NIH Biosketch Example (2026 Common Form)

An NIH biosketch is the structured, standardized biographical document every senior/key person on an NIH grant application must submit, in a fixed format rather than a free-form CV. For submissions due on or after January 25, 2026, NIH requires the two-part NIH Biographical Sketch Common Form plus a separate Biosketch Supplement, replacing the narrative Sections A–D format used since 2015.

Last verified against NIH primary sources: August 16, 2026.

What is a biosketch?

A biosketch (“biographical sketch”) is a short, structured biographical document required in U.S. federal research grant applications — most notably by NIH and NSF — submitted in place of a full curriculum vitae. Rather than a complete career history, a biosketch is built around a fixed set of fields a specific agency needs to evaluate a specific application: typically a personal statement of fit for the proposed research, a record of relevant positions and honors, and a curated set of contributions or outputs, all within a tightly page- or character-limited format. See the general biosketch definition for the full cross-agency comparison.

Biosketch formats are agency-specific, not interchangeable. NIH and NSF both now build their versions through the same underlying SciENcv tool and share the federal NSPM-33 Common Form architecture, but the actual fields, page limits, and enforcement rules differ — see NSF’s Biosketch (SciENcv) for that agency’s version. The rest of this guide covers the current NIH biosketch format specifically: what changed in 2026, a field-by-field breakdown, and a full illustrative worked example below.

What changed in 2026, and why it matters for how you fill this out

The pre-2026 biosketch was a single narrative document, capped at five pages, organized into Section A (Personal Statement), Section B (Positions, Scientific Appointments, and Honors), Section C (Contribution to Science — up to five contributions, each with up to four supporting citations), and, for fellowship applications only, Section D (Scholastic Performance). NIH replaced that structure with a common form shared across federal research agencies as part of a broader push toward standardized, machine-processable biosketch data (NIH Grants & Funding, Biosketch Format Pages). Two practical consequences follow directly from that change:

The document is now split in two. A “Biographical Sketch Common Form” (professional preparation, positions, and a list of products) is now paired with a separate “NIH Biosketch Supplement” that carries the personal statement, honors, and contributions to science — content that used to live in one continuous narrative now lives in two linked parts.
The rigid five-page cap is gone, replaced by per-field limits. Instead of fitting everything into five pages, each section now has its own entry count or character limit (for example, the Personal Statement is capped at roughly 3,500 characters and each Contribution to Science narrative at roughly 2,000 characters). Section D (Scholastic Performance) has been eliminated outright, including for fellowship applicants.

If you are working from an older biosketch template, a departmental boilerplate, or general advice written before early 2026, it is very likely describing the retired Section A–D format. Always cross-check the live instructions and current form template on NIH’s own Biosketch Format Pages before a submission, since NIH updates these forms periodically and this guide cannot substitute for the current, authoritative template.

Submission enforcement: old-format biosketches now cause hard errors, not warnings

NIH phased this change in rather than switching overnight. Guide Notice NOT-OD-26-018 set the Common Form requirement for due dates on or after January 25, 2026, but the eRA Commons submission system initially treated a non-compliant biosketch as a warning — the leniency period was extended once, by Notice NOT-OD-26-033, through May 7, 2026. That leniency ended: per Notice NOT-OD-26-079 (issued April 21, 2026), starting May 8, 2026 the same validations became hard errors that block submission outright — applications, Just-in-Time responses, Research Performance Progress Reports, and Prior Approval requests with a non-compliant biosketch or Current and Pending (Other) Support document can no longer go through.

If you are reading this because a submission just bounced, the three most common causes NIH itself cites are, in order of frequency: (1) the applicant’s ORCID iD is not linked to their eRA Commons account at all; (2) ORCID and eRA Commons are each linked, but not connected through SciENcv specifically, which is the link the validation actually checks; and (3) the biosketch PDF was exported from a stale SciENcv browser session and is missing required underlying metadata despite looking complete on the page. Re-link ORCID inside SciENcv itself and re-export a fresh PDF before resubmitting — see CASRAI’s guide to linking ORCID to SciENcv for NIH biosketches for the step-by-step. For the fuller enforcement timeline, see NIH Begins Enforcing Common Forms.

The current structure at a glance

Part 1 — NIH Biographical Sketch Common Form:

A. Professional Preparation — degree-granting education and postdoctoral training, in reverse chronological or standard CV order.
B. Appointments and Positions — academic, research, and relevant professional appointments held.
C. Products — up to ten total: up to five Products Closely Related to the Proposed Project, and up to five Other Significant Products that illustrate the applicant’s broader contributions to science. “Products” is deliberately broader than “publications” — datasets, software, patents, and other research outputs with a persistent identifier can qualify.

