NIBIB Biomedical Technology Resource Centers (P41)

Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/ Small Business Technology Transfer... is sponsored by National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). The NIBIB Small Business Program supports the translation of cutting-edge technologies into commercial products to address critical healthcare challenges. These programs encourage research and development with a strong potential for technology commercialization.

NextTech: Translational Development of Next-Generation Diagnostic and Therapeutic Devices (R18 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) is sponsored by National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). NextTech: Translational Development of Next-Generation Diagnostic and Therapeutic Devices is a grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) that funds the translational development of innovative diagnostic and therapeutic medical devices.

The PRIMED-AI Validation Center is a single-award opportunity to build the independent evaluation infrastructure for the entire NIH Common Fund PRIMED-AI program. Its function is to serve as a dedicated hub that verifies, validates and characterizes the AI-enabled, image-based multimodal clinical decision support tools produced by other PRIMED-AI awardees, assessing reliability, reproducibility and generalizability with an eye toward clinical adoption. This is a structurally different proposition from a research grant and applicants should read it that way: the Center is a service and methods organization accountable to a consortium, not a lab pursuing its own scientific agenda. Competitive applicants will need existing capacity in AI model evaluation, access to diverse and independent clinical validation datasets spanning multiple sites and populations, expertise in regulatory science given the Software as a Medical Device framing of the tools being evaluated, and the organizational maturity to run a benchmarking operation on someone else's timeline. Because only one award is expected, this is a winner-take-all competition, and the budget structure is notably front-loaded in an unusual way - $2,000,000 in direct costs in year one rising to as much as $3,200,000 per year thereafter, making this among the largest single awards in the PRIMED-AI portfolio. Foreign organizations and foreign components are not eligible, unlike the program's tool-development announcements. Institutions that intend to submit tool-development applications under RFA-RM-27-012 or RFA-RM-27-013 should think carefully about the independence expectations before also competing for the Validation Center role. The October 2, 2026 deadline is shared with the Logistics Center announcement (RFA-RM-27-015), the program's companion coordinating infrastructure award.

The PRIMED-AI Logistics Center is the coordinating hub for the NIH Common Fund's Precision Medicine with AI consortium, and it is the least research-like and most operationally demanding of the program's five announcements. The Center runs three integrated cores - Administration, Evaluation and Outreach - and its responsibilities are concrete: convening consortium meetings, developing and maintaining consortium policies, administering and distributing restricted funds for collaborative cross-site projects, conducting program evaluation, and building a public web portal that showcases the AI tools developed by PRIMED-AI awardees. The budget shape is the detail most likely to be misread. Year one is capped at $575,000 in direct costs, while years two through five allow up to $2,500,000 per year; that increase is not an expanding administrative budget but the restricted collaborative-project funds the Center passes through to consortium members, so applicants should build the budget narrative to make that distinction explicit. Only one award is expected, making this a single-winner competition, and the selection will favor institutions with a demonstrated record of running multi-site research consortia, managing subaward distribution, and sustaining public-facing scientific web infrastructure over those offering primarily scientific expertise in medical AI. Foreign organizations and foreign components are ineligible. The October 2, 2026 deadline is shared with the Validation Center announcement (RFA-RM-27-014); the two roles are complementary but distinct, with the Validation Center handling technical assessment of tools and the Logistics Center handling coordination, policy and dissemination. Organizations weighing which to pursue should choose based on whether their comparative strength is benchmarking science or consortium operations.

NIBIB Trailblazer Award for New and Early Stage Investigators (R21) is a grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), NIH that funds high-risk, high-impact research at the intersection of engineering, physical sciences, and biomedical sciences. Eligible applicants are NIH-defined New or Early Stage Investigators who have not previously submitted R01 or R15 applications. Awards provide $400,000 in direct costs over three years. No preliminary data are required — projects should be exploratory, novel, and non-incremental. Applications are due June 16, 2026.