Scholar Award Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. It is mandatory that you submit a letter of intent (LOI). LOIs are reviewed for eligibility and only eligible applicants may submit a full application. The letter of intent should include the following:

• Letter of Intent online form
• Abstract of proposed project (please do not exceed 350 words)
• NIH biosketch

You must complete the necessary form via the online awards portal (this includes justifying the category you intend to apply to and an abstract of your proposed research project), and include an NIH biosketch.

It depends. You cannot have overlapping ASH awards. For example, if you begin your CRTI program cycle in June 2019, the projected end date would be in May 2020. You would be eligible to submit a letter of intent (LOI) for the Scholar Award program with an application deadline of August 2019, as the Scholar Award program would not go into effect until July 2020. If you began CRTI in June 2019, you would not be eligible for a Scholar Award that began July 2019.

Eligible applicants must be a permanent resident or citizen of the United States or Canada or hold a visa to work in the United States or Canada.

Yes. Scholar Award recipients are required to be good standing ASH members. However, your membership may be pending when the LOI and application are due. If you are chosen as a Scholar, your award is contingent on the approval of your membership application.

The stage of your career will determine your membership process. Please visit the membership page for more details.

To verify your membership status, please log on to the membership section of the ASH website. If you need assistance with your username and password, please contact an ASH Customer Relations Representative at [email protected].

Your institution will be required to certify that at least 75 percent of your full-time professional effort is devoted to research.

It depends on the circumstances:

• If you have successfully competed for a substantial award (e.g. NIH R01 or equivalent grant) as the PI or co-PI before the application date, you are no longer eligible for the Scholar Award. For guidance on what constitutes the scope of a substantial award, see the descriptions of such awards in the NIH Early Stage Investigator (ESI) program.
• You may not be an awardee of other ASH programs while simultaneously receiving the ASH Scholar Award (such as CRTI or the Bridge Grant).
• Other grants you receive may have their own limitations on concurrent funding. Please check with them.
• Fellow to Faculty applicants cannot have more than $150,000 in direct cost resources, excluding salary support and institutional funding.

Generally, applications are due in very early August. Please check the awards portal for the official date.

No, your application must be complete as of the submission deadline or it will not be reviewed.

Yes, but please contact ASH for changes at [email protected].

Please follow NIH guidelines found here.

ASH maintains strict guidelines for the Scholar applications. The applicant’s career development plan may not exceed one page with NIH formatting. The applicant’s project narrative may not exceed 6 pages with NIH formatting, excluding references. References should be uploaded with the project narrative document. If the project narrative and/or the career development plan are longer than what is permitted, your application will not be eligible for review.

Please inform ASH of your transfer prior to submitting the full application- especially if you have a new email address. The new institution must be an eligible institution in the US or Canada.

Please note: an individual from your new institution must serve as either your primary mentor or secondary mentor on your application. Please have the change approved by mailing [email protected].

Letters of collaboration are not mandatory. They can be submitted as evidence of feasibility if the project will require significant support from another person/group to succeed. These should not be general in nature.

Please contact [email protected] as soon as you are aware of this situation.

Yes. Your eligibility is determined by your status and/or research experience as of the Letter of Intent deadline.

No. All eligibility qualifiers must be met by the LOI deadline.

There is no limit to the number of applications your institution and its affiliates can submit. However, no more than two awards will be granted per category/level (basic/translational research fellow, basic/translational research junior faculty, clinical fellow, clinical junior faculty) per ‘medical school’ (8 awards maximum). For this purpose, ASH defines ‘medical school’ to encompass all affiliate institutions (e.g., University of Washington would include the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle Children's Hospital, etc.).

Each laboratory/primary mentor (primary mentor's research program) may submit one application in each of the following categories/levels (maximum of four applications per laboratory/primary mentor):

• Basic/translational research fellow
• Basic/translational fellow to faculty
• Basic/translational research junior faculty
• Clinical research fellow
• Clinical fellow to faculty
• Clinical research junior faculty

No, you must use an NIH biosketch format.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to use the generic NIH biosketch format even while applying in the fellow category. However, a post-doctoral fellow NIH biosketch format will be accepted for Scholar Award fellow applicants.

A resubmission is an ASH Scholar Award where the applicant has submitted an ASH Scholar application in a previous cycle and the current application meets the following criteria:

• the applicant (PI) is the same,
• the applicant is applying in the same category (i.e. Fellow or Junior Faculty),
• the research strategy proposed in the current application is similar in topic to the previous application, such that it contains one or more, research components of prior application, either unchanged or modestly revised.

A resubmission allows you to provide a one page response to critiques and to identify changes in the text, to tell reviewers directly how you have addressed previous critiques, or to explain why you did not address them.

No, there is no limit to the number of resubmissions for ASH Scholar Award as long as the eligibility requirements continue to be met.

While there is not restriction on who can be a mentor, ASH strongly discourages mentors with familial relationships to the applicant to avoid conflicts of interest, and any type of familial relationship must be disclosed in your application. If your relationship with your mentor could appear to cause a conflict of interest, you must submit a justification as to why the mentor is appropriate for your project and submit a letter from your institution describing how it will manage the conflict.

The ASH scholar awards are mentored awards regardless of category (fellow and junior faculty). In order to be eligible to receive a Scholar Award, you must have both a primary mentor and secondary mentor. The mentor's role is to provide oversight and supervision. They must be available throughout the year.

No. Only one of the two needs to be an ASH member.

One option is asking the individual. Another option would be to check ASH's online Member Directory; however, you must be an ASH member to log into this feature. A last resort would be to e-mail [email protected] with your list of potential mentors.

Ideally, yes, your primary mentor should be at your institution. However, in some cases, we understand that your mentor may be at another institution. In this case, it is strongly encouraged that if your primary mentor is not from your institution, then your secondary mentor should be.

Yes, the primary mentor must provide an NIH biosketch.

No. For the purposes of the application, you will need to declare one primary mentor. We recommend you choose one to be your primary mentor and have the other act as your secondary mentor.

Please contact [email protected] for appropriate steps.

Letters should include details regarding;

• applicant’s appointment,
• institution’s commitment for protected time,
• resources (independent or otherwise) to perform studies

The letter should be signed by someone who is authorized to make the commitment on behalf of the institution.

If your primary mentor is the Chair/Head of your department, he or she is allowed to write your Institutional Commitment letter. However, the primary mentor’s letter of recommendation needs to be separate from the Institutional Commitment letter, so he or she will need to write two letters.

The supplemental budget is only for Fellow to Faculty applicants to provide information on other resources available to them. This is used to determine their eligibility for the award. The program requires that they have below $150,000 in direct cost resources, excluding salary and institutional funding. It is to be filled out at the LOI and reaffirmed during the application submission.

Applicants are required to follow the downloadable budget form for allowable items.

No. Indirect costs, which include any institutional costs, are not allowed with any ASH Scholar Award. Acceptable items to be figured into your budget include salary (PI or lab staff), fringe benefits (medical insurance, dental insurance, life insurance, retirement funds), and direct costs (supplies, equipment).

Travel expenses are allowed for no more than one meeting per year.

Fringe benefits are not to exceed 15 percent of the requested annual salary of the applicant or other personnel/lab staff.

Applicants should include patient care expenses under the supplies for research category.

There is no grant number associated with your Scholar Award. In the acknowledgement section, please state “Support provided by the American Society of Hematology Scholar Award.”

You can have shares or an interest, but your institutional support letter must disclose this interest and state how your institution will manage the conflict of interest.

ASH Scholars receive two years of benefits with membership and the annual meeting. Please contact [email protected] if you have any questions.