Pilot Awards Program Funds 22 Projects for 2018

ICTR granted 22 awards totaling $1.6 million for the 2018 Pilot Awards Program competition. Five of those awards were co-funded with campus partners; one each by the UW Waisman Center and the Department of Radiology, and three by the UW Carbone Cancer Center. Likewise, ICTR participated as a co-funder for two awards in the UW Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Pilot Awards Program. Such braided funding has been a hallmark of our pilot awards program for a number of years and allows ICTR to fund additional meritorious pilot awards that otherwise would not be possible.

Complete list of awards.

Five award types are included in this month’s announcement. They include Translational Basic & Clinical Pilot Awards (10), Novel Methods Pilot Awards (4), Clinical & Community Outcomes Research Pilot Awards (4), Dissemination & Implementation Research Awards (3), and a Stakeholder and Patient Engaged Research Award (1). Other ICTR pilot awards announced earlier in the year include the new Evidence to Implementation (E2I) awards and the Collaborative Health Equity Research (CHER) awards. Read more on our funding opportunities page.

Christine Sorkness, ICTR Senior Associate Executive Director, notes:

We are thrilled with this cohort of pilot awardees on multiple levels: We have an outstanding group of principal investigators representing schools from across campus including the School of Business, the School of Human Ecology, and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, as well as from the UW schools and college making up the ICTR partnership.

In addition, many of the proposals shine a health equity lens on health issues across Wisconsin. As well as interventions targeting Milwaukee community members from low-income and/or minority households, there are projects testing interventions to improve rural health. Finally, the health issues addressed by this year’s awards are of importance across the lifespan including issues specific to pediatric and geriatric populations.

Overall, pilot projects focus on research likely to lead to a direct impact on human health and that span the entire clinical and translational research spectrum. Examples include understanding sudden infant death syndrome, analysis of clinical workflows, increasing ambulation by geriatric patients, and improving breast cancer follow-up.

ICTR provides a variety of resources to investigators that support their research and enhance their ability to obtain research funding including ICTR Pilot Awards.

Maureen Smith, ICTR Director for Community-Academic Partnerships, comments:

Maureen Smith, MD, PhD, MPHMany of the applicants for Community Engagement and Research (T2 to T4) awards developed exceptional proposals with meaningful stakeholder engagement components by leveraging ICTR-CAP resources.

Some investigators took advantage of consultations with  ICTR-CAP Programs/Affiliate Programs, others completed the Certificate in Clinical & Community Outcomes Research, and still others incorporated feedback from the External Community Review Committee from previous application rounds.  Well done, 2018 pilot awardees!