NIH DSPAN (F99/K00) Application Materials

Please Note:

In March 2025, the Trump administration more or less illegitimately terminated the D-SPAN funding mechanism. As such no future applications will be meaningfully considered, though I believe you can still technically submit as of March 2025. This is an unprecedented attack on science and cannot be tolerated. I am leaving all of my documentation on the subject up and otherwise unaltered. I doubt that it will serve the purpose I intended - to help applicants win this award - but will likely now exist as a memorial and reminder of what we lose when we allow our fears and lesser impulses to drive our politics. Diversity grants don’t produce lesser scientists—they make sure that brilliant under-resourced people aren’t quietly forced out of academia like a virus from a body. If we let this happen, we’re not just losing the people who are going to cure cancers, solve dementia, and ease the sufferings that touch everyone.

Details of 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 provides 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). This funding mechanism, in my opinion, is not as well known as it should be. I wanted to document and share my experience to help others learn about the grant and know what to expect, so I’ve made everything available at this publicly accessible repository. This includes

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. Also, I have to give a lot of thanks to Haroon Popal who massively helped me in preparing this application by letting me take a look at all of his materials.