Funding Opportunities

We are breaking the mold of traditional funding with the launch of the Pitt Un-Challenge (PUnCh)—a bold new initiative designed to fund the unconventional, the uncharted, and the unprecedented across disciplines. 

Traditional funding models often reward incremental progress over big leaps. PUnCh exists to change that. Whether it’s a radical new approach to a long-standing problem, an unexpected collaboration, or a research concept that challenges conventional thinking, PUnCh is here to fund what others won’t.

The Quantitative Methodologies Pilot Program (QuMP) is a funding opportunity that supports interdisciplinary, translational research involving quantitative methodologies, such as mathematical modeling, statistics, biostatistics, and epidemiology. The QuMP Program specifically aims to encourage and support novel applications of quantitative methodologies, either through the novel use of existing methodologies or through the development of entirely new quantitative methodologies. Projects funded by the program are expected to involve trans-disciplinary collaborations between translational investigators and quantitative scientists.

The Pitt Innovation Challenge (PInCh^®) is seeking your bold solution to an important health problem. 

The CTSI created the PInCh program in order to stimulate the translation of novel problem-focused research into the community by giving researchers a venue to be creative, develop new ideas, and work with people beyond their usual sphere of collaborators.

The Virginia Kaufman Pain Research Challenge is a funding opportunity for ideas and solutions associated with both physiological and psychological pain. Research solutions can address the dynamics of pain, causes and alleviation of pain, and treatment to prevent and/or mitigate pain. Solutions should address a specific problem in the area(s) of pain including mechanism, treatments, modalities, and impacts of acute and chronic pain. 

These pilot awards will support new or ongoing research that focuses on using dissemination and implementation research methods to support the adoption, implementation or maintenance of an evidence-based practice or program. Proposed research may be at earlier stages along the translational continuum if the focus is on designing or developing innovations with D&I in mind.

CTSI includes in its mission a goal to increase the development and dissemination of skills throughout the University’s research workforce. To address this, we are offering Pilot Awards for investigators to incorporate into their research the use of existing data resources of a type that they have never used before. Examples of existing data resources include “-omics” data, large national databases, physical science databases, biorepositories, public records, marketing databases, and social media. This Pilot Award should stimulate exploration, novel analyses, or novel applications of the many biorepositories and data collections that are already available or develop new skills for the principal investigator and team.

CTSI at the University of Pittsburgh, in partnership with the office of the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of UPMC, seeks applications for the Commercialization-Innovations Phase II Pilot Awards. These awards are part of a series of funding opportunities to stimulate research for which implementation may involve inventions or commercialization.

The Implementation Lab Pilot Awards (ILPA) aim to facilitate connections between Pitt researchers and organizational Health Operations Partners that enable them to conduct Dissemination and Implementation research aimed at getting priority evidence-based practices into clinics and communities.

The goal of the SSIH Pilot Award is to co-create research in collaboration with communities and/or community-based organizations that amplify community priorities and expertise. The structure of this award will include support from the CTSI Community PARTners Core, and we intend that built-in support will encourage applications from investigators who may not have prior experience with community-partnered methodology.

The overall goal of this program is to create, mentor, and support mid-career scholars from SHS to lead high impact inter-professional teams that address society’s most pressing health-related challenges. Awards of $150,000 across two years will support the creation of teams of scholars comprising faculty from at least three of the SHS (Dental, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Public Health). Projects should propose a compelling approach for addressing scientific or health challenges requiring broad expertise from across the health sciences.

The goal of this program is to enhance collaboration between faculty members in SSoE and those in the six Schools of the Health Sciences (SHS) – i.e., the Schools of Medicine, Public Health, Pharmacy, Dental Medicine, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and Nursing. The financial support will be utilized to establish or expand trans-disciplinary collaborations that will ultimately lead to the submission of collaborative external grant applications in the areas of human health and medicine.

The Engage program seeks projects that will test new ways to involve individuals in maintenance of their own health.  In particular, we are looking for solutions that give agency and responsibility primarily to the non-medical individual. In this way, Engage applications will be distinct from other initiatives that develop treatments or interventions that will be pushed from medical providers to patients.

This award is designed to open up research that will bridge the gap between large data sets (e.g. million of electronic health records, millions of consumer purchases, genomic data or months of wearable fitness sensor data) and personalized care for the individual or region.

The Women’s Pain Research Challenge is a funding program to advance innovative solutions that address either physiological or psychological aspects of pain in women. This can include the dynamics of pain, causes and alleviation of pain, and/or treatments to prevent or mitigate pain.

The University of Pittsburgh’s first funding opportunity to promote environmental, economic, and social sustainability in healthcare.

The Re-Impact pilot awards are designed to stimulate new translational research on devices and/or interventions that can address clinical needs, biological processes, or therapeutics to improve the lives of older adults.

As a function of CTSI’s commitment to biomedical health innovation, the aim of this funding opportunity is to stimulate health innovation via translational science, with Graduate Students leading product development as Co-PIs.