Through several different award mechanisms, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides broad support for future physician-scientists. The following programs are available to those at the graduate and postdoctoral levels. Prospective applicants should review the eligibility requirements for each type of award.

K08 Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award
This award aims to equip clinicians with a mentored research training experience that will provide them with the skills and experience to establish independent and impactful research careers. Encompassing a diverse array of research areas, the award furnishes recipients with both resources and dedicated time for research, enabling them to focus on positioning themselves as productive, self-sustaining researchers in their respective fields.

K12 Clinical Scientist Institutional Career Development Program Award

K12 awards are institutional training grants that support fellows spending two to four years to conduct research with a qualified faculty mentor. Trainees are appointed on a competitive basis. Trainees on a K12 award are also eligible to apply for subsequent funding through K08 and K23 awards, for a total of six years of cumulative support.

K22 Career Transition Award
This program aims to facilitate the transition to independent research by providing support for a period of mentoring, followed by a period of independent research. This is a one- or two-phase award.

K23 Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award
Designed for those with a proven commitment to improving health care outcomes through clinical investigations, this program aims to cultivate clinician-scientists who drive advances in patient-oriented research.

K25 Mentored Quantitative Research Development Award
The K25 Award allows accomplished professionals with an advanced degree in engineering or a quantitative science (including but not limited to mathematics, statistics, engineering, computer science, imaging science, informatics, physics, or chemistry) to apply their quantitative skills to NIH-relevant research areas. The goal is to facilitate the integration of their quantitative expertise with biomedical research problems and objectives.

KL2 Mentored Career Development Award
The KL2 award is administratively connected to other institutional projects or set of projects, such as those related to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai’s ConduITS program. It is designed for recently appointed faculty who are beginning clinical or translational research.

R25 Research Education Program
The R25 program is an institutional research education training grant that allows recipients to gain expertise primarily through hands-on experience and immersive coursework that may lead to an advanced degree in a specific area of biomedical research.

U2C-TL1 Institutional Network Award for Promoting Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Research Training
This funding mechanism is a multi-institutional training grant for which awardees are appointed internally on a competitive basis. Trainees are supported to create career development resources that will help them accelerate kidney, urologic, and hematologic research.

R38 Stimulating Access to Research in Residency
The Stimulating Access to Research in Residency (StARR) (R38) Program is a structured institutional training program that specifies defined program milestones, and provides up to two years of mentored, postdoctoral-level research support for clinical residents.

NIH Institutional Research Training Grants (T32) are institutional training programs focused on research training and professional development. Mount Sinai has a number of department and/or program-based T32 awards that can support clinical residents and fellows (see table below). Awardees are selected by each program on a competitive basis. For more information, prospective applicants should contact the Program

Mount Sinai has numerous NIH-funded and other training grants that can support residents and clinical fellows to conduct one or more years of research (generally 80% or more effort). In addition to two R38 (StARR) grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Mount Sinai also has a variety of Institutional National Research Service Awards (NRSA) or T32 Training Grants. Each T32 grant supports trainees in a specific research area, such as: medical genetics, neuroscience, cancer biology, translational immunology, substance use disorders, and investigative gastroenterology and hepatology. Training grant slots are awarded on a competitive basis.

For additional funding opportunities, we encourage trainees to investigate national professional associations in their area of interest, such as the American Heart Association, the American Society of Hematology, and the Rheumatology Research Foundation. The American Physician Scientist Association also provides information on funding opportunities for postdoctoral level and early state physician scientists.

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai also offers a TL1 Linked Training Award through the ConduITS Institute for Translational Sciences. This award supports research training experiences for pre-doctoral trainees who are interested in pursuing research careers in multi-disciplinary clinical and translational science.

Each year, the Office of Graduate Medical Education (GME) evaluates applications from individuals admitted to Mount Sinai Health Systems (MSHS) ACGME-accredited fellowship programs who are interested in pursuing master’s degree-level education at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The application process comprises two stages: (1) an internal application, where finalists are invited to participate in an interview with the GME Leadership Team; and (2) recipients of funding awards must subsequently apply to the Icahn Mount Sinai Graduate School master’s degree program through the graduate school’s standard application platform. Master’s degree programs generally have a duration of 24 months or less.