The Pilot Projects Program (PPP) is one of the most important components of the CEG. The primary objective of the PPP is to provide seed support for new initiatives in basic, translational, and clinical research that will shed new light on the interaction between genes and the environment in which they operate. The goal of the program is to allow investigators, either established or new to the field, to obtain significant preliminary data that can become the basis of a new training grant (K-series) or R01-type grant proposals (or their equivalent) and associated publications. The program is also viewed by CEG as an important vehicle to help junior investigators in their career development (see Section 4. Career Development Program or CDP, pages 624-634). The PPP has been enormously successful in the past and during the last funding cycle [see F &G below, and Tables D2 (pages 612-617), E1 and E2]. Success of the PPP will continue to be measured by the following matrices: a) recruitment of new investigators at all levels to this area of research, b) subsequent attainment of independence among funded junior investigators, and c) funding of additional investigator-initiated grants, and d) resulting publications with high impact in the field. Special attention is given to whether the funded projects are integrated into the collaborative and integrative nature of the CEG, their creativity in utilizing technologies offered by the facilities and services cores, and their potentials in clinical translation. An important element of the PPP is to support synergistic, innovative, high-risk/high-reward research with a multidisciplinary foundation. The funding mechanisms for FY17-21 will be closely aligned to the mission of the CEG (see Section 1, page 444) and the two-track training model of the CDP (see, Section 4, page 624). Specifically, the PPP will introduce four new award mechanisms (see Figure 1): 1) mentee-mentor partnership awards, 2) new-to-EHS investigator awards, 3) Innovator awards for established investigators to pursue a new direction or acquire/utilize a new technology, and 4) affinity-group awards that aim at building functional multidisciplinary group research. The PPP will seek to fund projects that pioneer leading-edge directions and future leaders in the forefront of research in geneenvironment interactions. Given the completion of the Human Genome Project, the PPP is especially interested in funding studies on human populations or diseases. All PPP recipients will be fully supported by three state-of-the-art, highly integrated facilities and services cores: the Integrative Technologies Support Core, the Integrative Health Services Core, and the Bioinformatics Core.
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