CCTS announces AY20-21 Pilot Grant Funding, now accepting LOIs

The Center for Clinical and Translational Science announces the availability of pilot grant funding for Academic Year 2020-2021.

These pilot grant awards will be for two years, up to $30,000 annually , with funding starting November 2020.

CCTS Pilot Grant Program seeks to:

  • foster outstanding new clinical and translational health research at UIC by supporting the development of preliminary data that can be used to launch new NIH or other externally-funded research proposals;
  • encourage interdisciplinary teams of investigators that spans across Colleges and campus to develop collaborations or new research avenues;
  • promote interactions between basic, clinical and public health scientists; and
  • support research collaborations with community partners and organizations.
Pilot funding aims to support multiple aspects of multidisciplinary collaborations that may lead to successful, extramurally funded research programs. Aspects include but are not limited to:
  • proof of principle studies for new methodologies;
  • feasibility studies for patient 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 clinical research problem;
  • improvements in biomedical informatics architecture and/or delivery of services,
  • new methods for structuring or analyzing data sets; and
  • stimulating child clinical research.

AY20-21 Priority Areas

Although applications are welcome in the broad domains of clinical translational research, we are especially interested in applications covering the following priority areas for Fall 2020 funding:
  • Projects that directly addresses issues relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic by supporting rapid response research question
  • Pain management/opioid use/substance use
  • Health disparities and/or health equity
  • Health issues related to homelessness
  • Innovative implementation science, including methods promote the uptake of research findings into routine healthcare in clinical or policy contexts
  • Engineering solutions to health issues
  • Projects linking patient data to Chicago Health Atlas data and Healthy Chicago 2.0
  • Projects that tie into Healthy Chicago 2025 priorities
  • Studies on methods to improve the clinical translational research process
  • Projects grounded in bidirectional community-based participation
  • Child health research
  • Workforce preparedness and interventions to develop training materials

Application Timeline:

  • Letters of Intent Due: 12 Noon, JULY 1, 2020
  • Full Applications (invitation only) Due: September 4, 2020
  • Anticipated start November 16, 2020