Part 2 — NIH Biosketch Supplement:

Personal Statement — why this person is well-suited for their role(s) in this project, with room to explain factors that affected past productivity and to note whether they have published under another name. Capped at 3,500 characters.
Honors — a bounded list of awards and recognitions.
Contributions to Science — up to five narrative descriptions of the applicant’s most significant scientific contributions, each with supporting citations.

Both parts are generated together through SciENcv (Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae), the NIH-provided tool that has been the required biosketch-preparation method since 2021 — NIH does not accept a biosketch built entirely by hand outside SciENcv. SciENcv pulls publication data from My Bibliography/PubMed and ORCID to reduce manual re-entry, then produces the two linked PDFs NIH’s submission system expects.

The Common Form, field by field

The summary above is the shape of the document. Below is the actual field list, taken from NIH’s own Biographical Sketch Common Form instructions (OMB No. 3145-0279). Fields marked required are marked required by NIH. For NIH there is no page limit on the Biographical Sketch Common Form — the constraint is the per-field entry counts, not length.

One framing point that explains several of the fields: the Common Form exists partly as a research-security instrument. NIH’s own description states it “ensures consistency, transparency, and compliance with federal disclosure requirements, particularly those outlined in National Security Presidential Memorandum – 33 regarding foreign government-sponsored programs and talent recruitment activities.” That is why the appointments field reaches outside your own institution, and why there is a certification block at the end where the pre-2026 form had nothing.

Field	Required	What NIH asks for
Identifying Information	Yes	Name (last, first, middle, plus any suffix); Persistent Identifier (PID); and current Position Title. For NIH the PID must be an ORCID iD, and it must be linked to the individual’s eRA Commons Personal Profile. This is the field behind most rejected submissions.
Organization and Location	Yes	Name of the primary organization, plus City, State/Province and Country. Where State/Province does not apply, NIH asks for a literal “N/A” rather than a blank.
Professional Preparation	Yes	Education and training in reverse chronological order by start date. Include the baccalaureate or other initial professional education, and list every postdoctoral and fellowship appointment separately. Each entry needs: organization name; location; degree received (if applicable); start date of the degree or fellowship programme; month and year the degree was received or is expected; and field of study. Note that the start date is required — the pre-2026 format only asked for completion.
Appointments and Positions	Yes	Reverse chronological by start date, beginning with the current appointment. NIH’s definition is deliberately broad: “any titled academic, professional, or institutional position whether or not remuneration is received, and whether full-time, part-time, or voluntary (including adjunct, visiting, or honorary).” For appointments outside the primary organization — domestic and foreign — the required reporting window is up to three years back from the date of submission. Each entry: start year, end year, title, organization, department if applicable, and location.
Products	Yes	Up to five products closely related to the proposed project, plus up to five other significant products highlighting contributions to science. See below for what counts.
Certification	Yes	Three separate attestations plus a signature. See below — this is the part most guides omit.
Privacy Act and Burden Statement	Yes	Generated by SciENcv; nothing for you to complete.

What counts as a “Product”

The pre-2026 biosketch asked for publications. The Common Form asks for products, and NIH’s stated test is that they “must be citable and accessible.” The instructions give a non-exhaustive list: publications, conference papers and presentations; websites or other internet sites; technologies or techniques; inventions, patents, patent applications and licences; and other products “such as data, databases, or datasets, physical collections, audio or video products, software, models, educational aids or curricula, instruments or equipment, research material, interventions (e.g., clinical or educational), or new business creation.”

Each product must carry full citation information: names of authors; product title; date of publication or release; website URL; other persistent identifier if available; and other relevant citation detail such as journal or book title, volume, issue and pages. Where an element does not apply, enter “N/A”. Two practical allowances worth knowing: hypertext must follow the NIH Policy on Use of Hypertext in NIH Grant Applications, and for multi-author publications you may, at your discretion, list one or more authors followed by “et al” rather than the full author list.

The certification block — new, and easy to sign without reading

The Common Form ends with three certifications that did not exist on the pre-2026 biosketch. Each senior/key person certifies:

That the information is current, accurate and complete — explicitly including “information related to current, pending, and other support (both foreign and domestic) as defined in 42 U.S.C. § 6605.”
That they are not a party to a malign foreign talent recruitment program, under Section 10632 of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (42 U.S.C. § 19232).
That they have completed the requisite research security training — under Section 10634 of the CHIPS and Science Act (42 U.S.C. § 19234), meeting the requirements in Item 2 of Important Notice No. 149, within 12 months prior to proposal submission.

