NIH training grant mentor biosketches: Make it personal

Although personal statements are not required for mentor biosketches on NIH training grants, they can be used to effectively highlight relevant mentorship expertise, providing valuable information to reviewers about the strength of the mentor pool and the projects potential for success. As a robust mentorship pool is critical to a successful training grant application, the personal statement is another place to reinforce the program’s mentorship strength and describe factors that may have impacted the mentor’s productivity.  

The personal statement may be used to describe prior experience with:

• Training, mentoring, and promoting an inclusive and supportive scientific environment
• Providing training in rigorous and unbiased experimental design, methodology, analysis, interpretation, and reporting the results
• Aiding and supporting trainees in identifying and transitioning into careers in the biomedical research workforce that are consistent with trainees’ skills, interests, and values.

Simply adding a sentence on the number of years as a mentor and number of trainees over those years can go a long way to demonstrating a mentor’s relevant experience and qualifications as a mentor.

Remember that all standard NIH biosketch rules also still apply including font type, size, and margin requirements. Visit our full mentor biosketch webpage for more information and contact the Grants Submission Unit's Training Grant Team at GSUTraining@mednet.ucla.edu with further questions.