents were received by the NIH. Finally, the status of the ERA Commons portal changed on February 12th to indicate "Award prepared: refer questions to Grants Management Specialist" with the Notice of Award being received on February 20th, 2026.
It is of note that because of the extended timeline and my awkward funding position, I submitted a resubmission for the December 8th deadline prior to knowing the outcome of my first submission. That application was withdrawn once the first submission was funded.
I have the contents of this directory split into a few subdirectories:
Contains NIH-generated forms, guides, and information that I thought would be relevant to my application. Some of this may be outdated; I used Forms-H on my first submission due to a delay on the NIH side from switching over, but future applications should be Forms-I. My second application used Forms-I, and, although it was withdrawn prior to consideration, I included those for the sake of usefulness. I would check the NIH website for the most up-to-date versions of these things. I have an image of the F32 guidelines for component lengths just for quick reference. I also have the Funding Announcement and a Manual for building an application.
Once the application was accepted, I recevied an email from Christina Rinaldi at the NIH on December 18th requesting information regarding: 1) Whether my sponsorship team changed, 2) what NRSA funding my sponsors and I have received, 3) whether foreign sites would be involved, 4) annual cost of tuition and fees for proposed training and childcare costs, 5) IRB information, and 6) documentation of protection of human subjects training for key personnel. I was not informed of a deadline, but it seems like, informally, I only had about a month to complete it, as I started getting emails asking for it to be submitted about 3 weeks after I received the first email. Information related to this request is contained within this directory.
This is entirely supplemental. It contains a few powerpoints that I presented on the contents of the application. It is likely worthless to you, but if you find yourself wondering about the context of the research strategy, they could possibly provide some of that.
This is only relevant if you receive grant funding. Approximately one year after you are funded, you will need to complete an Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR). This is completed almost entirely through the Commons webportal. I have not completed this for this award yet, but I will save my responses as .docx files and update them here once I do. This is typically a fairly straightforward process and much of what you need to complete is outlined within this NIH RPPR guide. A few things of note:
- This RPPR does require a statement from your sponsors, which I had originally missed, so be sure to let them know ahead of time and account for that in your timeline;
- Some questions make direct reference to components that you had previously submitted in your award packet, such as your RCR training and specific aims. In these cases, I found it easiest to actually open the original document, use that structure, and make updates relevant to what I had accomplished.
- The RPPR included many more questions, many of which did not apply to my grant. These questions may apply to you. Even though I don't have them in this directory, scan through your specific RPPR to see which questions the NIH says apply to you.
- Some questions use dialogue box responses and others expect you to upload a .pdf. I have .pdf versions of the latter included in this directory.
If you have not yet been funded through a grant, it might be advisable to take a quick look through this directory to note the types of things that the NIH wants to monitor. This stage would have been far simpler had I been keeping track in anticipation of having to complete the RPPR since I started, but I learned about the RPPR when I got that first notice.
Contains the actual summary statements that I'd received from reviewers, which I think could maybe be enlightening as to what reviewers are generally going to be looking for, what they don't like to see, and perhaps how you can improve upon or address those concerns with later submissions, should it come to that. It also inclues my response to the feedback.
All of the materials that I submitted that got funded. Each item is a separate .docx file and affixed with a prefix denoting the general order in which the documents should be organized. This may actually be less helpful to new applicants, as the NIH has since switched to Forms-I and these were all written in Forms-H. However, much of the aims, strategy, and scientific statements remained unchanged in format between the two styles. This also contains a figures directory, including the .nii.gz masks, powerpoint files, and images I used to create the figures within my application. The ActivitiesPlanner.pptx document might be of some interest for your timeline document. I have also included my power_analyses, including the r scripts I used to generate power analyses for Aims 1, 2 and 3. These were completed using a simulated dataset and simr, assuming realistic characteristics we expect from our sample. NOTE: I've hidden sponsor statements and biosketches to maintain their privacy. I may add them in the future providing all parties consent, but if you'd like information or advice about those, please let me know.
All of the materials that I submitted that never got reviewed, but which is in the correct format and almost certainly represents a more thoughtful and better crafted application than the first. Each item is a separate .docx file and affixed with a prefix denoting the general order in which the documents should be organized.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out at billy.mitchell@temple.edu. I'm happy to give some more advice or feedback.