Request for Applications:
Urea Cycle Disorders Consortium Research Fellowship in Urea Cycle Disorders
Date of RFA: November 1
Submission Due Date: December 15
Awards to Be Announced by: February 1
Funding Begins: August 1
The primary mission of this program is to train and attract new investigators to the area of urea cycle disorders (UCD) research that is directly relevant to improvement in patient care and treatment and quality of life. Secondary goals are: 1) to increase the number of well-trained biochemical geneticists who are qualified in the care of patients with UCDs and other inborn errors of metabolism; 2) to contribute to the successful implementation of Urea Cycle Disorders Consortium (UCDC) site projects; and 2) to attract young investigators to research of rare diseases in general.
The mechanism of this program is to provide salary support for supplementing existing institutional support for the training of research fellows. Annual funding of $50,000 direct supportis available for partial support of 1-2 positions.Application for successive 12-month periods of support is possible, but this will be on a competitive basis. One application can be submitted from each UCDC site.
Application Process: Postgraduate trainees with M.D., Ph.D., or M.D./Ph.D. degrees are eligible. The application should use the attached template and include:
- Letter of intent from the applicant formally requesting support, and describing relevant previous and current training, and career plans (one page limit)
- Brief grant proposal with specific aims, background, preliminary studies/description of other ongoing research activities and methods of procedure of planned research (five page limit).
- Letter of recommendation/support from the sponsoring PI stating exact amount of support requested including the percent effort, salary, and fringe, and training environment (two page limit)
- NIH biosketch of the applicant (modular format).
- NIH biosketch of the mentor. The mentor does not necessarily have to be the PI of the RDCRC site. If it is other than the PI, there needs to be an additional letter of support from the proposed mentor.
Review criteria: The “study section” for the applications will consist of the PIs from of each participating UCDC sites (or a subset of these PIs), with the sponsoring site of each applicant abstaining in the scoring process. External Ad Hoc reviewers may be called as needed. NIH scale scores will be anonymously given to each applicant after discussion of each application. The Chair of the review committee will forward averaged scores and recommendation for funding to the PI of the UCDC. Each applicant will be reviewed based on the following criteria:
1)Quality of the applicant
- Previous and current training
- Potential to contribute to the UCDC mission
- Commitment to UCD research and patient care, biochemical genetics and/or neuropsychological training, rare disease research
2)Quality of research
- UCDC relevance (applicant is encouraged to participate/expand an existing UCDC project)
- Rare disease relevance
3)Quality of the training environment and potential to become independent clinical investigator
Deadline for submission and funding dates:
Deadline for submission of applications is December 15 in the year prior to the funding year. Awards will be announced by February 1 of the funding year and funding will beginAugust1.
The complete application should be submitted as a single PDF document and transmitted via email to chair of the fellowship selection committee, Dr.Sandesh Nagamani, and UCDC program manager, Jennifer Seminara .
Please contact Dr. Nagamani or Ms. Seminara with any questions you may have about the application process:
Sandesh Nagamani, MD
Phone: 713-798-7764
Email:
Jennifer Seminara
Phone: (202) 306-6489
Email:
Page 1 of 2