NIH NIDA NRSA (F32) Application Materials

Background and Details of the Grant

In August 2023, I received an NIH Blueprint and BRAIN Initiative Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience (D-SPAN) F99 / K00 Award, which provided up to two years of predoctoral funding and four years of postdoctoral funding to eligible applicants (i.e., people who meet the NIH definition of being from a diverse background; see the funding announcement). However. the Trump administration illegally and maliciously retired the D-SPAN mechanism prior to me being able to access the K00 funds, leaving myself and many other early career researchers, many of whom were in the midst of their postdocs, without funding. As a last ditch effort and in consultation with officials at the NIH and my advisors, I pivoted to apply for an NIH F32 in April 2025. The process was very delayed and somewhat atypical – largely due to attacks on funding, goverment shutdowns, and general confusion – but I did receive a Notice of Award in February 2026.

I made a repository documenting the D-SPAN application process because it was a great award with a low profile and few public resources available, and I heard from a lot of people about how much it helped. The F32 doesn’t suffer from the same issues, but it’s not without its own challenges, many of which could be reduced with more applicant transparency and information, so I wanted to do the same thing here.

Here, I am linking to a github repository (which may still be a work in progress at this point in time) containing:

General information about the grant
The narrative of my experience, including my scores, feedback, and timeline of all important dates.
Materials including resources I found helpful, application materials, summary statements, response to critiques, just in time documents, and products relevant to this research (presentations I’ve done, manuscripts, etc.)

Both the README and the repository landing page should have this information detailed.

Future Applicants

If you choose to share your materials after you apply as I have, please let me know! I will include a link to your materials here so that we can create a resource network for those who need it in the future. Alternatively, if you don’t want to go through the hassle of self-hosting, I’d be happy to add your materials to my repository if you send them to me.

Contact & Acknowledgements

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out at billy.mitchell@temple.edu. I’m happy to give some more advice or feedback.