FY22 DORI Request for Pilot Funding:
Establishing New Collaborative Research Teams
The USC Diabetes & Obesity Research Institute (DORI) is pleased to announce a call for new pilot award proposals. Awards will be up to $50,000 each for one year. We anticipate funding 1 to 2 awards this round. The primary focus of awards will be to support: (1) junior investigators launching a research program in obesity and/or diabetes, (2) established investigators who are moving into diabetes and/or obesity research, or (3) new collaborative research teams in diabetes and obesity related research. We welcome proposals from basic scientists as well as clinical/translational, community and population investigators from across USC and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA).
Eligibility
• Principal investigators must be full-time faculty members at USC or CHLA on July 1, 2022. They may hold the rank of Assistant, Associate, or full Professor in any academic track.
• Single or multiple principal investigator applications are allowed.
Previous Awardee Eligibility Requirements (all required)
Applicants who have received a DORI pilot award in the past are eligible to apply for a new award only if:
• The previous award has been completed, including complete expenditure of funds (prior award cannot be in no-cost extension); and
• Productivity from the prior award is demonstrated in a final progress report, including published or accepted manuscripts and/or grant applications submitted or funded.
Submission Guidelines
Applications must be submitted by 5pm Pacific time on Monday, April 18th, 2022. Please email a single PDF with the following components (Arial 11 font and 1-inch margins) to Christina Ayala at trujillc@usc.edu:

1. Summary of Prior Award (prior DORI recipients only): 250-word summary of the purpose and outcomes of prior award(s), to be considered during the review process of the new proposal
2. Executive Summary (limit 1 page): Clearly and concisely summarize your proposal with project aims, novelty of research, the composition of the team, and its future goals.
3. Purpose & Novelty of Proposal (limit 1 page): Explain the purpose of the research and how it advances gaps in diabetes and obesity research. The proposal needs to demonstrate a multi-discipline approach and justify how the project or resource will have broad benefits across multiple disciplines.
4. Approach (limit 3 pages): Describe the research plan/approach that will be
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   employed to achieve the project aims.
5. Future Directions (limit 1 page): Describe how information from the pilot project will be used to develop future studies and, in particular, extramural grant applications.
   a. Include specific funding mechanisms of programs if possible
6. Budget & Budget Justification: Provide a budget using NIH budget format (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/phs398/fp4.pdf) along with a budget justification to explain how you would use up to $50,000 in one year.
   a. Requests for salary support should include fringe benefits at 33.5%
   b. Salary and fringe for principal investigator(s) cannot exceed 5% of the total requested budget
   c. Indirect costs are not allowed.
7. Biosketch: Provide a biosketch using NIH biosketch format (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/forms/biosketch.htm) for each of the named faculty member (principal investigator[s] and collaborators).
   Selection Procedure
   Applications will be peer-reviewed using the following review criteria:
   • Innovation and Novelty: Does the application challenge and seek to shift current research or clinical practice paradigms by utilizing novel theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions? Is refinement, improvement, or new application of theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions proposed?
   • Significance. Importance of the stated purpose of the research
   • Approach: Quality and appropriateness of the study design, methodology, data acquisition and analysis and feasibility of the primary hypothesis
   • Investigators: Qualifications to conduct the proposed research
   • Resources and Environment: Quality and availability of resources needed to conduct the research
   The DORI internal advisory board will use peer reviews to make final funding decisions. Awardees will be notified in June 2022.
   Questions
   Submit questions about the application process to Christina Ayala (trujillc@usc.edu)
   About DORI
   The USC Diabetes & Obesity Research Institute (DORI) is a multi-disciplinary collaborative of investigators seeking to link basic, clinical, and public health research to advance the understanding of obesity and diabetes. The Institute was designed to foster interactions across disciplinary boundaries; embrace methods/techniques from diverse fields of study; and develop effective approaches to risk assessment, prevention and treatment of the international co-epidemics of diabetes and obesity.