Early Career Research Award

• The Principal Investigator (PI) of an ECRA application must have a primary academic appointment in the College of Medicine at the rank of Assistant Professor. In addition to the basic science faculty, virtually all physicians and psychologists employed by Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center have a primary academic appointment in the College of Medicine and are therefore eligible to apply.
• At time of application, the PI must not hold a K01, K08, K23, K99/R00, KL2 or similar research career development award; and must not have served as PI of a major research project grant (e.g. R01, R35, R3, U01, or equivalent) or as a project leader of a major center/program project grant.
• Applicants who have served as PI of an R03, R21, K22, R43/R44 or other similar external grant award are eligible to submit an application to this program if they meet the other eligibility criteria.
• Current or previous PIs of a Penn State College of Medicine Junior Faculty Research Scholar Award (JFRSA) are not eligible to apply.
• The PI must have a minimum commitment of 30% effort to research throughout the project period for this award. The PI can put a maximum of 10% effort on the proposed budget for each year and must provide a letter from the department chair or institute director describing support for an additional 20% effort to research for each year of the award.
• Eligible PIs may only submit one (1) application per application cycle.
• ECRA recipients may be eligible to apply for and receive other competitive institutional research grants provided there is no scientific overlap between the projects.

• ECRA applications may request up to $200,000 in direct costs over a project period of two years to support new research projects at Penn State College of Medicine/Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.
• Each PI must identify a Mentoring Team of two or more experienced investigators to provide advice and assistance in developing and executing both a Research Approach and a Career Development Plan.
• Grant funds may be used to support the salary and fringe benefits of the PI and research staff (in proportion to dedicated effort), student stipends, supplies, equipment, domestic travel, publication costs, and expenses related to the use of human subjects.  Other funding is required to support the contributions of any external collaborators as well as collaborators from other Penn State colleges or campuses.
• Additional funds may be requested for strategic instrumentation beneficial to the implementation of the research plan. Funding for the research and instrumentation will be considered sequentially. Ideally, the research plan should not be entirely dependent on the purchase of the instrumentation as it is possible that only the scientifically meritorious research component would be funded. Any instrumentation purchased by the award would be housed and managed as determined by the Institutional Biomedical Research Cores. Final decision on the funding of instrumentation purchases is the prerogative of the Vice Dean for Research and Graduate Studies.

All ECRA applications will undergo scientific merit review by non-conflicted Penn State faculty members with appropriate expertise using the following criteria:

• 50% – Scientific and technical merit of the Research Strategy using NIH review criteria and scoring metric
• 50% – Appropriateness of the proposed Career Development Plan

Following the scientific merit review, the merit of strategic instrumentation requests will be evaluated by the Vice Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in conjunction with Research Development and the Director of Biomedical Research Core Facilities. The Vice Dean for Research and Graduate Studies will recommend applications for funding and consideration for strategic instrumentation add-ons.

Applicants will receive written feedback from the review process.

Previous recipients of funding are listed here.