NIH states that misrepresentations or omissions “may be subject to prosecution and liability pursuant to, but not limited to, 18 U.S.C. §§ 287, 1001, 1031 and 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729–3733 and 3802.” Separately, the signature date “must be within the past 12 months from when the document is submitted” — which means a biosketch sitting unrefreshed in SciENcv for over a year is not merely stale, it is unacceptable. Both the twelve-month training window and the twelve-month signature window are recurring deadlines, not one-time tasks; treat them as annual maintenance on every senior/key person’s record.

What must not go in

NIH is explicit that personal information does not belong in a biosketch, listing: home address; home telephone, fax or cell numbers; home email address; driver’s licence number; marital status; and personal hobbies. Its stated position is that such information “is not appropriate for the biographical sketch and is not relevant to the merits of the proposal,” and that the funding agency is not liable for its release.

Personal Statement, Honors, and Contributions to Science: what the Supplement actually asks

The NIH Biographical Sketch Supplement (OMB Nos. 0925-0001 and 0925-0002) carries the three NIH-specific elements collected under NIH’s peer-review regulations at 42 CFR Part 52h. It repeats the identifying and organization fields, then adds the three that reviewers actually read.

Personal Statement — 3,500 characters

The brief is to “briefly describe why you are well-suited for your role(s) in this project.” NIH lists the relevant factors as: aspects of your training; previous experimental work on this specific topic or related topics; technical expertise; collaborators or scientific environment; and past performance in this or related fields, “including ongoing and completed research projects from the past three years that you want to highlight.”

Three formatting rules matter more than they look:

Reference your Products parenthetically, in text. You may cite any of the ten products listed on the Common Form. There is no prescribed style; NIH recommends lead author and year — e.g. (Collins et al., 2026) — or the PMCID/PMID, e.g. (PMCID0123456).
Do not provide full bibliographic citations, and do not include hyperlinked references anywhere in the Supplement. This is a direct instruction, and it is the opposite of what the old Section A allowed. Pasting a formatted reference list into the Personal Statement is a common carry-over error from the pre-2026 format.
The 3,500-character limit is a character limit, not a page estimate. Roughly 500–550 words of ordinary prose.

Two provisions are worth knowing because they are permissions rather than requirements. If you wish to explain factors that affected past productivity — NIH names family care responsibilities, illness, disability, or military service — the Personal Statement is where that belongs. And you are asked to indicate whether you have published or created research products under another name, which matters for anyone whose bibliography spans a name change.

Two audiences have specific instructions. On institutional research training, institutional career development, or research education grant applications, faculty who are not senior/key persons are encouraged but not required to complete a Personal Statement — enter “N/A” in the text field if you are not providing one. Applicants for dissertation research awards such as the R36 should additionally describe their career goals, intended career trajectory, and interest in the specific research areas named in the NOFO.

Honors — up to 15 entries

List relevant academic and professional achievements and honours. NIH singles out two groups: students, postdoctorates and junior faculty “should include scholarships, traineeships, fellowships, and development awards, as applicable”; clinicians “should include information on any clinical licensures and specialty board certifications.” The section is capped at 15 entries.

The field is required, so there is a defined way to leave it empty: enter Nothing to Report (without quotation marks) in both the “Honor” and “Name of Organization” fields, put the current year in the required “Year” field, and leave the optional “End Year” field blank. Guessing at this rather than following it is a needless validation failure.

Contributions to Science — up to five, 2,000 characters each

All senior/key persons complete this section; if you are genuinely not providing one, NIH again asks for a literal “N/A” in the text field rather than a blank. Describe up to five of your most significant contributions, each “no longer than one half page” and hard-capped at 2,000 characters. NIH adds a calibration note: while everyone may describe up to five, “graduate students and postdoctorates may wish to consider highlighting two or three they consider most significant.”

For each contribution, NIH asks for four specific things — and this four-part structure is the single most useful thing to know about the section, because a narrative that omits one of them reads as incomplete to a reviewer who is looking for all four:

The historical background that frames the scientific problem. What was the state of the field, and what was unresolved?
The central finding(s). What did the work establish?
The influence of the finding(s) on the progress of science, or their application to health or technology. This is the “so what” — the part most often missing.
Your specific role in the described work.

