GRF-STEM Continuations, FY 2019

The Graduate Research Fellowship in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (GRF-STEM) program provides grants to accredited academic institutions to support graduate research leading to doctoral degrees in topic areas that are relevant to preventing and controlling crime, and ensuring the fair and impartial administration of criminal justice in the United States. Applicant academic institutions sponsoring doctoral students are eligible to apply only if the doctoral student's degree program is a Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) discipline; and the student's proposed dissertation research has demonstrable implications for addressing the challenges of crime and/or the fair and impartial administration of criminal justice in the United States. Awards are anticipated to be made to successful applicant institutions in the form of grants to cover fellowships for the sponsored doctoral students. GRF-STEM fellowships allow up to 3 years of support usable over a 5-year period. For each year of support, NIJ provides the degree-granting institution a stipend of $35,000 usable toward the student's salary and related costs, and up to $15,000 to cover the student's tuition and fees, administrative expenses, research expenses, and related costs. Initial awards were made for the first year of funding only, but it was anticipated that up to two additional annual funding increments would be available, pending demonstration of: 1) Continued active enrollment in the doctoral degree program, and 2) Verification (in the form of a signed letter from the dissertation committee chair) that the doctoral student is actively carrying out research and making satisfactory progress toward the dissertation topic originally proposed (or substantively similar to that originally proposed). This GRF-STEM Continuations solicitation allows previously awarded GRF-STEM fellows from FY 2017 and earlier, who have not yet received 3 years of funding and who are not otherwise ineligible, to request an additional annual funding supplement. Program parameters were changed in FY 2018, such that those and later fellows will no longer be required to request annual supplements through a continuations solicitation process.