Call for Project Proposals – LOI
Well-being, Health and Biomedical Discovery
Deadlines
Academic Unit:
Memorial Deadline:
External Deadline: Friday 23rd, March 2018
Description
To interested researchers, please note:
- 1) Research Grant and Contract Services is not required to sign off at the LOI stage of this funding opportunity. Please notify your Associate Dean (Research) and Department Head of your intention to submit an LOI to this competition.
- 2) If your LOI is selected to go forward to the full application stage, we request that you contact the applicable RGCS individual indicated below at least 10 working days prior to the application deadline, as terms and conditions of the opportunity may require the inclusion of overhead costs (as per the Indirect Cost of Externally Funded Research Policy).
- 3) Institutional Review by RGCS will be required at the full application stage. The internal deadline will be April 6, 2018.
CNTRP has been invited to submit a full application to the federal Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) competition. This is Canada’s flagship research competition and provides our community the opportunity to compete for $30M of new funding. Clearly, our vision—to expand our research capacity and tackle the One-Transplant-for-Life challenge that aims to fulfill every donation opportunity and turn transplantation into a cure—resonated with reviewers. This bold vision is achieved by focusing on five inter-related themes:
Theme 1: Create a culture of donation
Theme 2: Inform universal practices for donation
Theme 3: Engineer and allocate better grafts
Theme 4: Tailor an optimal immune system for each patient
Theme 5: Restore long-term health
These 5 themes are supported by a strengthened and revised core infrastructure and 5 cross-cutting research priorities:
- Sex and gender
- Pediatric, adolescent and elderly
- Indigenous, rural and remote populations
- Policy, commercialization and knowledge transfer
- Patient/Family Researcher Partnership
For more details on our vision, themes and cross-cutting research priorities, see www.cntrp.ca/nce-vision.
In the full application (due on July 19), we need to describe the projects our network will fund in year 1. Conceptually, these projects need to have the breadth and depth to show that our community understands the evolving challenges in our field and can generate the pathways to address them. We are therefore launching a 2-step call for projects to include in the application. These will be the initial ~10 projects that our network could fund in year 1. In subsequent years, we will issue RFAs with our partners on an ongoing basis to fund more projects. For the full application, we are looking for:
- Projects that are ready to roll – i.e. have the necessary staff and resources already in place to hit the ground running before January 2019, should we win.
- Projects with an annual budget of $150-500K/year and duration of 1-3 years.
- Bold, visionary ideas that clearly demonstrate that the CNTRP is worthy of the status of an NCE; that will:
- Have measurable impact;
- Are transdisciplinary; national/multi-institutional; address the cross-cutting research priorities; fit at least one of the themes (see CNTRP link above) and at least two Tri-Council agency subject areas;
- May not fit easily into current Tri-Council agency funding programs due to their high risk-high reward and transdisciplinary nature;
- Have strong partner involvement and/or collaboration – whether partner support is financial or in-kind (eg: people, resources, KT output, media contacts, databases, etc.);
- Bring together donation, SOT and BMT researchers, together with patient/families, or other groups that have not previously collaborated:
- Use exciting new methods (eg: machine learning, gene editing); and
- Be at various stages along the research pathway (new or established ideas).
To build on the original mandate of the CNTRP and focus on our areas of strength and expertise, we are not looking to fund or focus on the underlying diseases that cause the need for transplantation. We do anticipate however that our funded projects may have a downstream impact on reducing the need for transplantation.
This call is open to any independent investigator at a Canadian research institution and is not limited to current CNTRP investigators.
The timeline is incredibly tight. If you are interested in submitting a project idea, please submit it using form available on our website by Friday, March 23.
Scoring criteria (weighted equally):
- Impact on addressing the one-transplant-for-life challenge
- Fit with the themes and cross-cutting research priorities
- Transdisciplinary and multi-institution scope
- Engagement of the four communities (donation, SOT, BMT, patients/families)
- Engagement with partners
We encourage you to contact the theme leads (include link) or our Management team to discuss your ideas—or to attend one of two webinars scheduled for 12:00 or 15:00 Eastern time on Monday, March 19 to learn more. http://cntrp.adobeconnect.com/webinars
Selected projects will be notified ~March 30 and invited to submit additional details by April 13 for further review and final selection.
Additional details and application form are available on CNTRP’s website.