Funding Resources for MD Phd and MSTP students

NRSA NIH Fellowship

One avenue to increase your stipend during some of your PhD years and your final years as a medical student is through a NIH F30 fellowship. The prestigous fellowships, often called an “F30” or “NRSA grant”, provide an opportunity to fund your research. Importantly, they also provide an additional $3,000 stipend payment (may vary slightly across universities). F30 program is specifically designed to support training in an accredited, combined MD/PhD program.

• More info on the NIH site for (formal grant title): Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards for Individual Predoctoral MD/PhD Fellows (F30)
• NRSA Application checklist (PDF) from UIUC.
• Strategic Planning for Grant Funding for MD/PhDs (PPT) from Emory.
• NRSA Fellowship Guide from U. Wisconsin

Other Things to Keep in Mind

• The NIH has a loan repayment program to encourage clinicians to enter research programs. In exchange for a two-year commitment to your clinical research career, NIH will repay up to $35,000 per year of your qualified educational debt, pay an additional 39% of the repayments to cover your Federal taxes, and may reimburse state taxes that result from these payments. See http://www.lrp.nih.gov/ for more info.