The NIH Director’s Pioneer Award Program is a unique aspect of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, a high-risk research initiative of Research Teams of the Future.

Pioneer Awards are designed to support individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose pioneering – and possibly transforming approaches – to major challenges in biomedical and behavioral research. The term “pioneering” is used to describe highly innovative approaches that have the potential to produce an unusually high impact on a broad area of biomedical or behavioral research, and the term “award” is used to mean a grant for conducting research, rather than a reward for past achievements. To be considered pioneering, the proposed research must reflect ideas substantially different from those already being pursued in the investigator’s laboratory or elsewhere. Biomedical and behavioral research is defined broadly in this announcement as encompassing scientific investigations in the biological, behavioral, clinical, social, physical, chemical, computational, engineering, and mathematical sciences.

Awardees are required to commit the major portion (at least 51%) of their research effort to activities supported by the Pioneer Award. Investigators at all career levels are eligible, and those at early to middle stages of their careers and women and members of groups underrepresented in biomedical or behavioral research are especially encouraged to apply.

The fifth annual NIH Director’s Pioneer Award Symposium took place on September 24-25, 2009 at the Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda Maryland. The symposium featured talks by 2007 Pioneer Award winners, poster sessions by Pioneer and New Innovator Award recipients, roundtable discussions and ample opportunities for informal interaction. It concluded with the announcement of the 2008 recipients of the NIH Director’s Pioneer and New Innovator awards.

Both programs support exceptionally creative scientists who take highly innovative, and often unconventional, approaches to major challenges in biomedical or behavioral research.

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