Four further constraints, all from the instructions: figures, tables and graphics are not allowed; products may be referenced parenthetically in text using the same conventions as the Personal Statement, with no full citations and no hyperlinks; descriptions “may include a mention of research products under development, such as manuscripts that have not yet been accepted for publication”; and the contributions do not have to be related to the project proposed in this application. That last point is frequently misunderstood in the opposite direction — the Contributions section is a career record, not a second relevance argument. The relevance argument is the Personal Statement’s job, and the Products section’s “Closely Related” list.

Illustrative worked example: a filled-in biosketch

The example below is an illustrative composite created for this guide. “Dr. Alex J. Rivera,” “Meridian State University,” and every credential, award, and publication shown are invented for demonstration purposes only — they do not describe any real person, institution, or funded project. Use this to see how the sections fit together, not as a template to copy verbatim; your own content, credentials, and citation counts must be your own.

Part 1: Biographical Sketch Common Form

NAME: Rivera, Alex J.
POSITION TITLE: Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

A. Professional Preparation

Institution	Location	Degree	Completion Date	Field of Study
Meridian State University	Riverton, State	BS	05/2013	Bioengineering
Fictional Institute of Technology	Cascade City, State	PhD	05/2019	Biomedical Engineering
Northbridge University Medical Center	Northbridge, State	Postdoctoral Fellowship	06/2022	Point-of-care diagnostics

B. Appointments and Positions

2022–present: Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Meridian State University
2019–2022: Postdoctoral Fellow, Northbridge University Medical Center, Laboratory of Dr. J. Okafor (fictional)
2022–present: Member, Meridian State University Institutional Biosafety Committee

C. Products

Products Closely Related to the Proposed Project

Rivera AJ, Okafor J. Wearable biosensor arrays for early sepsis-marker detection in ambulatory settings. Journal of Biomedical Instrumentation (fictional). 2024;12(3):201–214.
Rivera AJ, Chen L, Okafor J. A low-power signal-processing pipeline for continuous physiological monitoring. Journal of Biomedical Instrumentation (fictional). 2023;11(1):45–58.
Rivera AJ. Sepsis biosensor calibration dataset, v1.0 (fictional dataset). Deposited in a fictional repository; DOI: 10.9999/example.2024.001.

Other Significant Products

Rivera AJ, Nakamura S. Machine-learning classification of noisy wearable sensor streams. Fictional Journal of Applied Signal Processing. 2021;5(2):88–102.
Rivera AJ. Open-source firmware for low-cost biosensor prototyping (fictional software product), archived with a persistent identifier.

Part 2: NIH Biosketch Supplement

Personal Statement

My research develops wearable biosensors that detect early physiological markers of sepsis outside the hospital setting, work that sits at the intersection of signal processing, low-power electronics, and clinical translation. During my postdoctoral training I led the development and clinical-workflow validation of a continuous-monitoring sensor array (Product 1 above), and since starting my own laboratory I have extended that work toward a fully ambulatory device. I am well positioned to lead the proposed aim because I have direct hands-on experience across the full pipeline this project requires: sensor hardware design, the embedded signal-processing methods needed to run on low-power devices, and the clinical validation steps needed to move a device from bench to bedside. My laboratory also has an active practice of documenting contributor roles using the CRediT taxonomy on our publications and depositing datasets with persistent identifiers, both of which support reproducibility beyond my own group.

Honors (fictional, illustrative)

2023 – Early-Career Investigator Award (fictional), Fictional Society of Biomedical Engineers
2019 – Outstanding Dissertation Award (fictional), Fictional Institute of Technology

Contributions to Science

Wearable sepsis-marker detection. My doctoral and postdoctoral work established a signal-processing approach for extracting early sepsis biomarkers from noisy, continuously-worn sensor data, later validated in a small ambulatory cohort. This work is described in Rivera & Okafor (2024) and the associated calibration dataset (both cited above under Products).
Low-power embedded signal processing for continuous monitoring. I developed and open-sourced a firmware pipeline that reduced on-device power consumption for continuous physiological monitoring by a substantial margin relative to the lab’s prior approach, described in Rivera, Chen & Okafor (2023) and archived as an open-source product.

