The Pilot Project Program (PPP) has played a key role in pursuing the mission of the University of Cincinnati's Center for Environmental Genetics (CEG) with a thematic focus on gene-environment interaction (GxE) research. The overall objective of the PPP is to provide seed support for new research initiatives in environmental health sciences (EHS) that will shed new light on the GxE research focus of the CEG. The goal is to allow investigators, either established or new to the field, to obtain significant preliminary data that can become the basis of new NIH/NIEHS grant proposal(s) and associated publications. To accomplish this, the following six different award mechanisms will be used: New (early stage) Investigator Award, Innovator Award, New-to-EHS Investigator Award, Affinity Group Award, Translation and Community Engagement Award, and Time-Sensitive Response Award. The CEG-PPP relies on both internal and external reviews of its pilot applications and has developed an Inter-Center Reviewer Consortium involving four NIEHS-funded P30 EHS Centers. The review process is aligned closely with the format followed at the NIH. Review criteria and the score scale (1-9) similar to NIH review process allow us to provide a meaningful feedback to the applicants as well as help the Center train its junior faculty in the NIH-type review process. The PPP has a built-in mechanism to track the progress and outcome of the pilot awards through a regular progress reporting (including professional presentations, publications, extramural grants) and an annual Pilot Project Symposium directed at a broader audience across the CEG membership and the university campus. Overall, the PPP program is an important vehicle in multiple ways such as helping junior investigators in their career pursuits, recruiting new investigators into the field of EHS research, stimulating novel research ideas and filling the gaps in CEG research agenda, promoting facility cores usage, building trans-disciplinary research teams and facilitating translation and community engagement activities. In essence, the PPP serves to integrate all other components of the Center through its award mechanisms, and helps the individual CEG cores realize their goals. The performance of the CEG-PPP will continue to be reviewed by the Center's Internal Advisory Board and External Advisory Board and judged by two key criteria: Return on Investment in terms of subsequent extramural funding and Publications emanating from the funded pilot projects. The CEP-PPP strives to maintain its excellence in channelizing the pilot funds to the most promising projects in EHS and supporting new investigators (both Early Stage and New-to-EHS) to facilitate obtaining extramural funding on new and innovative directions in GxE research.
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