In This Issue

• Apply Now: Career Development Awards
• ICTR Pilot Project Awards Application Available
• 2023 NYC RING Convocation November 14th
• Implementation Science Grand Rounds November 29th
• Free Spanish Translation Resource for K Awardees

Applications for the K12 Mentored Clinical and Translational Research Career Development Awards are available now. These research career development awards, funded under a K12 mechanism, are sponsored by a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the NIH and the Einstein Montefiore Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR). Each award will provide support for junior faculty (Instructor or Assistant Professor) with doctoral degrees who will devote the majority of their effort to clinical or translational research and training for 2 to 3 years. Only applicants whose research and career development plans emphasize translational research will be considered.

Letters of intent must be uploaded via our web-based system no later than December 4th, 2023, through the portal here. Applications are due February 12th, 2024. To view the call for applications, click here.

The Co-Directors of the program, Dr. Michal Melamed and Dr. Paul Marantz, will hold an Informational Zoom Webinar on November 13th from 5:00-6:00 pm. Please click here to register.

Administrative questions should be addressed to Ms. Nancy Marte, [email protected] or 718-430-4008. Programmatic questions should be addressed to the program co-directors: Michal Melamed, MD, MHS, Professor of Medicine, [email protected] 718-430-2304; or Paul Marantz, MD, MPH, Associate Dean for Clinical Research Education, [email protected] 718-430-4187.

The Pilot Project Program of the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) of the Einstein Montefiore Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) invites all Einstein Montefiore faculty to apply for pilot funding to support Translational Science (TS) projects. Projects supported by this program must address a translational roadblock and meet the definition of translational science research. You can learn more about TS research here. Applications are due January 31st, 2024. For the application to be considered, the PI MUST have a 1:1 consultation with the Pilot Program Directors or attend the Translational Science Town Hall meeting prior to submission.

Register to attend the informational Translational Science Town Hall meeting on December 5th, 2023 here. The meeting will be held in person, on the Einstein Campus, Price Center, Room 551. Lunch will be served. Zoom link available upon request.

Questions may be directed to CTSA Pilot Project Program leaders, Sofiya Milman, MD, [email protected] and Sylvia Suadicani, PhD, [email protected] or the ICTR Administrative Director, Ms. Elizabeth Castro [email protected].

The 2023 NYC RING Convocation of Practices, an annual gathering of clinicians, researchers, and investigators from across our network of partner sites, will take place on Tuesday, November 14^th at the Price Center/Block Research Pavilion at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, featuring a keynote address from Dr. Rowena Dolor, MD, MHS, FACP. The poster session showcasing a wide variety of practice-based research and quality improvement activities is an excellent opportunity for NYC clinicians, researchers, and scholars to connect, share ideas, and discuss future collaboration. Click here to register now.

The next Implementation Science Grand Rounds, sponsored by the ICTR Health Research Implementation Core will be held via Zoom on Wednesday, November 29th at 1pm. Dr. Kevin Fiori will present "Experiments in Implementation Research: Community Health Worker programs from Northern Togo to the South Bronx".



Dr. Fiori is an Associate Professor in both the Division of Academic General Pediatrics and Department of Family and Social Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is the Vice Chair for Community Health & Engagement and inaugural Division Chief for the Division of Community and Population Health within the Department of Pediatrics, the Executive Director, Community Health Worker Institute at Montefiore and the Director-Social Determinants of Health at the Office of Community & Population Health, Montefiore Health System. His research aims to address health disparities in communities both in the Bronx and abroad. 

The ICTR Community Collaborative Core offers its Spanish Translation Resource free of charge to Einstein Montefiore K Awardees. The Resource provides access to a fully-bilingual and certified Spanish-language translator who will translate research documents from English to Spanish and incorporate linguistic and culturally relevant considerations.

For more information on the Spanish Translation Resource please visit the ICTR Community Collaborative Core (CCC) website. To request translation services, please fill out the ICTR Service Request Form.

The ICTR is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Elizabeth Castro as Assistant Director, Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Einstein and Montefiore. Ms. Castro has been with the ICTR since 2006 when she was recruited to manage the administrative functions of the Clinical Research Center (CRC) and operationalize the research activities in the newly built Moses Campus CRC. She was instrumental in developing systems and processes to track and analyze utilization trends to identify areas for workflow enhancements and productivity improvements.

In her new role as Assistant Director Liz will oversee the day-to-day financial functions of the ICTR including the suite of CTSA awards and other Federal and non-Federal grant awards, as well as institutional sources of funding. While she will continue to manage the administrative functions of the CRCs on both campuses, Liz will have a much broader role in the preparation and submission of NIH grant applications, progress reports and regulatory documents.

Please join us in congratulating Liz on this well-deserved promotion. To learn more about the ICTR leadership, click here.

Join the Office of Biotechnology and Business Development for its upcoming event: Biomarkers and Diagnostics: Strategies for Patenting on Friday, November 17th at 1pm on Zoom, featuring Janet MacLeod and Michael Glynn Partners at Fox Rothchild, LLP. The event will focus on:

• Requirements for patentability and judicially created exclusions
• Supreme Court’s Mayo decision – is it a death knell for diagnostic method patents?
• USPTO’s guidelines for patent-eligible subject

matter

• Successful strategies for patenting diagnostic methods
• A look ahead at changing landscape

To learn more and register for this event, click here.

One new initiative funded by the recent $100 million anonymous gift to Einstein is the establishment of the Einstein 2030 Seed Fund.This fund will provide about $700,000/year to support studies by investigators that will enable them to generate the critical data and proof of concept studies that will serve as a pathway toward NIH funding.  

While preference will be given to funding early or mid-career faculty, these seed funds are available to all Einstein principal investigators engaged in basic research to be utilized to support start-up efforts and new lines of research that show significant promise. The individual awards will range from $50,000-$150,000, with funding at the $150,000 level reserved for outstanding projects with well-justified budgets. Investigators can include funding for their effort on the project and these awards may be renewable based on strong evidence of significant progress. 

The primary purpose of the Einstein 2030 Seed Fund is to support basic science research with potential translational applications and to bring discoveries to their next phase of evidence-based findings that will generate funding from NIH or other external sources. Review criteria used during the review process will be based on the reviewers’ assessment of the likelihood for the project to have a high impact and powerful influence on the research field(s) involved and strong potential for the proposed studies to generate results that will support the submission of a research project that will ultimately be funded by the NIH. 

Eligibility: Applicants must be tenure-track faculty members holding the rank of Assistant Professor or higher. 

For review of your application by Einstein’s Awards Committee, click here. Applications are due November 15th, 2023.

The ICTR would like to congratulate two of its faculty members on their promotions:

Sofiya Milman MD has been promoted to interim Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Medicine and Professor with Tenure in the Departments of Medicine (Endocrinology) and Genetics

Sylvia Suadicai PhD is now Professor with Tenure in the Departments of Urology and Molecular Pharmacology

The Block Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) is part of the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Cite NIH funding in manuscripts, press releases, and other communication forums. All publications, press releases, or other documents that result from the utilization of any Einstein Montefiore CTSA resource are required to credit the CTSA grant and comply with NIH Public Access Policy (submission to PubMed Central). To learn more, click here.