Eligibility

Funding Priorities

• An essential element of the mission of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is the support and career promotion of the next generation of exceptionally talented and creative new scientists who will further the understanding of the impact of environmental exposures on human health.
• In 2006, NIEHS initiated a program of research grants for Early Stage Investigators, The Outstanding New Environmental Scientist (ONES) Award, that is designed to identify the best new biomedical investigators across the spectrum of science supported by the NIEHS (i.e., including basic mechanistic, clinical and population based researchers) and facilitate their establishing a vibrant, independent research program in the environmental health sciences.
• Research projects proposed in response to this FOA will be expected to have a defined impact on the environmental health sciences and be responsive to both the mission of the NIH and, specifically, to the mission of the NIEHS and the 2018-2023 Strategic Plan: Advancing Science, Improving Health: A Plan for Environmental Health Sciences Research. This plan sets out a set of strategic themes and strategic goals that have been identified as priority areas for the field of environmental health sciences. These reflect both the mission of the NIEHS, which is to discover how the environment affects people in order to promote healthier lives, and the goal to conduct and support the very best environmental health sciences research in alignment with real-world public health needs, and to translate science findings into knowledge that can inform real-life individual and public health outcomes.

Additional Information

• Due to the focus on the career enhancement of the individual, multiple PD/PI applications will not be accepted.
• Only one application per school or college within a university will be accepted. For example, within a university, one application can be submitted from each of the schools of medicine, public health, arts and sciences, etc. If more than one application from the same grantee entity is submitted, none will be reviewed.
• The budget for direct costs is composed of two elements - research direct costs and career enhancement costs. For most applications, the budget for research direct costs should be limited to $250,000 per year. With strong justification, research projects which have inherently higher costs may request direct costs of up to $400,000 per year. Career enhancement direct costs are limited to $250,000 direct costs, which can be distributed over the 5-year award period. Note: the total direct cost budget (research plus career enhancement) may not exceed $475,000 in any year of the award.