Pilot Core

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

The goal of the Pilot Core is to stimulate research in both faculty members and students on the topics of healthy minds. The expectation is that these awards will result in publishable findings in their own right, but also will yield sufficiently interesting results to serve as pilot data for large-scale projects that will be submitted and funded through other mechanisms, such as RO-l's, program projects, and private initiatives. To this end, the Center will award three grants in the amount of $20,000 per year (direct costs) to faculty members at UIUC. In addition to funds budgeted for faculty awards, we also propose to make four awards of $5,000 each to postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. Such research awards will facilitate entry of young scholars into the field and also increase the amount of pilot data available for subsequent grant applications. The program is modeled after the highly successful seed grant program conducted under the auspices of the Roybal Center that Dr. Park has directed for the past two funding periods. Two model proposals are included, one by Elizabeth Stine-Morrow and Dan Morrow that proposes to develop a pilot "Odyssey of the Mind" program for senior adults, and a second project by Edward Diener that collects pilot data to understand the relationship between positive affect and cognitive flexibility and working memory function (Experiment 1) as well as social and cognitive engagement (Experiment 2).