Pilot Project Program

Columbia University Health Sciences, New York NY

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

SUMMARY – PILOT PROJECT PROGRAM (PPP) The goal of the Pilot Project Program (PPP) of the Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan (CEHNM) is to provide seed funding and intellectual support to outstanding new research ideas from existing members and potential new members. The PPP provides funding for research (≤$35K for full pilot projects and ≤$10K for mini-pilots), access to CEHNM state-of-the-art facility cores (FCs), and research design, grant preparation, and intellectual support. The PPP specifically promotes projects that interact with our local communities. We prioritize applications from early-career faculty and faculty who are not yet CEHNM members but who seek to develop new research programs in environmental health sciences. Funding advances our understanding of the health impacts of environmental exposures with a focus on CEHNM’s three scientific directions: Advancing the Exposome, Environmental Data Science, and Biological and Molecular Mechanisms. In addition to supporting CEHNM’s current directions, the PPP also encourages the development of research outside of those directions as a way to develop novel areas of focus. Over the lifetime of the CEHNM, the PPP has been an extraordinary success. Between 2013 and 2021, the PPP received 115 pilot proposals, of which 52 were funded. PPP awardees included investigators from 19 different departments across Columbia University (CU), thus fostering the development of new interdisciplinary collaboration and the expansion of the CEHNM community. More importantly, the PPP seeded novel ideas that significantly advanced the impact of CEHNM’s research. Innovations for this funding cycle include a new funding mechanism and a change in leadership. We will introduce a new category of full-pilot awards, the Cross-Disciplinary Linked Pilots (Linked Pilots) soliciting two coordinated pilot applications (≤$35K each) linking a mechanistic pilot to a human study. The PPP leadership now includes a population scientist (Factor-Litvak) and a laboratory scientist (Re) to help support a full range of applications. To promote creativity, we will modify our scoring criteria to formally include the interdisciplinarity of the applicant team in the review process. The aims of the PPP are to: Aim 1. Foster innovative environmental health research that fills critical translational gaps and fosters CEHNM’s current and future research directions. Aim 2. Support early- career faculty members to develop creative, novel research projects. Aim 3. Attract faculty members from the CU community with complementary backgrounds, skills, and expertise. Aim 4. Facilitate research on crucial environmental health questions and concerns identified through multidirectional communications with community groups and stakeholders.