NIH Biosketch Common Form Drafting Template

NIH Biographical Sketch Draft: [Your name]

Drafting aid for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) biographical sketch in its Common Form format: the federal Biographical Sketch Common Form (identifying information, professional preparation, appointments and positions, products) plus the NIH Biographical Sketch Supplement (personal statement, honors, contributions to science), required for NIH applications and reports due on or after 2026-01-25 under notice NOT-OD-26-018. Draft and count characters here, then enter the final text in SciENcv, the only system NIH accepts for these forms. Facts were checked in October 2026; NIH has amended the rollout more than once, so check the current notices and form instructions before you submit. Replace every [bracketed] value and every passage marked Example.

1. What NIH requires (October 2026)

2. Identifying information

3. Professional preparation

4. Appointments and positions

5. Products

5.1 Products closely related to the proposed project (up to 5)

5.2 Other significant products (up to 5)

Check before entering: publicly funded journal articles you authored should show a PMCID where the NIH public access policy applies, and every URL should be shown in full rather than hidden behind link text.

6. Personal statement (up to 3,500 characters)

[Example (926 characters including spaces): I am an environmental epidemiologist with more than ten years of experience in studies of heat and health, and I will lead the design and analysis of this project. My postdoctoral training at a coastal health research centre focused on time-series methods for daily health records, and my group has since built a linked dataset of emergency visits and local weather for two hospitals (Velden 2024, P2). Our recent analysis showed that visits by adults aged 75 and over rose by 12% for each day above the local heat threshold (Velden 2025, P1), which is the starting point for Aim 1. I have led two completed pilot projects on this topic, funded by [funder], and I co-lead an ongoing study of cooling centre use. I work closely with the city public health department, which will host the warning trial in Aim 3, and with the biostatistics core that will support the analysis. I published under the name M. Andersen before 2015.]

Character count: [N] / 3,500 (the example above: 926)

7. Honors (up to 15 entries)

8. Contributions to science (up to 5, each up to 2,000 characters)

C1. [Example: Before 2015, most heat-health studies used city-wide temperature series and could not separate the effect of heat from that of air pollution on the same days. I developed a method that uses neighbourhood-level temperature and pollution data together (P6). It showed that about one fifth of the apparent heat effect in earlier studies reflected pollution. The method has since been adopted in [describe uptake without overstating]. I conceived the method, wrote the analysis code and led the paper.]

Character count: 497 / 2,000 (Example)

C2. [Background, central finding, influence, your role. Products: P#]

Character count: [N] / 2,000

C3. [Contribution]

Character count: [N] / 2,000

C4. [Contribution, or delete]

C5. [Contribution, or delete]

9. Before you certify

• Name, ORCID iD and eRA Commons profile match, and the iD is linked
• All domestic and foreign appointments and positions are listed
• At most 5 related products and 5 other significant products
• Every product has a full citation and visible persistent identifier
• Personal statement is at or under 3,500 characters including spaces
• Honors list has no more than 15 entries
• No more than 5 contributions, each at or under 2,000 characters
• No full citations or links inside the narrative boxes
• Research security training completed within the last 12 months (due dates on or after 2026-05-25) and the date recorded
• The certification statements in SciENcv have been read in full
• The PDF downloaded from SciENcv is the one attached, not an older version
• Current and Pending (Other) Support Common Form is prepared separately in SciENcv

Official pages to check before submission:

• NIH notice NOT-OD-26-018: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-26-018.html
• Biographical Sketch Common Form: https://grants.nih.gov/grants-process/write-application/forms-directory/biographical-sketch-common-form
• NIH Biographical Sketch Supplement: https://grants.nih.gov/grants-process/write-application/forms-directory/nih-biographical-sketch-supplement
• SciENcv: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sciencv/

Revision history

Standard and licence note

Based on public US federal guidance, described in original words: NIH notice NOT-OD-26-018 (Common Forms for the biographical sketch and current and pending (other) support, due dates on or after 2026-01-25), NOT-OD-26-033 and NOT-OD-26-079 (adjusted timeline, end of the leniency period on 2026-05-07 and system enforcement), NOT-OD-26-017 (research security training) and the NIH Biographical Sketch Supplement instructions. NIH pages blocked automated access in October 2026, so section limits and dates were confirmed through university research office and library guides that reproduce the NIH instructions (WashU Becker Medical Library, Rutgers, HJF, University of Oklahoma HSC). Check the current notices and form instructions on grants.nih.gov before submitting. This is a drafting aid, not legal advice. Template licence: MIT.