The NIH Biographical Sketch: Variations on a Theme

The format may be set in stone, but there’s still much flexibility in how you organize your biosketch

One constant in any application for funding from the National Institutes of Health is the Biographical Sketch. No matter which program a PI or trainee is applying to, they will have to include a biosketch for every key person involved in the proposal, and those biosketches will all need to follow a certain format.

That format has a rigid structure intended to maintain some conformity in the application process. But in spite of that, there is a still a lot of variation in what people include in their biosketch and how they organize things. After looking over and editing dozens (maybe hundreds?) of faculty and trainee biosketches as an editor, I have a few thoughts and perhaps some helpful advice.

The Prologue

The first lines of the biosketch are fairly cut-and-dry: your name, position, education, etc. is what it is. But here are a few suggestions.

Name: Some people use [Last Name, First Name] format, and others do the opposite. Either is fine, just as long as it’s consistent in all the biosketches within an application. Use bold for your name so that it stands out.

Instructions: The blank format pages in Word that the NIH provides as a template to generate the biosketch includes some instructions (highlighted in yellow in my example below). When an NIH biosketch is generated in SciENcv, those instructions also appear in the automated output. In my experience, most PIs just leave those on their final biosketch (perhaps out of fear of being out of compliance). That is totally fine. Occasionally a PI will go rogue and remove those instructions, and as far as I know, that is fine too. But I would always include the header at the top to confirm you are using an updated and approved revision of the template.

Part A. Personal Statement

This is probably the most variable part of the NIH biosketch. The length of the statement can sometimes stretch up to a page. Personally, I think half a page is plenty in most cases though. If it stretches too long, you risk that a weary reviewer will only skim it and miss what you want them to really focus on. Regardless, keep in mind the NIH’s stated purpose of the biosketch:

“NIH staff and peer reviewers utilize the biosketch to ensure that individuals included on the applications are equipped with the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to carry out the proposed research.”

This should be your guiding star for what you want to communicate. Although the personal statement can be organized many ways, the diagram I made below lays out how I would organize it into three paragraphs, with the third paragraph being completely different and specific for each NIH application.

In addition to the four citations the NIH says you can include at the bottom of the personal statement, many PIs also include their current or recent funding (which used to be included as its own section in older NIH biosketch formats). Although funding isn’t required, it is not at all unexpected.

Part B. Positions, Scientific Appointments, and Honors

While some people combine positions (e.g., Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, etc.) and appointments (Chair, Vice Chief, Director, President, etc.), others put them in separate categories. Either is fine. Just remember to list them in reverse chronological order. Some faculty will add other categories like editorial responsibilities and review panels to establish their prominence in their field. It may not be necessary, but I don’t think it hurts either.

Part C. Contributions to Science

Like the personal statement, you have a lot of liberty here to describe your background and expertise as you see fit. Up to five items are allowed here, and each can have up to 4 research products, which are usually cited publications. Trainees may want to organize these items according to their training periods (1. Undergrad project, 2. Grad project, 3. Postdoc project). Early-career faculty may want to focus on a few different aspects of their research focus for each of the items. And more established PIs usually have it organized according the distinct projects happening in their lab, or the ones from their past that are most relevant to the proposal.

Do whatever makes sense for you situation. And be sure to bold your name where it appears on your cited publications. Trainees should keep in mind too that if publications are lacking, posters, presentations, and abstracts also count as research products that can be cited.

If you don’t have one already, set Up a MyNCBI account and create your My Bibliography list there so you can include a link to your full publication list, which you can include at the bottom of this section. It’s not required, but it’s a good way to demonstrate that you have way more publications than what you show on your biosketch (if that is the case). Some faculty will also include a note stating how many publications they have or what their h-index is, etc. That’s not expected, but no one is going to stop you either. Sometimes faculty will try to use a Google Scholar link here instead, but the NIH instructions technically do not allow anything other than a link to a federal site such as NCBI.

Part D. Scholastic Performance

This section is only included in the fellowship format that is required graduate students and postdocs in most of their applications. According to the instructions, graduate students should include undergraduate and graduate courses here, but just graduate courses are sufficient for postdocs (which is good news if, like me, you got better grades in grad school than undergrad).

Some Final Words of Advice

Don’t Change the Fonts and Formatting. Just use Arial 11 pnt for everything. You can leave the instructions that appear on the blank format page in Arial 8 pnt though. I might suggest to use full justification in the paragraphs if that is your preference, but otherwise keep the spacing, margins, and formatting as is is in the blank format page.

Don’t Include Any Hyperlinks Except for the NCBI MyBibliography link. This NCBI link is literally the one and only hyperlink allowed in an entire NIH application. So if you have PubMed links included in citations that you’ve copied and pasted from your CV, make sure you remove those. If you suspect hyperlinks might be hiding in your Word doc that you can’t see, use Alt+F9 or Option+F9 to change them into text that automatically includes “HYPERLINK,” then search for “hyperlink” with Ctrl+F. There might be an easier way, but that’s how I do it.

Do Update Your Biosketch With Every Application. Add new citations, change what you want to emphasize in each section as needed, and let your brilliance shine through in the best way possible!

Robert Lawrence is a science editor at Baylor College of Medicine. You can find his published work at www.robertlawrencephd.com