NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THIS RFA
The Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI) with funding from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studieswill provide funds for seed/pilot research projects conceived and designed by clinicians and translational researchers around the state of Michigan through its Pilot and Collaborative Translational and Clinical Studies (PCTCS) program. Success of this program will be the judged by the rate at which seed grants produce new extramural funding for clinical and translational research or create new intellectual property at MSU-CTSI partner institutions. To provide both flexibility and agility to funding decisions, online grant applications will be accepted at any time during the year.
CRITERIA FOR FUNDING
Projects will be selected based on the following criteria. In order to be considered for funding, it is mandatory that a proposed project meet at least two of these criteria.
·The research is clinical and/or translational (translational defined as either bench-to-bedside or research center-to-communities).
·The research actively engages investigators and/or subjects in multiple community sites around Michigan.
·The project has already been submitted for extramural funding, and tangible evidence is provided to link the proposed research to a future award approval.
GRANT APPLICATION SUBMISSION AND DECISIONS
An initial letter of intent (preapplication)must be submitted prior to acceptance of a full application.The letter of intent – two page limit, template provided at http://ctsi.msu.edu/node/95 - should describe the goals of the proposed project, with an emphasis on its potential to produce external funding or intellectual property. It is also imperative that the letter describe how the proposed project will meet the funding criteria described above.
To ensure that funding decisions occur in as short a time as possible, full applications will be reviewed on a monthly basis.To ensure that the best applications are funded – regardless of the calendar month in which they are submitted, the PTCTS Executive Committee will strive to award funds in as close to an even distribution across the fiscal year as is reasonably possible.