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: Applications are strongly encouraged to include hands-on research experiences as part of the education program.
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 substitute for Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) programs.

Scope

In order to remain at the cutting edge of science, researchers, including those who have completed their formal education and fellowships, need training to master new analytical techniques, technologies, and data sources. This FOA invites applications to develop and conduct short-term research education programs to improve the knowledge and research skills of biomedical and behavioral scientists conducting research in areas relevant to the mission of NICHD, including reproductive, developmental, behavioral, social, and rehabilitative processes that contribute to the health and well-being of newborns, infants, children, adults, families, and populations. Programs should be unique and provide compelling value to students and/or investigators in the field. Depending on the goals of the proposed training programs, the duration of the short courses can vary from one week or less to a maximum of 12 weeks. Recurring courses are allowed, if justified.

R25 programs may be proposed in any research area relevant to the mission of NICHD. The NICHD mission is to lead research and training to understand human development, improve reproductive health, enhance the lives of children and adolescents, and optimize abilities for all. The NICHD's broad research portfolio includes research related to conception and pregnancy; typical and atypical development in childhood; childhood trauma, injury, and critical illness; the transition from adolescence to adulthood; reproductive health; rehabilitation; intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities; and population dynamics across the lifespan. See NICHD’s Extramural Scientific Branches and the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research for detailed information on research priorities and activities.

This FOA will support creative educational activities that focus primarily on research skills development. Although activities focused primarily on mentoring activities or professional skills development are not within the scope of this FOA, the informal mentoring activities and professional skills development that are usually associated with courses for research skills development are permitted.

Areas of particular interest include:

Training in specialized research techniques, research methodology, data sets, or statistical approaches.
Training in advanced approaches to clinical, translational, or basic research, for instance, training in design and implementation of clinical trials or complex data collection projects.
Training in the use of model organisms or systems.
Short-term courses to expose upper undergraduates in the scientific areas that are within the scientific scope of the NICHD.
Courses in computational analysis of genomic data to identify genomic variants associated with structural birth defects.
Training in gene editing techniques for producing organisms modeling structural birth defects or studying genes involved with embryonic development.
Training in approaches toward analyzing and modeling developmental gene regulatory networks.
Training in the collection of phenotypic and clinical data using controlled vocabularies and ontologies for standardized phenotyping of structural birth defects.
Virtual skills development courses and supporting resources for researchers on best practice topics such as:
The inclusion and retention of pregnant and lactating persons and/or pediatric patients and their families in clinical research.
Best practices for increasing the inclusion of under-represented groups in clinical research, focusing on outreach to members of under-represented groups, training of the researchers running the research projects, or both.
Data management to address issues such as disclosure review, discoverability, multi-site access to restricted-access data, interoperability, and other aspects of ensuring confidentiality while maximizing data sharing and accessibility.
Program leaders and faculty should be national leaders in the training area being proposed, should have a strong reputation as educators, and, where appropriate, should have current, vibrant research programs.

Proposed programs should have clear practical content, with an expectation that participants will leave the program with enhanced research capabilities related to the mission of NICHD.

Training programs must be compliant with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

This program encourages:

Courses that include both didactic and hands-on research experiences
Partnerships across disciplines and institutions
Train-the-trainers models
The audience for the educational program may include individuals from the upper undergraduate to the professorial level.

Proposed research education programs submitted to this FOA are expected to be designed for, and available to, a broad audience.

All approaches must be justified in terms of the goals and cost effectiveness of the proposed research education program.

The following activities are not within the scope of this FOA and are of low program priority:

Training that is available to the proposed program participants through formal NIH training mechanisms such as the T32 mechanism.
Training that is available to the proposed program participants through existing institutional courses.
Programs exclusively devoted to curriculum development.
Programs that provide training and/or for-credit courses primarily aimed at students or participants at a single institution or at a small number of institutions.
Conferences or other workshops that were previously funded by, or are appropriate for support by, the R13/U13 mechanism.
Informational courses that lack concrete practical experience related to the conduct of research, including continuing medical education courses for physicians or other health professionals.
Activities that primarily focus on the development or maintenance of mentoring networks or programs.