Prospective Scholar

Becoming a Scholar

All Scholar Awards are open to:
  • Assistant Professor (in rank ≤ 6 years)
  • Of all gender identities (not only women)
All Scholars Awarded must:
  • Participate in Bi-annual Reviews of their work
  • Attend Interdisciplinary Weekly Seminars
  • Submit an external grant proposal by the end of award period
BIRWCH

Research Focus:

Women’s health or sex/gender differences in health

Seed Grant

Research Focus: 

the improvement of the health and wellbeing of women with a priority given to research focused on aging or menopausal women


On average

100% of scholars feel well prepared for interdisciplinary women’s health research productivity


96% of scholars believe the program prepares scholars well for academic and professional career development and advancement


90% of scholars believed the program review process was a useful part of their career development


Key Elements to Success

Career Development Plan

Scholars participate in a strategic program structure career development plan as well as create their own individualized career development plan.

  • Some program-specific career development benchmarks include: 
  • Participate in career development workshops, seminars and conferences
  • Complete NIH online Sex & Gender continued education courses
  • Submit intramural or small extramural grants
  • Submit NIH individual K or R grants

In addition, individualize career development plans are crafted with specific benchmarks identified by each scholar with the help from program leadership and mentors to facilitate research career growth.

Mentoring Team

A critical component of the Women’s Health Research Program is a strong, structured mentoring program involving successful scientists from a wide range of disciplines.
The goals of our mentoring program are to:

  • enhance Scholars’ research career development and academic socialization; 
  • facilitate research productivity and scientific dissemination; and 
  • meet the psychosocial and career needs of the BIRCWH Scholars as they transition into independent scientists.

In addition to the list of mentors below, members of the Executive Leadership Team and the IAC are all NIH-approved mentors.