NEH boosts fellowships to $5000/month

Earlier this month the NEH announced that they are increasing the amount of their fellowships from $4200 a month to $5000 a month, for a maximum stipend of $60,000 over a 12-month period. That's almost $10,000 more per year! The increase applies to the NEH's 'regular' fellowships as well as the NEH-Mellon fellowships for digital publication.

Please see this press release dated February 21, 2018, for more details: NEH Increases Award Amount for NEH Fellowships. The deadline for both types of NEH Fellowships is April 11, 2018.

Four NSF BIO divisions do away with pre-proposals (and deadlines!)

NSF announced on October 5th in Dear Colleague Letter 18-011 that after careful consideration of the impact of the pre-proposal pilot on reviewers, institutions and the research community, "BIO will implement a 'no-deadline,' full-proposal mechanism for receiving and reviewing proposals submitted to core programs in the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB), the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS), the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB), and to the programs in the Research Resources Cluster of the Division of Biological Infrastructure (DBI)." More information on the changes to proposals can be found in these FAQ's (NSF 18-012) as well as on the division's websites.

NIH Update: new biosketch not required until 5/25/15

NIH has pushed back the requirement to use the new biosketch format from January to May, although they "encourage" people to start using it for applications due on or after January 25th. The new deadline for mandatory use of the new format is for applications due on or after May 25, as detailed in notice NOT-OD-15-032. They also state in this notice that they have made "adjustments to improve [the] usability" of the new forms.

NIH relaxes their stance on resubmissions

The NIH and AHRQ released a notice (NOT-OD-14-074) on April 17th that reads in part:

Effective immediately, for application due dates after April 16, 2014, following an unsuccessful resubmission (A1) application, applicants may submit the same idea as a new (A0) application for the next appropriate due date. The NIH and AHRQ will not assess the similarity of the science in the new (A0) application to any previously reviewed submission when accepting an application for review.

A FAQ's page has also been released: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/resubmission_q&a.htm

UPDATE 4/28/14: The NIH has provided clarification of the policy, based on questions they received. You may find the answers helpful.
Notice NOT-OD-14-082