The NIH Research Education Program (R25) supports research education activities in the mission areas of the NIH. The overarching goal of this National Institute of Allergy and infectious Diseases (NIAID) R25 program is to support educational activities that complement and/or enhance the training of a diverse workforce to meet the nations biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs of NIAID mission areas.Section I. Funding Opportunity Description
The NIH Research Education Program (R25) supports research educational activities that complement other formal training programs in the mission areas of the NIH Institutes and Centers.

The overarching goal of this R25 program is to support educational activities that complement and/or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs.

To accomplish the stated over-arching goal, this FOA will support creative educational activities with a primary focus on:

Courses for Skills Development: For example, advanced courses in a specific discipline or research area, clinical procedures for research, or specialized research techniques.
Research Experiences: For example, for undergraduate students: to provide hands-on exposure to research, to reinforce their intent to graduate with a science degree, and/or to prepare them for graduate school admissions and/or careers in research; for graduate and medical, dental, nursing and other health professional students: to provide research experiences and related training not available through formal NIH training mechanisms; for postdoctorates, medical residents and faculty: to extend their skills, experiences, and knowledge base; for high school and college science teachers: to enhance their science teaching.
Mentoring Activities: For example, dedicated efforts at providing not only technical expertise, but advice, insight, and professional career skills to college students, graduate students, postdoctorates and/or early-career faculty.
Applications Not Responsive To This FOA

The following types of applications are not responsive to this FOA and will not be reviewed:

Applications lacking a plan for instruction in responsible conduct of research.
Applications lacking a recruitment plan to enhance diversity.
Applications that do not include plans for all three of the following activities: courses for skills development, research experiences, and mentoring activities; however, the emphasis on each activity need not be equal.
Research education programs may complement ongoing research training and education occurring at the applicant institution, but the proposed educational experiences must be distinct from those training and education programs currently receiving Federal support. R25 programs may augment institutional research training programs (e.g., T32, T90) but cannot be used to replace or circumvent Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) programs.

NIAID recognizes that some eligible institutions may not have sufficient numbers of active researchers with extramural funding to support on-campus research experiences. Such institutions could establish collaborative arrangements with research-intensive institutions that have a significant number of faculty mentors with NIH or other extramural research support to have their participants benefit from off-campus research experiences, especially during the summer.