Bridges to Translation offers funding for pilot projects

As part of its mission to accelerate discoveries to benefit human health, Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute regularly awards funding to support pilot projects through its Bridges to Translation award.

The translation of biomedical and health discoveries to application is a long and complex process with high costs and substantial failure rates. As such, the institute seeks to fund pilot projects that build linkages and overcome roadblocks at any stage in the translational process.

Special consideration will be given to projects that focus on development or applications addressing social and environmental determinants of health, specifically as these releate to rural and other vulnerable populations who experience health disparities.

“Bridges to Translation allowed our cross-disciplinary team to tackle a very complex problem in computer-aided drug discovery. We have published several papers based on this research and developed open software for the community. This opportunity allowed us to further collaborate on other projects and on a major National Science Foundation grant.”
– Nikolay Dokholyan, PhD, MS

This topic includes, but is not limited to:

• Social determinants
• Environmental determinants
• Study of and/or interventions focused on diseases of despair (Case and Deaton, PNAS 2015)
• New or new applications of methodologies including telemedicine, community-engaged research, big data modeling, etc., in research on the determinants of health
• Population health and patient-centered outcomes research

Award amount

CTSI will provide up to $300,000 to support up to 10 interdisciplinary, multi-investigator projects. Awards will be capped at a $50,000 budget.

Eligibility

The principal investigator (PI) must hold a Penn State faculty appointment. This includes faculty members at all Penn State campuses. Proposals from multi-disciplinary, cross-campus teams, led by junior investigators with senior investigators on the team will be most competitive.

Important dates

Office hours: On Friday, Nov. 19, potential applicants have an opportunity to join open office hours and ask questions related to the application. Join this Zoom room from 10-11 a.m. and 2:30-3:30 p.m. (Password: 920027)

Letter of intent: Dec. 10, 2021 at 5 p.m.

Full proposal invitations: Dec. 21, 2021

Full Application due date: Feb. 18, 2022 at 5 p.m.

Award announcement: May 18, 2022

Anticipated funding start date: Sept. 1, 2022

View more application information on InfoReady

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