Thrasher Research Fund Early Career Awards

The goal is to fund applicants who will go on to be independent investigators. The Fund will make up to 32 awards total with two funding cycles (16 awards each).

Research Interests

• The Fund is open to a wide variety of research topics. They do not focus on a particular ​disease, but all the funded projects deal directly with children’s health.
• In the Early Career Award Program, the Fund is particularly interested in applicants that show great potential to impact that field of children’s health through medical research. Both an applicant’s aptitude and inclination toward research are considered. The quality of the mentor and the mentoring relationship are also considered to be important predictors of success.

Eligibility Criteria

• Those eligible to apply include:
  • Physicians who are in a residency/fellowship training program, or who completed that program no more than one year before the Concept Paper deadline.
  • Post-doctoral researchers who received the doctoral level degree no more than three years before the Concept Paper deadline.
• Extensions may be granted for parental, family, or medical leave.
• While the award is open to all who are eligible, they especially hope to encourage applications from those in the United States who are part of underrepresented minority groups in research.
• There are no restrictions with regard to citizenship.
• The Fund is open to applications from institutions both inside and outside the United States. These eligibility guidelines were developed from the prospective of a US training system, they are happy to discuss eligibility under different training systems and encourage applicants from outside the US to apply.
• An applicant who is supported, or has been supported in the past, by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) K award (including a K12 award) or a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) is not eligible to apply for the Early Career Award. An Investigator with an application pending for one of the above may apply to the Early Career Award Program, but if an award is received before the Thrasher full proposal submission deadline the application will be removed from consideration. If the award is received after the full proposal submission deadline you may keep both awards.
• Each project needs to be under the guidance of a mentor. The qualifications and experience of the mentor will be considered in the evaluation of the application. A mentor may have only one Thrasher Research Fund Early Career Awardee at a time.

Selection Criteria

• Applicant
  • Applicants who excel in this category have demonstrated commitment to a research career that will find solutions to children’s health problems. These applicants should demonstrate the potential to eventually become independent principal investigators.
  • This is judged in part by
    • Publication record relative to where the applicant is in training
    • The applicant’s role in developing the research project
    • Prior funding, grants, and recognitions
• Mentor
  • This is judged in part by
    • History of successful funding
    • Publication record
    • Expertise in the topical area
    • Mentoring track-record
    • History of working with the applicant
• Research Question
  • All applications are expected to have a novel, scientifically sound, hypothesis-driven approach. Projects should be feasibly accomplished between 1-2 years.
• Distance to Applicability
  • In the Discovery/Development/Delivery paradigm, most of the grants fall into the Development category, though excellent applicants in the Discovery and Delivery categories are occasionally funded.
    • Discovery: Mechanis​ms and pathways, biomarker target identification, gene identification, descriptive ‘-omics
    • Development: Therapeutics, interventions, diagnostics, clinically relevant biomarker validation
    • Delivery: Implementation science, operations research, health services, quality improvement.
• Medical Problem
  • Both the incidence and severity of the children’s health problem are considered, including the resources and treatments already available to the problem.
• Potential Impact
  • The line of research ultimately h​as the potential to meaningfully advance the field. Positive results will significantly improve child health, address an important research gap, and be widely translatable.

For more information, visit Thrasher Research Fund.