Pilot & Feasibility Program The UCSF DRC's Pilot & Feasibility Program aims to contribute to the building of a robust diabetes research community at UCSF by fulfilling the following goals: ? Identify, attract and support new investigators and junior faculty establishing research programs in diabetes. ? Foster new and innovative collaborations amongst DRC/UCSF faculty. ? Enable established faculty to transfer skills and research developments to the arena of diabetes research. ? Encourage highly innovative early stage investigation in basic and clinical diabetes research. ? Provide seed funding that can be leveraged to increase external grant funding in emerging areas of research During the current funding cycle, the DRC P&F Program supporting diabetes research at UCSF with a total of $980,000 in funding for 23 projects out of 63 applications over six Requests for Applications. An additional 3 proposals ($70,000) were funded with UCSF Diabetes Center funds. The DRC Program placed a high priority on providing support for young faculty intending to establish research programs relevant to diabetes, and 16 of the successful applicants were New/Early Stage Investigators. The Principle Investigators on 8 of the funded project were new to diabetes research, and the remaining two were established diabetes investigators proposing new and exceptionally innovative translational research directions. The P&F program was dedicated to facilitating all UCSF Faculty wishing to pursue new initiatives in basic or clinical diabetes research. The successful research programs were conducted in 18 different departments or Organized Research Units and 3 campuses. Projects that were initiated with seed funding have, to date, resulted in 30 publications and successfully competed for $6,560,351 in external grant funding, of which $2,780,351 went to early stage investigators. This outstanding return reflects the extremely high quality of the applications received. As a result of this funding success, and the P&F Program mentoring program, all but 2 of the P&F awardees remain in diabetes research, and 8 are now permanent members of the DRC. This success in expanding and enriching the diabetes research community at USCF lead to a 2 million dollar private donation to the UCSF Diabetes Center to expand the P&F program. Our goal is to build on this success in the coming cycle. Our RFAs will reach a broader segment of UCSF by participating in a recently set-up campus-wide intramural grants support system. The increased average grant size will capture an even larger number of high quality applications and permit grantees greater leeway in proposing innovative projects. Finally, we have exciting plans to improve our mentoring and feedback mechanisms that ensure our P&F grant recipients take full advantage of the local expertise.
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