Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

Clinical Scientist Development Award

Purpose

The Doris Duke Clinical Scientist Development Award provides grants to junior physician-scientists to facilitate their transition to independent clinical research careers.

Rationale & Program History

The transition to an independent research career is often more difficult for physician-scientists conducting clinical research than it is for other researchers, as these individuals must balance both the demands of seeing patients with those of conducting research. The Medical Research Program created the Clinical Scientist Development Award to provide support to physician-scientists during this critical stage of career development.

Since the beginning of the program in 1998, the foundation has awarded 159 Clinical Scientist Development Awards totaling approximately $68 million.

2010 CSDA Competition Overview

The foundation plans to award up to 14 three-year grants in 2010 of $125,000 per year in direct costs and $10,000 per year in indirect costs to junior faculty level physician-scientists conducting clinical research in any disease area.

Nominations

The deadline for nominations has passed. This information is provided for reference only.

Each U.S. accredited, degree-granting institution—which would encompass for that institution all affiliated graduate schools, related hospitals and research institutes— may nominate up to two candidates.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation values the diversity of the nominees; thus, we are collecting data on race/ethnicity and gender to measure progress in the nomination of diverse applicants. Biographical information about the nominee – year of birth, gender, race/ethnicity, and whether the individual is from a historically disadvantaged background – are for statistical purposes only, will only be described in aggregate and will not be provided to the review panel.

Different divisions, departments, hospitals, centers, or schools of the same degree-granting institution should confer to submit one slate of nominees.

Eligibility

This program is specifically intended to help physician-scientists make the critical transition from training to independence as clinical investigators.

It is the responsibility of each institution to ensure that its nominees meet all of the eligibility requirements. The replacement of nominees will not be permitted.

Applicants must:

• Be a physician-scientist conducting clinical research in any disease area;
• Have received an M.D. or a foreign equivalent from an accredited institution;
• Be working in a U.S. degree-granting institution, but do not have to be a U.S. citizen;
• Have a full-time faculty level position not higher than the Assistant Professor level; and
• Have been appointed to their first full-time faculty level position between January 1, 2005 and January 1, 2010. (All full-time post-fellowship Instructor level positions will be considered full-time faculty level appointments.)

There are no fellowship level or research associate level awards as part of this competition.

In addition, an award will not be made if, prior to the commencement of this award, the applicant has been or becomes the principal investigator on a National Institutes of Health, peer-reviewed, R01 research grant and/or the principal investigator on a research project that is part of a P01 program project or a P50 center grant.

Applicants are allowed to hold a National Institutes of Health K series award or other career development award at the same time as the CSDA grant. However, applicants must propose distinct and different research aims in their CSDA application and there should be no scientific or budgetary overlap.

Experiments that utilize animals or primary tissues derived from animals will not be supported by this program.

Selection Process

An advisory panel of distinguished scientific leaders in major disease areas will review the proposals based on the criteria listed in the RFP, and will recommend the strongest proposals for funding to the DDCF.

Read the Request for Nominations for complete details.