Thrasher Research Fund: Early Career Awards Grant

Thrasher Research Fund: Early Career Awards Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Thrasher Research Fund
Amount: Up to US $25,000
Last Updated: January 13, 2026

Summary

The Thrasher Research Fund: Early Career Awards aims to support new researchers in child health by providing small grants. With up to 32 awards available across two funding cycles, the initiative encourages innovative research across various topics related to children's health. The program emphasizes the potential impact of applicants and the importance of mentoring relationships, fostering the next generation of independent investigators ready to make significant contributions to the field.

Overview

The purpose of this program is to encourage the development of researchers in child health by awarding small grants to new researchers, helping them gain a foothold in this important area. The goal is to fund applicants who will go on to be independent investigators. The Fund will make up to 32 awards total with two funding cycles (16 awards each). The Fund is open to a wide variety of research topics. We do not focus on a particular ​disease, but all our funded projects deal directly with children's health. In the Early Career Award Program, the Fund is particularly interested in applicants that show great potential to impact that field of children's health through medical research. Both an applicant's aptitude and inclination toward research are considered. The quality of the mentor and the mentoring relationship are also considered to be important predictors of success.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Those eligible to apply include:Physicians who are in a residency/fellowship training program, or who completed that program no more than one year before the Concept Paper deadline.Post-doctoral researchers who received the doctoral level degree no more than three years before the Concept Paper deadline.We calculate eligibility by the year, ie. if you finished fellowship in July 2024 you are eligible to apply through all of 2025.There are no restrictions with regard to citizenship. The Fund is open to applications from institutions both inside and outside the United States. These eligibility guidelines were developed from the prospective of a US training system, we are happy to discuss eligibility under different training systems and encourage applicants from outside the US to apply.All applications are expected to have a novel, scientifically sound, hypothesis-driven approach.Projects should be feasibly accomplished between 1-2 years.

Ineligibility

An applicant who is supported, or has been supported in the past, by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) K award (including a K12 award) or a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) is not eligible to apply for the Early Career Award.An Investigator with an application pending for one of the above may apply to the Early Career Award Program, but if an award is received before the Thrasher full proposal submission deadline the application will be removed from consideration. If the award is received after the full proposal submission deadline you may keep both awards.