American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellowship 2027: Historical Reference for the Closed Cycle

American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellowship 2027: Historical Reference for the Closed Cycle

The American Heart Association (AHA) 2027 Predoctoral Fellowship cycle is closed. The official program page gives Tuesday, August 4, 2026 at 3 p.m. Central Time as the proposal deadline and explicitly says that late submissions, extension requests, and appeals are not accepted. Its current program description is for the 2027 fellowship, with an award start listed as January 1, 2027. The page reviewed for this update does not announce a later application cycle. This entry is therefore an archive of the documented 2027 cycle, not an invitation to submit now and not a prediction of a future deadline.

The closed-cycle information remains useful to students, mentors, and research administrators who want to understand the award’s purpose, support, eligibility rules, and application structure. A future call could change its dates or terms. Anyone considering a later AHA fellowship should return to the Association’s live funding page and use the new program description and ProposalCentral instructions for that cycle rather than relying on this archive as a current application guide.

2027 cycle at a glance

Purpose and research fit

The fellowship supports one or two years of mentored training for students in predoctoral and clinical health degree programs who intend to pursue scientific, physician-scientist, clinician-scientist, or related careers connected to cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, or brain health. The research question should fit that mission and be presented as a training experience as well as a scientific project. The proposal is expected to explain why the question matters, what the trainee will do, and how the work and mentoring will help the applicant develop toward an independent research career.

The AHA describes the proposal as a systematic investigation developed collaboratively by the trainee and mentor. The applicant must have primary responsibility for writing and preparing it, while the mentor provides substantive guidance. A project can relate to work already supported in the mentor’s laboratory, but the applicant’s role and contribution need to be clear. The official description prohibits submitting identical or significantly similar content as another investigator’s application, including substantially duplicative mentor grant and fellow applications. It allows a mentor grant and fellowship to be funded together when the aims are not duplicated.

The award can be relevant to basic, clinical, translational, population, and other research approaches when the connection to cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, or brain health is explained. A general biomedical topic is not automatically a fit. The applicant should make the health problem and its relationship to the AHA mission explicit, connect the aims to a testable investigative question, and show why the project suits their background and intended career. The organization also says a new fellow may use mentor-generated preliminary data when the student has not yet had enough time to generate their own; the source of the data should be put into context.

Support and budget boundaries

For each award year, the official 2027 description lists a $29,364 stipend, a $4,550 health-insurance allowance, and $2,000 in project support. The insurance allowance may be used to supplement insurance costs, but the allowance itself cannot be redirected to unrelated expenses. The AHA says the stipend matches the published NIH predoctoral stipend at the time its proposal intake begins. The fellowship may be requested for one or two years, so applicants should make the duration consistent with the scope and timing of the research and training plan.

Project support is intended for research-related costs and the program description says there is no limit on an individual line item, with examples including travel, computers, and equipment. International travel is permitted and does not require prior approval according to this cycle’s terms. These amounts do not make the award a full project grant: the Association does not pay indirect costs on fellowships, and additional monetary support for the proposed research must come from the mentor’s laboratory. The proposal should therefore fit the lab’s existing capacity and identify the resources needed to carry out the work. The applicant and mentor should not assume that the fellowship’s small project-support allowance will cover all laboratory expenses.

Eligibility recorded for this cycle

At application, the student had to be enrolled full time in a post-baccalaureate PhD, MD, DO, DVM, PharmD, DDS, or DrPH program, or in a PhD program in science, nursing, public health, or an equivalent clinical health science doctoral program. The stated purpose is research training with a sponsor before embarking on a research career. The award is not intended for people of faculty or staff rank.

At award activation, an applicant must have completed initial coursework and be far enough along to devote full-time effort, defined by AHA as 80%, to research or activities that develop the fellow toward independence or a related career advancing cardiovascular health. The program recognizes the challenges of clinical service and permits delayed starts of up to six months, including for applicants with clinical appointments. The applicant was expected to indicate an intended delay in the Personal Statement section of the biosketch. A delay cannot be used to finish required predoctoral coursework.

The award is limited to research at eligible U.S.-based nonprofit institutions, including universities and colleges, medical, osteopathic, dental, veterinary, public-health, pharmacy, or nursing schools, and public or voluntary hospitals able to conduct the work. Applicants did not need to have lived in the United States for a specified period before applying. At submission, and throughout the award, the applicant had to hold an eligible status. AHA lists U.S. citizenship, permanent residence, and pending permanent residence (with a filed Form I-485 and an I-797C notice confirming receipt and a pending case), along with E-3, F-1 for predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows, G-4, H1-B, J-1 for predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows, O-1, TN, or DACA status. Applicants with questions about a particular status were directed to consult their institutional grants officer.

