NIH Director’s Pioneer Award
OSP Deadline: August 25, 2017
Sponsor Deadline: September 1, 2017
Award Amount: $700,000/year for five years plus applicable F&A 

The Pioneer Award supports individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose pioneering and possibly transforming approaches to addressing major biomedical or behavioral challenges that have the potential to produce an unusually high impact on enhancing health, lengthening life, and reducing illness and disability. To be considered pioneering, the proposed research must reflect ideas substantially different from those being pursued in the investigator’s research program or being pursued elsewhere. While the research direction may have as its foundation the applicant’s prior work and expertise, it cannot be an obvious extension or scale up of a current research enterprise which could be anticipated to be competitive as a new or renewal R01 application. Rather, the proposed project must reflect a fundamental new insight into the potential solution of a problem, which may derive from the development of exceptionally innovative approaches and/or from the posing of radically unconventional hypotheses. Pioneer awardees are required to commit the major portion (at least 51%) of their research effort to activities supported by the Pioneer Award research project in the first three years of the project period. Effort expended toward teaching, administrative, or clinical duties should not be included in this calculation. Awardees will be allowed to reduce effort to 33% and 25% in the fourth and fifth years, respectively.