Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) Pilot Grant Funding Opportunity

The Center for Clinical and Translational Science believes health research should raise people’s overall well-being in Chicago and beyond. We help UIC researchers bring health breakthroughs into the world faster.

The Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) announces the availability of pilot grant funding for research development. These pilot grant awards will be for one-year, up to $30,000, with funding starting in June 1st, 2024.

The goals of the CCTS Pilot Grant Program are:

· To foster outstanding new clinical and translational research at UIC that supports research development to address urgent questions or to develop preliminary data that can be used to launch new NIH or other externally-funded research proposals
· To encourage interdisciplinary teams of investigators that span across Colleges and campus to develop collaborations or new research avenues
· To promote interactions between basic, clinical, community, and social scientists
· To support research collaborations with community partners and organizations
· To advance health equity through research

The expectation at the end of the 12-month grant cycle is that awardees will have generated preliminary data, or data that helps respond to prior submitted proposal critiques, that will be used in an external (e.g., NIH) grant proposal.

We will consider a range of potential research ideas across the full translational spectrum. Pilot funding proposal ideas include but are not limited to:

· Proof of principle studies for new methodologies
· Feasibility studies for participant recruitment
· Measurement validation studies
· Pilot intervention studies to inform sample size and power estimation
· Establishment of collaborative community partnerships
· Development of new technologies to address a research problem
· Improvements in biomedical informatics architecture and/or delivery of services
· New methods for structuring or analyzing data sets
· Development of research addressing child health

PI Eligibility
Principal Investigators must be clinical, research, or tenure track UIC faculty or Senior Scientists at UIC. Although adjunct faculty cannot serve as PIs, they may serve as named investigators, collaborators, or key personnel. Post-doctoral fellows may also serve as key personnel but cannot be PIs.

Application Process
The grant application process is divided into two phases: the Letter of Intent and Full Application phases. Letters of intent are required and will be reviewed. Only applicants who have submitted a letter of intent and who are invited to apply for the full pilot or planning grant will be eligible. Applications will ONLY be accepted via electronic submission in the Awards system CCTS Awards System. Please note, the application cycle is currently under construction and will be open for applications in the next few days.

Application Timeline
· RFA Release date: Monday, October 30, 2023
· LOIs due: Friday, December 1, 2023 by 5:00 PM CST
· Invitations to full application: Monday, January 22, 2024
· Full Applications due: Friday, March 8, 2024 by 5:00 PM CST
· Award Notification: Monday, April 22, 2024
· Award Start Date: Saturday, June 1, 2024

Learn More Here!