Applicants also had to be AHA Professional Members when submitting. The program page advised allowing three to five days for membership processing and expected mentors on mentored research awards to maintain active AHA Professional Membership too. Other restrictions in the cycle description included one Predoctoral Fellowship application per applicant per deadline and only one AHA research award held by a predoctoral fellow at a time. A fellow could apply for an AHA Postdoctoral Fellowship in the final year of the predoctoral award.

Mentor and training environment

The sponsor or mentor is central to this fellowship. AHA expects an established investigator who is interested in the fellow’s progress and able to direct the project and training. The mentor’s application materials should describe the relationship between the proposed work and ongoing funded research, explain the trainee’s role in developing the proposal, and show how the project will contribute to the applicant’s development and career plans. Because only the stipend and specified allowances come from the fellowship, the mentor’s laboratory must provide additional monetary support for the research.

The mentoring plan should be specific to the student. AHA encourages institutions to use Individual Development Plans, and states that the applicant’s career goals and the mentor’s training plan should complement one another. Review considers the mentor’s experience, productivity, funding, prior trainees, familiarity with the applicant’s goals, and the quality of the training plan and research environment. The plan should describe the skills and guidance the fellow needs, how progress will be reviewed, and why the lab and institutional environment make the work and training feasible. A standard template that could apply unchanged to any student is unlikely to communicate a well-matched plan.

Application materials and process documented by AHA

Applications for the closed cycle were submitted electronically through ProposalCentral. AHA said the system opened eight weeks before the deadline and that all submissions required a designated institutional representative’s signature. The source describes the following materials for a Predoctoral Fellowship application; applicants for a future cycle should verify the new instructions because requirements can change:

• The applicant’s proposed research plan, limited to five pages, with the investigative question, aims, methods, scientific rationale, the applicant’s role, and the project’s value as a training vehicle.
• The applicant’s biosketch and Personal Statement. The AHA biosketch instructions call for a career-goals statement for fellowship applicants; those goals should reflect the applicant’s actual plans.
• Literature cited, with a four-page limit, and vertebrate animal subjects information when relevant. Resubmission modifications are included when applicable and have a two-page limit.
• Three reference reports. Referees upload their own reports through the ProposalCentral link and must submit them by the deadline before the proposal can be submitted. The mentor, co-mentor, department head, collaborating investigator, or consultant contributing to the proposal may not serve as a referee.
• Mentor and, if named, co-mentor biosketches, past and current trainees information, a three-page training plan for the fellow, and research project environment information.

The AHA’s general application-resource page specifies which documents come from the applicant and which from third parties. The applicant coordinates the application in ProposalCentral, but referees and mentors provide their own materials through the system. A designated institutional representative must sign off. These roles make lead time important: a student has to coordinate scientific writing, mentor documents, referee submissions, membership, and institutional review. For the closed 2027 round the page gave May 15, 2026 as the ProposalCentral opening date and August 4, 2026 as the submission deadline. Those dates are historical cycle facts, not future planning dates.

How applications were evaluated

The AHA lists three principal review areas. The potential of the fellow is 30% and includes the applicant’s research-career potential, stated career plans, research experience or publications, reference support, and rationale for the training. The mentor’s commitment and research training plan account for 40%; reviewers assess the mentor’s funding and track record, the applicant-specific training plan, and the research environment. Evaluation of the research as a training vehicle accounts for the remaining 30%, including the appropriateness and feasibility of the work for the applicant, a clear hypothesis and methodology, and the significance of the problem to cardiovascular disease, stroke, or brain health.

For projects involving people or vertebrate animals, the application must address how relevant biological variables, including sex, are incorporated in design, analysis, and reporting. A proposal studying only one sex needs a strong justification based on relevant evidence. The AHA says it may triage at least half of submissions before full review. Applicants must not contact peer reviewers. These review details help explain why a competitive submission has to connect the science, applicant, sponsor, and training plan instead of treating them as separate paperwork sections.

Historical status and next-cycle guidance

The 2027 call’s firm deadline has passed. The AHA says it does not accept late proposals, extension requests, or appeals. The official page reviewed here continues to identify the 2027 Predoctoral Fellowship and does not state a subsequent cycle’s deadline or application opening. No later date is supplied in this archive. Its metadata keeps the actual August 4, 2026 closing date and marks the page with historicalReference = true, so the closed date is preserved without presenting the fellowship as an open listing.

Students planning for a possible future round can use this record to begin conversations with a potential sponsor, assess whether the research connects to AHA’s mission, and learn the general structure of the award. They should wait for a new official program description before assuming that the same stipend, eligibility rules, materials, or schedule will apply. Check the AHA funding opportunities page and its application resources for an announced cycle, read that cycle’s request for proposals, and confirm membership, institutional eligibility, and all ProposalCentral instructions from the current source. The AHA 2027 page remains the authority for the facts recorded above, but it is not evidence that applications are currently being accepted.

Official program page: https://professional.heart.org/en/research-programs/aha-funding-opportunities/predoctoral-fellowship