NIH ODSS AI Initiatives (Workforce, Ethics, AI-Readiness)

NIH ODSS AI Initiatives Admin Supplements — Seed

Funds AI, ethics, and data readiness initiatives at institutions partnering with NIH grants.

The NIH Office of Data Science Strategy runs three distinct AI initiatives that fund U.S. research institutions through annual administrative supplement notices: (1) Addressing the Workforce Gap in Data Governance for AI in Biomedicine, which trains new investigators at the intersection of information science, AI, and biomedical research; (2) Ethics, Bias, and Transparency for People and Machines, which supports social and technical solutions across the AI lifecycle in biomedical contexts; and (3) Improving the AI-Readiness of Existing NIH-Supported Datasets, which funds work to make existing IC-supported datasets FAIR-compliant and suitable for AI/ML applications. Each initiative has been funded through separate NOT-OD administrative supplement notices — confirmed cycles include FY2021 (NOT-OD-21-094 for AI Readiness; NOT-OD-21-079 for AI Workforce), FY2022 (NOT-OD-22-067 for AI Readiness; NOT-OD-22-065 for AI Ethics), and FY2023 (NOT-OD-23-082 for AI Readiness).

These are administrative supplements — not standalone NOFOs. Applicants must already hold an active NIH parent award; the supplement adds funding and scope to an existing project rather than initiating a new one. Eligible applicants are U.S. nonprofits, universities, and research organizations with active NIH grants. For-profit entities and individual investigators are not eligible. Each annual cycle is announced under a new NOT-OD notice number, and applicants must monitor the NIH Guide for new issuances. The last confirmed FY2023 cycle issued NOT-OD-23-082; FY2024 and later cycles have not been confirmed in available sources as of mid-2026.

To compete, applicants must connect their proposed AI supplement work directly to the scope of their active NIH parent award and map it clearly to one of the three ODSS AI initiative themes. Given that the program has recurred annually since FY2021, institutions with existing NIH awards in data science, health informatics, AI, or FAIR data practices should monitor the NIH Guide around the Q1 fiscal-year window when these notices have historically appeared.