NIH FIRST at Mount Sinai

At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, we recognize diversity, equity, and inclusion as key drivers of excellence. Both within the School and throughout the Mount Sinai Health System, we continue to enhance these efforts, including within our research community. In our latest initiative, NIH FIRST at Mount Sinai—the result of a $16 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—we are hiring four clusters of three early-stage investigators in the biomedical sciences committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

The NIH Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) program aims to transform academic culture by building a self-reinforcing community of scientists committed to diversity and inclusive excellence. As part of this cluster cohort hiring initiative, we are examining and refining our faculty recruitment, development, mentoring, sponsorship, and promotion processes.

The twelve new faculty—with research specializations in the focus areas of neuroscience, health disparities, cancer, and microbiology—are being hired across premier research institutes: The Friedman Brain Institute, the Institute for Health Equity Research, The Tisch Cancer Institute, and the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute.

Leaders from across Icahn Mount Sinai will support the new faculty with inclusive and equitable mentorship and a broad range of programs, helping them to enter our community of scholars and thrive as independent investigators.

The NIH FIRST Cohort Cluster Hiring Initiative at Icahn Mount Sinai is supported by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U54CA267776. This award is supported by the NIH Common Fund, through the Office of Strategic Coordination/Office of the NIH Director.