The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will announce the nine recipients of the first-ever NIH Director’s Pioneer Award program, one of a series of far-reaching initiatives called for in the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research <http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/>, released one year ago.

The Director’s Pioneer Award was created to support individual scientists and thinkers with highly innovative ideas and approaches to contemporary challenges in medical research. The recipients will each be awarded $500,000 in direct costs per year for five years. During that period, they will spend the majority of their time conducting high-risk, high-impact research with the potential to make extraordinary contributions to our knowledge of human health.

During a telebriefing, NIH Director, Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., and Pioneer Award Program Co-Chairs, Stephen E. Straus, M.D., and Ellie Ehrenfeld, Ph.D., will announce:

• The award recipients’ names and institutional affiliations;


• The research areas that will be explored; and


• Details on the nomination and selection process.

For more information about the Pioneer Award program, contact Sara Alden at 301-496-5787. More information about the NIH Roadmap can be found at <http://nihroadmap.nih.gov>. Additional information about the NIH Director's Pioneer Award is located at http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/highrisk/initiatives/pioneer/.