These awards provide up to $10,000 for one year to support senior fellowship and post-doc research trainees as they build a solid research foundation to help them obtain a career development award after the project. The pilot project should be part of a long-term plan to become an independent investigator. This award requires support from an externally funded mentor to enhance the likelihood of progression toward a career development award. 

Applicant Eligibility

  • All senior fellow/post doc trainees with a primary appointment in DOM or who have a mentor with a primary appointment in DOM are eligible.  
  • All trainees must be eligible to submit an extramural career development award (K award, etc.) as a PI at the start of the grant period.  
  • Investigators may submit applications from basic, clinical, health services, and translational science.  
  • The DOM Research Council follows the NIH proposal model and allows investigators an initial application and one resubmission for funding consideration. Investigators may resubmit unfunded proposals found to have merit only once.  
  • A no-cost extension in the second year is possible with demonstrated productivity. Investigators need to carefully justify continuation requests as DOM will consider them as competing renewal applications. DOM does not allow support for a second year if the applicant has received external funding for the same project.

Proposal Requirements

Proposals should consist of the following and the applicant should compile them into a single PDF in this order for submission purposes:

  1. NIH-style Biographical sketch for trainee and mentor (5 page max for each)
  2. Budget (use the linked template)
  3. Budget justification
  4. Abstract/Scientific Aims (1 page maximum)
    1. Applicants should briefly describe the aims they will use to test their hypothesis.
    2. Aims should be related but not dependent upon each other (i.e., failure or unexpected results of one aim will not prevent the completion of another).
  5. Bibliography/References
  6. Career development goals (1 page maximum)
  7. Project milestones and future funding plans with a Gantt chart describing the timeline to external proposal submission (1 page maximum)
  8. Mentoring plan (1 page maximum)
  9. Letter confirming provision of matching and/or support funds, if applicable

Review Criteria

Awards will be based on a general assessment of the overall strength of the presented science, career development goals, and mentoring plan. The DOM Research Council will only consider funding proposals with a clear path to the submission of an early career development award proposal.