AGA Fellowship-to-Faculty Transition Award Grant

The AGA Fellowship-to-Faculty Transition Award offers $65,000 per year for two years, totaling $130,000, to clinical and postdoctoral fellows. This funding is intended to support their transition to independent research careers focused on inflammatory bowel disease in gastroenterology. Applicants must hold an MD or equivalent, be in a fellowship position in North America, and demonstrate a commitment to clinical or translational research. AGA membership is required, and applicants should have a mentor who is also an AGA member.

TThis award provides $65,000 annually for two years ($130,000 total) to clinical or postdoctoral fellows seeking to protect time for clinical or translational research in preparation for careers as independent inflammatory bowel disease investigators in gastroenterology.
Objective
The objective of this AGA Research Foundation award is to provide funds to clinical and postdoctoral fellows to protect time dedicated to clinical or translational research to aid in their transition to independence. Projects must focus on the epidemiology, prevention, diagnosis, treatment or patient outcomes of inflammatory bowel disease.

Eligibility

Applicants for this award must hold an MD, PhD and/or equivalent degree (e.g., MBBS, MBChB, DO) and hold a clinical or postdoctoral fellow position at an institution in North America (United States, Canada or Mexico).Clinical fellows must be in the final year of fellowship training or those in the year following the end of their fellowship training at the time of application.
Postdoctoral fellows must have at least four years and fewer than six years of postdoctoral research at the time of application and be actively preparing to seek faculty positions before this award concludes. Postdoctoral applicants must clearly describe their plan for establishing scientific independence from their current mentor(s) and plans – including timeline – for applying to faculty positions.AGA membership is required at the time of application submission.AGA membership must be maintained throughout the two-year duration of the award.Applicants must have a mentor who is an AGA member at the time of application.The proposed research must be relevant to gastroenterology, hepatology, pancreatology or other closely allied fields.Applicants will be asked to self-assign their proposal to one of the following categories:Clinical: Research involving direct contact with human subjects or using clinical data to address problems related to the prevention, diagnosis, treatment or outcome of human diseases (e.g., clinical epidemiology). This category also includes research related to health care delivery (e.g., health services, health IT).
Translational: Research focused on turning observations from the laboratory, clinic, and/or community into interventions that improve diagnostics and therapeutics. This category can involve human biospecimens or human data as resources for laboratory- or informatics-based investigation, or pre-clinical in vivo models provided they directly test human disease-relevant biology.Resources allocated through this award are intended to support the career development of the applicant. The applicant must allocate a minimum of 50 percent effort to the proposed project.
Applicants are required to have a sponsor and mentor for the award; one individual may serve in the capacity of both positions. A sponsor (typically a division chief or department chair) is an individual who takes responsibility for the quality assessment of the proposed research project, the quality of the research environment within which the project will be undertaken, and the experience and expertise of the principal investigator and other key researchers involved. A mentor will supervise the principal investigator’s research activities ensuring timelines and deliverables and will work with the applicant to create a research career development plan.Applicants must submit a career development plan detailing their career goals and objectives. The plan should describe career development and training activities the applicant will pursue during the award period and provide a timeline for applying for faculty positions.
The intent of this award is to protect time for research to facilitate generation of preliminary data and gain necessary experience to become more competitive for academic research appointments.The following expenses are allowable:Salary and benefits for the principal investigator or other personnel. You must provide clear justification if the total budget is exclusively allocated to salary and benefits.
Biostatistics/bioinformatics support.
Supplies and/or equipment.
Other direct expenses necessary to conduct the proposed research.
You must be a member of this organization to apply for this award - become a member.

Ineligibility

Awards are intended for fellows and therefore applicants who have existing commitments for permanent faculty positions prior to the start date of the award are ineligible.
Fellowship-to-faculty transition award applicants are ineligible for an AGA Research Scholar Award in the same awards cycle.Applicants performing exclusively basic research are ineligible.The following expenses are not allowed:Salary and benefits of the mentor.
Travel costs.
Indirect costs.At the time of application submission, applicants may not hold awards directly related to the proposed research from another organization (e.g., government agency, foundation, academic institution, professional society). If the applicant is granted the award and notified of a comparable award from another agency prior to the first payment of this award, the recipient must select one of the two awards (i.e., the recipient may not retain both awards). If a recipient is granted a comparable award following the first payment of this award, subsequent payments on this award will be reduced by 50%.