The National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) is a nationwide mentoring and professional-development program supported by the NIH Common Fund and administered by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). It connects researchers across career stages — from undergraduates to faculty — in the biomedical, behavioral, clinical, and social sciences with evidence-based mentoring, networking opportunities, and career-development resources, with a stated emphasis on increasing diversity, inclusion, and equity in the biomedical research workforce.
NRMN is not itself a grant mechanism that funds a researcher’s project — it is a mentoring infrastructure and services program. Research administrators typically encounter it when advising early-career or underrepresented investigators on where to find structured mentoring, grant-writing support, or a professional network alongside (not instead of) a traditional funding award such as an F31, F32, or T32 training grant.
NRMN and the NIH Common Fund’s Diversity Program Consortium
NRMN was launched in October 2014 as one of three interlocking components of the NIH Common Fund’s Diversity Program Consortium (DPC), a national initiative created to develop and test new approaches for diversifying the biomedical research workforce. The other two components are BUILD (Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity), which funds undergraduate research-capacity building at partner institutions, and the Coordination and Evaluation Center (CEC), based at UCLA, which evaluates the Consortium’s programs and coordinates data collection across all three components. NIGMS manages the Consortium on behalf of the NIH Common Fund, which pools resources across NIH institutes and centers for trans-NIH initiatives.
NRMN’s initial five-year Common Fund award was reported at roughly $19 million, part of a broader Diversity Program Consortium initiative NIH described at launch as a roughly $250 million, decade-scale investment. NRMN has since been renewed through subsequent competitive cycles (for example, the NRMN Resource Center funding opportunity RFA-RM-18-002) rather than operating as a single fixed award, so a research administrator advising on any NRMN-affiliated activity should confirm current award status and scope directly with NIGMS or the network’s coordinating institutions rather than assuming the original 2014 award terms still apply.
Who NRMN Serves
NRMN is deliberately structured to span the full career continuum rather than a single training stage. Its stated audience includes:
- Undergraduate and graduate students in biomedical, behavioral, clinical, and social-science fields exploring or pursuing a research career.
- Postdoctoral researchers preparing to transition to independent faculty positions.
- Early-career and new investigators, including junior faculty building an independent research program and applying for their first major federal awards.
- Established faculty and senior scientists who volunteer as mentors, or who seek certified training in evidence-based mentoring practice themselves.
Consistent with the Diversity Program Consortium’s overall mission, NRMN gives particular emphasis to researchers from backgrounds underrepresented in biomedical research, though its mentoring platform and many of its resources are broadly accessible rather than restricted by demographic eligibility criteria. Some specific NRMN-affiliated programs do carry their own eligibility rules — for example, certain grant-writing coaching cohorts have required applicants to hold Early Stage or New Investigator status and be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, consistent with standard NIH early-career funding eligibility conventions. Eligibility criteria vary by individual program and should always be checked against the current program page rather than assumed.
NRMN’s Core Programs and Resources
MyNRMN
MyNRMN is NRMN’s free online mentoring and networking platform, open at no cost through nrmnet.net. It functions as a matching and social-networking tool: users create a profile, and the platform recommends mentor or mentee connections and lets members build a personal professional network that can include several mentors and peer connections simultaneously, reflecting the “developmental network” model of mentoring rather than a single-mentor-per-mentee pairing. Program evaluations published in the peer-reviewed literature have reported MyNRMN registration in the tens of thousands, spanning mentors and mentees across all 50 U.S. states and thousands of participating institutions — figures that reflect a specific evaluation snapshot rather than a live, continuously updated count, so treat any specific registration number as a reported historical figure rather than a current one.
Mentor and facilitator training
NRMN offers mentor training and facilitator certification developed in partnership with the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER), which maintains the evidence-based mentor-training curricula used across much of the NIH-funded mentoring ecosystem. This lets institutions train their own facilitators to deliver structured mentor-training workshops locally, extending NRMN’s reach beyond its own directly-run sessions.
Grant-writing coaching groups
NRMN runs structured, cohort-based grant-writing coaching programs aimed at early-stage investigators developing competitive federal proposals, with facilitation support historically provided through partner institutions such as Northwestern University. These combine peer accountability, structured milestones, and expert feedback on proposal drafts, distinct from the one-off grant-writing workshops many institutions run internally.
