NIH released data regarding the funding rates for Early Stage Investigators (ESI) for fiscal years 2024 and 2025. The data provide breakdowns by career stage: ESI, new (non-ESI), at-risk, and established, and report number of applications versus awards, discussion rate, funding rate, and mean and median age (years) for the four career stages.
NIH defines the following:
- ESI: Investigators who are within 10 years of their terminal degree or completion of clinical training and who have not yet been awarded a substantial NIH grant (R01-equivalent or more).
- New, non-ESI: Investigators who are new to the NIH system but more than 10 years beyond their terminal degree or completion of clinical training.
- At-Risk Investigators: Investigators who have received a prior substantial NIH award but will have no funding the following fiscal year if they are not successful in securing a competing award this year.
- Established investigators: Investigators who have received a prior substantial NIH award and will have NIH funding the following fiscal year irrespective of the outcome of this year’s competitions.
The data reveal that, while the number of applications submitted regardless of career stage has increased since FY2023, the number of awards made steadily declined in FYs 2024 and 2025. The graph below shows the decline for all four career stages.
These side-by-side graphs show the divergence between the number of applications submitted and the number of awards made by career stage.
We also calculated the percent change year over year in the number of awards for FY2022-2025 by career stage. FY2023 demonstrated a consistent decline for all four applicant types. However, the percent decrease in FYs 2024 and 2025 were considerable, with New, Non-ESIs showing the greatest decrease (-32.65% in FY 2025).
| 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
| ESI | 6.35% | -1.37% | -10.33% | -19.61% |
| New, Non-ESI | -1.80% | -3.42% | -6.92% | -32.65% |
| At-Risk | 3.01% | -0.57% | -8.10% | -22.65% |
| Established | 6.07% | -2.42% | -7.15% | -23.16% |
NIH leadership has stated that their efforts to support ESIs include:
- Prioritizing ESI applications for funding
- Separating ESI applications from established investigators during review
- Implementing a simplified framework for peer review to create a fairer and more transparent evaluation process for emerging researchers.
- Integrating the needs of early career investigators directly into core funding tenets as part of the recently released NIH Unified Funding Strategy
- Prioritizing funding for the New Innovator and Katz Awards encouraging early career researchers to pursue innovative and possibly high-risk, high-reward research questions that will advance the NIH’s mission Â
