The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the nation’s medical research agency — making important discoveries that improve health and save lives.
The Trailblazer Award aims to support NIH-defined New and Early Stage Investigators in research programs that combine engineering and the physical sciences with life and/or biomedical sciences. It targets exploratory, developmental, proof of concept, or high risk-high impact projects, including those that are technology design-directed, discovery-driven, or hypothesis-driven. A key requirement is that proposed research approaches must not rely on extensive preliminary data. Applications may involve minimal preliminary data but should not exceed half a page or include more than one figure. Budgets for these projects are capped at $400,000 in direct costs over a maximum of three years, with no more than $200,000 in direct costs allowed in any single year. The project's scope will dictate the period, up to three years.