Trailblazer Award for New and Early Stage Investigators (R21 Clinical Trial Optional)

The Trailblazer Award is a grant tailored for New and Early Stage Investigators as defined by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This award is intended to encourage research programs that merge engineering and the physical sciences with life and/or biomedical sciences. Furthermore, the type of project that can be explored under this grant could be exploratory, developmental, proof of concept, or high-risk high-impact, and may be driven by technology design, discovery, or hypothesis.

Unique to this grant, no preliminary data is required, expected or encouraged from applicants. In fact, research proposals put forward should ideally be for approaches that have little to no existing prelimary data. If any preliminary data is available, it should be minimal. Preliminary data is classified as information independently generated by the applicant and yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

In case of inclusion, all preliminary data must be clearly marked and limited to half a page, and may include one figure. Any applications containing data more than half a page or more than one figure will be deemed noncompliant with the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) instructions, and hence will not be considered for review.