Developmental network coaching and health-equity programming
NRMN has also run structured coaching interventions — including a studied “Developmental Network Coaching” model — aimed at building an early-career investigator’s full network of developmental relationships rather than a single mentor pairing, and programming such as the Strategic Empowerment Tailored for Health Equity (SETH EQ) Collaboratory, which provides health-equity-focused professional development and virtual peer interaction for investigators in that space.
Webinars and professional development
NRMN regularly hosts webinars and other professional-development programming open to its network on topics spanning career navigation, mentoring skills, and grant strategy, archived on its site for members who cannot attend live sessions.
How Researchers Access NRMN
Because NRMN is a services and mentoring network rather than a funding mechanism, there is no single competitive application that grants “membership” in the way a fellowship award does. In practice, a researcher or research administrator engages with NRMN by:
- Creating a free MyNRMN profile at nrmnet.net to access the mentor-matching platform directly.
- Applying to specific structured programs — such as a grant-writing coaching cohort or a developmental-coaching program — each of which runs its own application cycle, eligibility criteria, and timeline, published on the NRMN site when open.
- Attending NRMN webinars and events, most of which are open registration rather than competitive.
- Institutions and mentors seeking facilitator certification apply through NRMN’s CIMER-affiliated training pathway to become certified to deliver mentor training locally.
Research administration offices supporting early-career investigators — particularly those preparing K-series career-development or F-series fellowship applications — commonly point applicants to NRMN as a complement to institutional mentoring committees and formal mentoring agreements required by many NIH training and career-development awards, not as a substitute for them.
How NRMN Relates to Other Mentoring and Career-Development Mechanisms
NRMN is frequently confused with NIH mentoring requirements embedded directly in specific award mechanisms. The distinction matters for research administrators advising investigators:
- NIH mentoring plans and K-awards — K-series career development awards require an institutionally-specific, reviewed mentoring plan as part of the application itself; NRMN is an optional external resource an investigator can draw on to strengthen that plan or find an additional mentor, not a substitute for the required plan. See CASRAI’s guide to NIH mentoring plans, K-awards, and training grants for how those formal requirements work.
- NIH Diversity Supplements — administrative supplements that fund an underrepresented researcher’s addition to an existing active NIH grant are a distinct funding mechanism from NRMN; the two are complementary in intent (both address workforce diversity) but operate through entirely different application and funding pathways. See CASRAI’s NIH Diversity Supplement guide for that mechanism specifically.
- T32 institutional training grants — a T32 funds an institution’s structured training program for a cohort of trainees; NRMN is not tied to a specific institution’s T32 and instead offers a national, cross-institutional mentoring network any eligible researcher can join independent of local training-grant enrollment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is NRMN a grant program?
No. NRMN does not fund research projects or salaries directly. It provides mentoring infrastructure, training, networking, and professional-development programming. Researchers seeking project or salary funding still need a separate funding mechanism such as an NIH fellowship, career-development award, or diversity supplement.
Is NRMN free to join?
The core MyNRMN platform and most NRMN professional-development programming are free to eligible participants, consistent with its funding through the NIH Common Fund as a public workforce-development resource. Specific structured cohort programs may have limited capacity and their own application and selection process even though there is no fee to apply.
Who funds and administers NRMN?
NRMN is funded by the NIH Common Fund and administered by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) as one of three components of the Diversity Program Consortium, alongside BUILD and the UCLA-based Coordination and Evaluation Center.
Do I need to be from an underrepresented background to use NRMN?
NRMN’s mission centers on diversifying the biomedical research workforce, and it gives particular emphasis and outreach to researchers from underrepresented backgrounds, but its general mentoring platform and many resources are not restricted by demographic eligibility criteria. Specific structured programs may set their own eligibility rules, which should be checked individually.
How is NRMN different from a T32 or K-award mentoring plan?
A T32 or K-award mentoring plan is a formal, reviewed requirement embedded in a specific NIH award. NRMN is an independent, national network a researcher can use to supplement that required mentoring, find additional mentors, or access grant-writing coaching, regardless of which (if any) NIH award they currently hold.