Section-by-section annotations: what reviewers are actually checking for

Professional Preparation and Appointments (A & B) establish continuity and trajectory — reviewers are checking that training and appointment history plausibly supports the seniority and expertise the application claims, not evaluating the entries individually. Gaps do not need to be explained here; that belongs, if anywhere, in the Personal Statement.
Products (C) is where reviewers assess direct relevance to the proposed work. The “Closely Related” vs. “Other Significant” split exists precisely so applicants can show both direct preparation for this specific project and broader scientific standing — don’t pad “Closely Related” with tangential work just to fill five slots; an honest three-item list is stronger than five weak matches.
Personal Statement is the one narrative space in the whole document. The most common weakness reviewers flag is a statement that restates the CV instead of explaining why the specific track record maps onto the specific proposed role — write it that way deliberately, and keep it inside the character limit rather than assuming SciENcv will absorb an overage gracefully.
Contributions to Science narratives should explain the significance of the work, not just summarize it — state the problem, what was found or built, and why it mattered, then cite the supporting products. This section is the closest analogue in the biosketch to a CRediT contribution statement, but it is written at the level of a whole body of work rather than a single paper (see below).
Honors is bounded (up to 15 entries) — list the entries that carry real signal to a study section, not every departmental certificate.

Biosketch vs. CRediT contribution statements: related, but not the same document

It’s worth being precise about how a biosketch relates to other contribution-documentation formats CASRAI covers, because they are easy to conflate and serve different purposes:

A biosketch is a career-level, funder-facing document: it summarizes one person’s training, positions, and body of work to justify their role on a specific proposed project, and NIH is the audience.
A CRediT contribution statement (per the CRediT taxonomy, ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022) is a publication-level, machine-readable record of exactly which of 14 defined roles each co-author performed on one specific paper — readers and indexers are the audience, not a funder.

They connect in one direction that matters for accuracy: the “Products” and “Contributions to Science” claims in a biosketch should be consistent with what a co-author actually did, as documented in that paper’s CRediT statement or equivalent. Overstating a role in a biosketch narrative that a CRediT statement elsewhere records more narrowly is the same category of misrepresentation risk as authorship inflation generally — see CASRAI’s guide on writing an author contribution statement for the publication-level side of this, or CRediT author statement samples for worked examples of that format specifically.

For more detail, see nih specific aims examples — Searching for a Specific Aims page example is a different job than searching for Specific Aims page instructions.

Frequently asked questions

Is the NIH biosketch the same as a CV?

No. A CV is typically comprehensive and self-formatted; the NIH biosketch is deliberately bounded, standardized, and prepared through SciENcv in NIH’s own format so that reviewers can compare applicants consistently across a study section.

Do I have to use SciENcv to prepare an NIH biosketch?

Yes for NIH submissions — SciENcv-generated biosketches have been required since 2021, and the current Common Form/Supplement structure is generated the same way. A hand-formatted document outside SciENcv is not an accepted substitute.

How many Products can I list?

Up to ten total under the current Common Form: up to five “Products Closely Related to the Proposed Project” and up to five “Other Significant Products,” per the current NIH instructions.

What happened to Section D (Scholastic Performance)?

It has been eliminated under the 2026 Common Form, including for fellowship (F-series) applications that previously required it.

Does every senior/key person on the application need a biosketch?

Yes — NIH requires a biosketch for every individual designated as senior/key personnel, not just the Program Director/Principal Investigator.

Is a biosketch the same thing as a CRediT contribution statement?

No — a biosketch documents one person’s career-level qualifications for a funder; a CRediT statement documents specific role contributions to one specific publication for readers and indexers. See the comparison above.

Will my old (pre-2026) biosketch still be accepted?

No, not for a due date on or after January 25, 2026, and since May 8, 2026 the eRA system rejects a non-compliant biosketch as a hard error rather than a warning — you cannot submit past it. If you have a Section A–D narrative biosketch on file from before 2026, treat it as retired and rebuild it in SciENcv under the current Common Form/Supplement structure.

What does a filled-in NIH biosketch example look like under the new format?

See the full illustrative worked example above, mapped section-by-section to the current Biographical Sketch Common Form (Professional Preparation, Appointments and Positions, Products) and NIH Biosketch Supplement (Personal Statement, Honors, Contributions to Science).

Related CASRAI resources

Biosketch (NIH-style) — the dictionary definition of this term
NIH Begins Enforcing Common Forms — the May 2026 hard-error enforcement timeline
NSF Biosketch (SciENcv) — how NSF’s version differs
Biosketch — the general concept across funders
NIH biosketch vs. UKRI R4RI — comparing narrative CV formats internationally
Current and pending support — the companion disclosure NIH applications also require
Author Contribution Statement: What It Is and How to Write One
CRediT Author Statement Samples: Formats for Every Scenario
CRediT & Authorship Attribution — cluster overview

NIH Biosketch Worked Example: A Filled-In Sample Biosketch (2026 Common Form)