Early Career Awards - Thrasher Research Fund
Early Career Awards from the Thrasher Research Fund support mentored early-career researchers conducting child-health medical research to improve children’s health and build independent research careers.
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Funder: Thrasher Research Fund
Due Dates: Mid October 2026 (Invited fall proposals) | March 16, 2027 (Spring concepts, noon Mountain Time) | Early May 2027 (Invited spring proposals) | August 30, 2027 (Fall concepts, noon Mountain Time) | Mid October 2027 (Invited fall proposals)
Funding Amounts: Up to $25,000 in direct costs plus up to 7% indirect costs ($26,750 total), for up to two years
Summary: Supports mentored early-career researchers conducting medical research directly concerned with children’s health and developing toward independent investigator careers.
Key Information: Applicants with current or previous NIH K award support (including K12) or CTSA support are ineligible.
Description
The Thrasher Research Fund’s Early Career Awards provide small grants to new child-health researchers, helping them develop toward careers as independent investigators. The program welcomes a wide variety of medical research topics rather than concentrating on a particular disease. It considers applicants’ research aptitude and commitment, alongside the quality of their mentors and mentoring relationships.
Projects should use novel, scientifically sound, hypothesis-driven approaches with a clear pathway to meaningful child-health impact. Most funded work falls within development, including therapeutics, interventions, diagnostics, and clinically relevant biomarker validation. Discovery and delivery research are occasionally supported. The Fund considers the health problem’s incidence and severity, existing resources and treatments, and whether positive results could address an important research gap and be widely translated.
