What is an R15?
NIH awards R15 grants to support small-scale research projects at educational institutions that provide baccalaureate or advanced degrees but that have not been major recipients of NIH support.
There are two types of R15 awards:
- Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) for Undergraduate-Focused Institutions
- Research Enhancement Award Program (REAP) for Health Professional Schools and Graduate Schools
Eligibility
Generally, the funding benchmark is that the organization must not have NIH totaling more than $6 million per year (in both direct and F&A/indirect costs) in 4 of the last 7 years. The PI on the proposed R15 cannot be a PI on an active NIH research grant at time of award. Collaborators can be at AREA-ineligible schools. Note that your school may be ineligible but your division or department might be eligible! Check with a program officer.
Tips
The awards are typically $300K over 3 years. While they are smaller than an R01, they tend to be easier for an eligible institution to land, given that they are competing only against similar institutions (as opposed to large R1 universities with lots of resources). It is important to remember that these are not training grants! They are meant to expose students (particularly undergraduates) to research so that they might consider careers in research. Don’t include training or mentoring plans, coursework, seminars, or similar. The goal is to expose students to research to stimulate interest. Therefore, instead, propose having students design and troubleshoot experiments, collect and analyze data, participate in lab meetings, help draft journal articles, etc.
For more informationThe R15 page (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/r15.htm) has additional details. NIH also has several YouTube videos about the R15 that can be accesssed from this page: https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2023/07/11/are-you-eligible-for-an-nih-research-enhancement-award-r15/
