Pilot Project Program

Icahn School Of Medicine At Mount Sinai, New York NY

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

Project Summary The Pilot Projects Program (PPP) of the Mount Sinai P30 Center on “Health and Environment Across the LifeSpan” provides funding for “start-up” research projects targeting important environmental health science (EHS) issues, particularly those that fit our life course theme, and research groups. The PPP is supplemented with >$100,000 of institutional funding annually and awards an average of $397,000 (direct costs) in EHS pilot grants annually. In this proposal we will partner with three other NIH- funded Mount Sinai P30 Centers (Cancer, Aging, and Skin Biology) and our Clinical Translational Science Aware (CTSA) to co-fund EHSfocused pilot grants (e.g., aging and the environment, clinical translational environmental health etc.). These partnerships further augment EHS pilot grant funding and build new collaborations to attract researchers with no previous EHS experience to our Center. PPP applications are peer-reviewed using NIH review criteria and are prioritized if 1) they are likely to lead to a extramural grant, 2) if the PI is an early stage investigator; and 3) if the proposal is a multi-PI grant with a postdoctoral fellow who pledges to use the project for a K grant application. In the Center’s first 8 years, we distributed 78 pilots totaling ~$2.4 million. In return, these pilots have led to 43 NIH grant applications, 19 of which are already NIH funded. We have doubled our NIEHS overall funding from 2018 to today, and tripled our NIEHS funding since the Center was founded. The PPP also enhances Facility Core usage and is a vehicle for career development. Our early-stage investigator (ESI) support mechanisms have been remarkably successful, with 48 of 78 funded pilot grants awarded to ESIs. Our Center has fueled many new cross-disciplinary pilot grant collaborations among its Members, and Pilot Project PIs have come from multiple departments, including Genetics (Drs. Faith and Pandey), Global Health (Dr. Vreeman), Otolaryngology (Dr. van Gerwen), Oncology (Drs. Muhammed and Lujambio), Dermatology (Dr. Chipuk), Neuroscience (Dr. Morishita), Pediatrics (Drs. Chu, Satlin), Endocrinology (Dr. Homann), Pulmonology (Drs. Bose and Lee), Nephrology (Drs. Nadkarni and Zhou), Population Health (Dr Benn) and Psychiatry (Dr. Reichenberg). These PIs had no prior EHS research experience before receiving a P30 pilot grant. The PPP Core created many of the supports that accelerated our remarkable growth over the Center’s first 8 years. We have demonstrated our ability to leverage pilot grants for future NIH awards and to bring new investigators into EHS. Going forward, we will increase our total outlay in pilot funding through crossdisciplinary partnerships with other NIH funded Mount Sinai P30 Centers and our CTSA, ensuring that our Center expands its sphere of influence across Mount Sinai, meets pressing EHS research needs and engages researchers from multiple disciplines bringing EHS into greater local, regional and national attention.