The Graduate Partnerships Program (GPP) was crafted to take advantage of the best of two worlds – the academic environment of highly respected universities and the breadth and depth of research at NIH.  The goal is to create a different kind of graduate experience, one which purposefully focuses on skills of the future scientist and how discoveries will be made in the decades ahead.  The volume and type of knowledge being discovered each day is leading to a new generation of integrative science.  Although there are still limitless new details to be discovered, biomedical science has reached an era where questions can now be asked that require integration of data and strategies across laboratories, disciplines and continents.  

All of this will require the scientist of the future to understand and work with a broader array of topics, methods and collaborators.  Creating scientists will this skill set is the mission of the GPP.

At the NIH, you can study at the bench in a highly collaborative research environment with leading scientists and clinicians.  You will be on the same campus as the largest translational research hospital in the nation.  You can attend regular workshops by professional trainers covering topics such as leadership training, scientific writing, and public speaking.  Limitless research opportunities await you in areas such as bioinformatics, biophysics, epidemiology, immunology, cell and molecular biology, neuroscience, health sciences, structural biology, sensory and communication neuroscience, molecular pathology, biobehavioral research, and developmental biology. 

Graduates of the GPP reflect upon their experiences in a very positive way.  Students say that dissertation research at the NIH is advantageous for a number of reasons:

• Very easy access to incredible research resources
• Encouragement to try experiments that might be considered too risky in academic institutions with frequent grant review cycles 
• Cost of an experiment is seldom a limiting factor 
• A highly cooperative, helpful environment – open doors and people 
• Amazing exposure to renowned scientists from around the world through seminars 
• Easy and productive collaborations among many labs 
• High productivity – an average of 5-6 publications from Ph.D. research 
• Encouragement to work independently with adequate guidance
  

Graduate students come to the NIH in one of two ways:

Institutional Partnerships – If you have an undergraduate degree and you would like to pursue a Ph.D. in the biomedical sciences you can apply to one or more of the GPP Institutional Partnerships.  Students apply concurrently to the GPP and to a partner university.  Enrollment is limited to US citizens and US permanent residents.  
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Individual Partnerships – If you are currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program and you would like to perform part or all of your dissertation research at the NIH, consider developing an individual agreement between an NIH Investigator and your graduate university.  Individual agreements are open to US Citizens, US Permanent Residents, and Foreign Nationals currently enrolled in a PhD or equivalent program.
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