2024 Call for Proposals
| Proposals Due |
| May 15, 2024 |
| Start Date |
| July 1, 2024 |
Purpose
The Women’s Health Technologies Initiative seeks to apply engineering technology to develop novel strategies to improve the detection, diagnosis and treatment of conditions affecting the female reproductive system. Example areas include: contraception and family planning, bladder and pelvic pain, fertility, maternal-fetal medicine, minimally invasive gynecological approaches, and gynecologic oncology.
Collaboration Initiation Projects
The goal of the Pilot and Feasibility (P&F) Award is to generate a sustaining collaboration between engineering and clinical/translational partners that will be competitive for future extramural federal funding.
- The collaborating team must be comprised of a Principal Investigator with a primary faculty appointment within the department of McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and the other PI must have a primary faculty appointment in the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
- The funds will support a new collaboration between laboratories of the co-PIs; existing collaborations with evidence of independent funding are not eligible for this fund.
- Preference will be given to early-stage investigators and applications addressing health disparities.
- Postdoctoral trainees or residents in either School that have suitable expertise to design and carry out the planned experiments and can provide documentation that their mentor will support their research for the duration of the project, are eligible to serve as a co-PI.
- No citizenship requirement for P&F applicants.
- Awards of up to $30,000 for one year (two awards total).
- A second year of funding is potentially available, but is a competitive process, and will depend upon successful progress and promise of adequate data to support renewal.
- Applications must be submitted by 4:00 p.m. on May 15, 2024.
- Awards will be announced on May 31, 2024 and funding will begin July 1, 2024.
All applications will be reviewed for scientific merit, originality, relevance of the work to women’s reproductive health, the involvement of an engineering component, and the potential for the team to establish a lasting collaboration.
- All awardees must have appropriate institutional regulatory approvals (Human Research Protection Office- HRPO, Animal Studies, etc.) before funds will be released.
- Grantees will be required to present their work at a WUSTL research seminar series (e.g., engineering seminar or CRepHS seminar) and submit an annual progress report describing the results of their work, related publications and funding.
- Grantees agree to review CIG awards for the subsequent year.
- Research Plan: 2-page document, containing background in support of the proposal, preliminary data where available, and experimental plan.
- Facilities: 1-page document including planned use of WUSTL Core Facilities
- Biosketches: NIH-formatted biosketch (5-page maximum each) for each PI
- Budget: 1-page document with table of expenditures and justification
- IRB/IACUC approval letter as needed
- Entire package should be submitted to audreyj@wustl.edu as a single PDF.
- Secretarial/administrative personnel salary support
- Office equipment and supplies
- Equipment costing $3,000 or more
- Computers
- Tuition
- Domestic or foreign travel
- Publication costs, including reprints
- Dues and membership fees in scientific societies
- Purchasing and binding of periodicals and books
- Rental of office or laboratory space