New York Regional Center for Diabetes Translation Research

Pilot & Feasibility Program The Pilot and Feasibility Study (P&F) Program of the New York Regional Center for Diabetes Translation Research (NY-CDTR) is designed to support primarily early stage investigators (ESIs), but also established investigators in other fields to conduct research in diabetes, obesity and related cardiometabolic disorders. Proposals that investigate health disparities related to diabetes and obesity, and these areas as they relate to COVID-19, are encouraged. During our initial grant award cycle, we exceeded the mandated average of two funded proposals per year for a P&F program, having a total of 13 P&F funded grants. For this renewal application, we introduce a coordinated initiative to address racial disparities in obtaining NIH funded R01 grants. We solicit P&F proposals through our website and by email reaching out to our members and relevant departments at our member institutions to solicit P&F proposals as well as through our Enrichment Program and Cores. Overall, the goals of the P&F Program are to foster innovative areas of inquiry in diabetes or obesity both by supporting and mentoring individual P&F recipients and to encourage collaboration among NY- CDTR members. Our Specific Aims are: 1) To conduct annual P&F grant competitions. We have increased our institutional collaboration and refined our procedures for our annual competition to increase the number of responsive applications to a minimum of ten per year. We will expand the circulation of our annual solicitation for P&F proposals through new collaborations with other NIH-supported Centers..2) To increase P&F awardee and early stage investigator use of CDTR resources (Core services and Enrichment programming). We are collaborating with the Core and Enrichment leaders to increase awareness and use of NY-CDTR Core services and Program resources and to facilitate networking, which P&F awardees identified as a priority on the Spring 2020 Membership Survey. 3) To objectively evaluate P&F awardee progress. We are formalizing our evaluation metrics for all P&F projects to include a quarterly checklist-type status update that reports on milestones achieved. 4) To increase P&F applications from URiM investigators and evaluate relevant funding metrics. The P&F program will collaborate with the Enrichment Program and the Administrative Core to engage the membership network, pipeline programs, and Diversity Supplement grant recipients to solicit P&F proposals. We will assess barriers and facilitators for URiM early stage investigators in obtaining R01 funding.