Discover Funding Opportunities

The purpose of the NIH Independent Scientist Award (K02) is to foster the development of outstanding scientists and enable them to expand their potential to make significant contributions to their field of research. The K02 award provides three to five years of salary support and protected time for newly independent scientists who can demonstrate the need for a period of intensive research focus as a means of enhancing their research careers. This Parent Funding Opportunity Announcement is for basic science experimental studies involving humans, specifically prospective basic science studies involving human participants. These studies fall within the NIH definition of a clinical trial and also meet the definition of basic research. Types of studies that should be submitted include studies that prospectively assign human participants to conditions (i.e., experimentally manipulate independent variables) and that assess biomedical or behavioral outcomes in humans for the purpose of understanding the fundamental aspects of phenomena without specific application towards processes or products in mind. The proposed project must be related to the programmatic interests of one or more of the participating NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) based on their scientific missions.