NIH DP5 Grants — NIH Director's Early Independence Award

Recent DP5 awards from NIH RePORTER

Examples of funded DP5 projects across the last two fiscal years. The matching-award count comes from the full result set; funding totals, averages, rankings, and examples use the first 500 records returned by NIH RePORTER. Figures reflect a snapshot last refreshed on September 5, 2026.

Example DP5 projects from the sample

• Deciphering Neuronal Control of Behavioral Initiation and Suppression

  4DP5OD036140-04
  Emily Ferenczi · MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL, MA · $835,000 · awarded Aug 28, 2026 · NIH

  PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Nearly one million people in the USA are living with Parkinson’s disease (PD). It is a disabling neurodegenerative disease that causes progressive difficulty with movement, however equally debilitating is the progressive impairment of motivation that is experienced by most patients. Patients struggle to initiate things they want to…

• Predictive modeling of viral RNA cellular behavior

  4DP5OD037420-03
  Megan Ken · SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE, THE, CA · $1,380,000 · awarded Aug 28, 2026 · NIH

  PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Modern biomedical science enjoys an unprecedented ability to identify and describe viral pathogenic mechanisms, as well as characterize the biomolecular components that constitute them. However, we have not yet achieved a fully quantitative biophysical understanding in which modeling of component molecules is accurately predictive…

• Using person-specific networks to uncover sex differences in vulnerability to internalizing disorders

  4DP5OD036142-04
  Sheila Shanmugan · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PA · $812,500 · awarded Aug 28, 2026 · NIH

  PROJECT SUMMARY/ ABSTRACT Internalizing disorders such as major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder show marked sex differences in prevalence, presentation, and trajectory. For example, depression and anxiety disorders are more prevalent in females than males. The neural mechanisms underlying such sex differences, however, are not well…

• Transfer learning leveraging large-scale transcriptomics to map disrupted gene networks in cardiovascular disease

  4DP5OD036170-04
  Christina Theodoris · J. DAVID GLADSTONE INSTITUTES, CA · $945,000 · awarded Aug 28, 2026 · NIH

  PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Mapping the gene regulatory networks driving human disease enables the design of network-correcting treatments that target the core disease mechanism rather than merely managing symptoms. I previously developed a framework for mapping disease-dependent gene networks to enable network-based screening leveraging machine learning and…

• Place-Based Influences on Mortality among People Experiencing Homelessness

  5DP5OD037332-03
  Kaitlyn Berry · UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, MN · $382,937 · awarded Aug 27, 2026 · NIH

  PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Research Challenge: More than 582,000 people in the US experience homelessness each night, and a staggering 1.25 million people enter the shelter system each year. People experiencing homelessness endure extreme adversity, drastically increasing their risk of dying young. Although the response to the homelessness crisis primarily…

• Decoding the Heterogeneity in Chemo-Immunomodulation to Unlock the Potential of Chemoimmunotherapy in Metastatic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

  4DP5OD036134-04
  Mohammed Gbadamosi · UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, FL · $762,500 · awarded Aug 27, 2026 · NIH

  PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly heterogeneous and aggressive subtype of breast cancer characterized by the highest potential for metastasis and thus the worst clinical outcomes of all breast cancer subtypes. The outcome in metastatic TNBC (mTNBC) is particularly poor with a median overall survival time of < 16…

• Decoding the beat: physiological control mechanisms for robust heart development

  5DP5OD039406-02
  Bill Jia · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO, CA · $410,000 · awarded Aug 27, 2026 · NIH

  SUMMARY A robust heartbeat is essential for vertebrate life, as it is critical for sustained transport of nutrients and waste throughout large body plans. Given this fact, the emergence and maturation of cardiac activity during embryogenesis must be extremely reliable and must be bidirectionally coordinated with development of the heart’s form. The calcium…

• Deciphering the principles and mechanism of RNA structure

  5DP5OD039455-02
  Yousuf Khan · STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CA · $385,000 · awarded Aug 27, 2026 · NIH

  Project Summary/Abstract: This project seeks to address the significant challenges in RNA structure, an area that remains underdeveloped despite RNA’s critical roles in various biological processes and its potential for therapeutic applications. The research is structured into three major aims, each leveraging computational and biophysical methodologies to…

• Identifying transcriptomic and epigenomic convergence in intellectual and developmental disorders

  4DP5OD036131-04
  Ryan Dhindsa · BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, TX · $800,000 · awarded Aug 21, 2026 · NIH

  Project Summary Intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs) cause immense suffering and affect almost 3% of the U.S. population. Nearly 1,000 IDD-associated genes have been identified, but this is far too many to study individually and develop custom therapies for each. An alternative approach is to divide IDD-associated genes into subgroups based on…

• Therapeutic Potential of a Novel MGMT-Dependent DNA Interstrand Crosslinking Agent in the Treatment of DNA Repair Deficient Cancer

  4DP5OD036128-04
  Susan Gueble · YALE UNIVERSITY, CT · $837,500 · awarded Aug 20, 2026 · NIH

  PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Defects in DNA repair are prevalent in human cancer and present an opportunity for targeted tumor treatment with agents that induce DNA damage only in cells with specific DNA repair defects. O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT), a direct reversal repair enzyme that removes O6-alkylguanine lesions deposited by alkylating…

• Dissecting the logic of mammalian gene regulation using synthetic biology and single-cell sequencing

  4DP5OD036167-04
  Sudarshan Pinglay · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, WA · $777,500 · awarded Aug 20, 2026 · NIH

  PROJECT SUMMARY During development, a series of extracellular signals lead to the formation of different cell-types by inducing the differential expression of many genes. Although all genes experience the same signal, the expression of some genes is increased, some reduced, and others stay the same. Therefore, the gene expression profile that is…

• Novel high-throughput approaches to discover and dissect human transcriptional protein interactions

  5DP5OD039380-02
  Nicole DelRosso · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO, CA · $410,000 · awarded Aug 19, 2026 · NIH

  PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Understanding transcription factors in human cells is essential for insights into development, health, and disease. However, our understanding of the protein-protein interactions driving transcriptional regulation remains incomplete. While high-throughput screens have identified hundreds of effector domains within transcription…

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Searchers often land on DP5 while deciding between adjacent NIH activity codes. Compare scope, NIH staff involvement, budget scale, and applicant stage before choosing a funding opportunity.