Applying for a CO-Pilot grant involves submitting a Letter of Intent, followed by a 4-page NIH-style application. These steps are detailed below. The application is scored, reviewed, and the awardees are chosen in council with the CCTSI Executive Committee. Each applicant (PI, co-investigator, and mentor) should be included in ONLY ONE application.
Your CO-Pilot Grant Application should describe cross-disciplinary and collaborative research in clinical and translational medicine. Translational research is intentionally broadly construed and includes any basic, pre-clinical or clinical research directed with promise to improve human health. There are three award levels (indirect costs not permitted):
- Pilot Awards: $20,000. Mentored Pilot Awards are for beginning investigators (including post-docs and assistant professors in tenure or research tracks) to partner with a more senior mentor investigator. Junior Faculty Pilot Awards are for junior faculty, including faculty and post-docs who have not attained associate professor rank or above.
- Independent Investigator/Career Transition Award: $50,000. Independent Investigator/Career Transition Awards are for independent investigators (associate professor and above) looking to incorporate a new clinical translational direction into their research. This can include applications for mini-sabbaticals supporting an investigator’s incorporating a new technology or area to move their research toward clinical translational efforts.
- Team Science Award: $100,000. The Team Science Award is for groups of researchers demonstrating an efficient plan for cross-disciplinary collaboration.
CO-Pilot grants are judged on these criteria:
|
Reviewer Guidelines with Specific Emphasis on CCTSI Mission |
| Significance |
Will the results further our understanding / diagnosis / or treatment of human diseases? |
| Approach |
Are the hypotheses and the experimental approach sound? What is the likelihood of success given the experiments / proposal as outlined? Are there explicit plans for development of future funding for the project, whether through the NIH, other Foundations, or even commercial sources? |
| Innovation |
Is the proposal innovative and novel in its hypotheses, approaches, and techniques? |
| Investigators |
Have the investigators made use of new collaborations? Are attempts made to bridge basic and translational researchers in discovery translation? Are efforts made to build collaborations with community-based efforts? |
| Environment |
Quality of the proposal in terms of the mission of the CCTSI. Does the proposal consider use of CCTSI resources, including Design, Biostatistics, Technology Resources, Patient and Clinical Interaction Resources etc? |
| Experimental Considerations |
This section will address the appropriate institutional policies regarding animal welfare, human subjects and use of biohazards
Overall Evaluation Summary of important aspects of the critique and major recommendations. |
Step 1 – Letter of Intent, indicating:
- PI name, affiliation, rank
- Co-investigators’ or Mentors names and affiliations
- Project Title
- Grant level (Mentored Pilot, Junior Faculty Pilot, Independent Investigator, Team)
- Special considerations: PI is Underserved minority investigator; PI is Changing research direction toward clinical translational research; Project represents a Bioengineering collaboration.
Step 2 – 4-page NIH style application:
Contents of the CO-Pilot Program Application
- Goals, objectives or aims of your project. (suggested 1/2 page);
Provide a clear, concise summary of the hypothesis to be tested. What clinical or translational research areas will this apply to?
- Background and Preliminary Work for the proposal. (suggested 1 page)
Clearly describe the overall plan for methods development. Describe proposed tests, procedures, subject population and ages in sufficient detail to allow adequate evaluation of your approach. Include a projected time-line.
- Experimental Design and Methods (suggested 2 pages)
Include details of the relative involvement of mentors and the applicant in Mentored Science Award applications or details of different collaborators’ expected roles in applications involving collaboration.
- Use of CCTSI Resources. (suggested ½ page) Consult CCTSI website or the CCTSI Navigator (Sarah Stallings, 720.848.5519) for information.
- Budget.
a. Justification: Justify items by categories. No investigator salary or tuition support is permitted.
b. Other support
- Include an NIH biosketch for PI and CO-investigators on the project.
- For Mini-sabbatical applications only: Letter demonstrating Institutional support of the sabbatical.
Step 3 – Scoring:
Each application will be scored by two reviewers on a scale of 1 to 5.
Step 4 – Review:
Reviewers will convene in a study section to discuss the applications with the higher scores. These will be scored again by the entire review committee. The highest scoring applications from each category will garner a CO-Pilot award, pending approval by the Executive Committee.