Hobbs Discovery Strategic Priorities Awards

Nicholas Hobbs Discovery Awards

Request for Proposals is open-Due date October 1, 2024

Purpose

The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center (VKC) has a fundamental mission to improve the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families. The Nicholas Hobbs Discovery Grant Award serves to encourage and support impactful, innovative, and interdisciplinary early-stage (preliminary) studies addressing this mission and enables future competitive grant applications to federal agencies or private foundations.

The program is made possible by the generous gifts of donors and is not meant to serve as bridge funding or extensions of previous Hobbs awards. The Awards are intended to support original empirical research. This grant mechanism does not support literature reviews, manuscript preparation, conferences, workshops, training programs, or non-research clinical activities. The goal is to fund cutting‐edge research that will advance scientific knowledge and contribute to the overall competitiveness of the Center.

Period and Amount of Awards

The total funding is $50,000 (Indirect costs are not permitted). Awards will be for one year, with possible no-cost extension allowed per the discretion of VKC leadership.

Research Objectives and Eligibility

This competition is open to VKC faculty members and any early-stage investigators at Vanderbilt University or Vanderbilt University Medical Center to conduct pilot projects consistent with the mission of the VKC to improve the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families. Early-stage investigators who are not currently members and who receive an award will automatically become members of the VKC. Additionally, research proposals from mentees working under the guidance of current VKC members will be accepted. The VKC faculty member will serve as Faculty PI and the mentee (who must have completed at least 2 years of postdoctoral training or equivalent) will serve as Mentee PI. It is our hope that this inclusion will support early-career researchers, providing crucial funding for the development of pilot data, enhancing opportunities for future grants. The Hobbs Discovery Grant Award supports innovative and interdisciplinary research on fundamental mechanisms of behavioral, cognitive, and brain development and plasticity relevant to developmental disabilities, across the lifespan.

Applications are encouraged that represent exploration into promising new areas of interdisciplinary research and for which existing grant funds are not available.

Priority will be given to applications that propose innovative, interdisciplinary research, and that have potential to have meaningful impact for people with intellectual disabilities and future extramural grant support. Applications proposing research that links biomedical (e.g., neuroscience or genetics) variables with behavioral, educational, or policy components (e.g., learning, behavior problems), as well as from investigators from underrepresented populations or research studies focused or inclusive of underserved populations are especially encouraged.

Application Procedure

Applications are due by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, October 1, 2024. Applications submitted beyond that date will not be considered. Applicants should email a pdf file to Tim Stafford (tim.stafford@vumc.org) Award decisions will be made in November 2024.

Applicants should submit a 2‐page Research Plan. With respect to the 2-page limit, a suggestion is that the first page could consist of background/significance, innovation, and impact; second page could be approach, written at a general level in order to give reviewers an understanding of the feasibility and scope of the work. Arial 11 pt. font should be used. Applicants should also submit a Budget (Detailed Budget for Initial Period only) and Budget Justification (provide brief summary).

IRB and IACUC Approvals

It is not necessary for your project to be approved by the IRB and/or Animal Care Committees at the time you submit your proposal; however, if your proposal is awarded, funds will not be made available until you have submitted your approval notification to Tim Stafford. (Your IRB or IACUC approval notification should include the title of your Hobbs Discovery proposal, and the funding source should state Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Hobbs Discovery Award.)

Application Contents (use Arial 11 pt. font and 0.5” margins around on all documents)

The following items should be submitted:

Budget (Detailed Budget for Initial Period only-no more than 1 page for budget and budget justification))
Budget Justification (provide brief summary)
Biographical Sketch for each Key Personnel

Research Plan (2-page limit for sections a-e)

(a) Introduction - Statement of Problem and Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Mission Relevance
(b) Specific Hypotheses
(c) Background and Significance
(d) Research Design and Methods
(e) Brief description of how the proposed work will support future grant funding applications, including specific mechanisms or Request for Applications (if known).
(f) Literature Cited (2-page limit)

Specific Instructions Regarding Budget and Allowable Costs

Applicants must provide a detailed budget and brief budget justification. Allowable expenses are salaries for staff, trainees, and student assistants, small equipment, consumable laboratory supplies, travel necessary for carrying out research, participant reimbursements, research computer software and supplies, and other miscellaneous costs necessary for carrying out the proposed research. Examples of costs that are NOT allowable are investigator or co‐investigator faculty salaries (tenure or research track), travel expenses to and from conferences (including registration fees, hotels and meals), tuition, subscriptions, books, office renovation or equipment and furnishings, local meals with guests, and other non‐research costs.

Nicholas Hobbs Discovery Awards are not intended to directly support the aims and goals of ongoing federal or foundation grants. However, the award may be used to complete an already productive pilot project supported with private foundation grant funds. At the discretion of the VKC Director, funds may be used to support additional “spin-off” research studies that may be related to existing funded projects that are novel lines of research outside the scope of work contained within the funded grant. In these cases, additional information should be submitted with the application, including the detailed Specific Aims and official Statement of Work (1 page max), and a description of how the work proposed is distinct from but has potential to expand the impact of the funded research (0.5 page max).

If an applicant is proposing to use remaining funds from another source (e.g., a small grant from an advocacy organization or private foundation) in addition to the Nicholas Hobbs Award, the proposed budget must show what each source of funding would cover.

Submission Procedure

Review Criteria

The review criteria employed in evaluating these applications will be similar to those in evaluating NIH Small Grant (R03) applications. The focus of applications must be on furthering the understanding, prevention, or intervention for problems associated with intellectual disabilities and/or other related developmental disabilities. Five criteria with be used in evaluating proposals:

Ideas have scientific merit and are innovative
Responsiveness to stated criteria and mission of the VKC
Work appears to be realizable
Likelihood the project will lead to external funding
Investigator qualifications.

Scientific merit includes originality and innovative nature of the scientific question and approach and soundness of research design and proposed measurement system. Pilot research typically involves small samples that may preclude an adequate statistical power analysis; however, applicants will be expected to demonstrate how such preliminary findings will be interpreted, given the nature of the anticipated findings. Applicants must describe how they plan to use that information to convince an NIH or that findings based on a small sample is likely to be generalizable to a larger group.

Feasibility refers to ability to carry out the research described with the funds provided. Proposals that promise to do far more than can conceivably be accomplished with the limited funds provided will not fare well on this criterion.

It is very difficult to predict accurately whether a given pilot project will lead to a funded federal research grant. However, the applicant will be expected to explain her/his rationale concerning how the findings generated with the proposed Hobbs Discovery Award funds would logically lead reviewers to conclude that a subsequently proposed project submitted to a federal agency would likely be successful and makes sense in light of the data generated using the grant funds.

Evaluation Process

The VKC Director and Associate Director will assign two faculty reviewers (in most instances, VKC investigators/members) to review each application to assure a competent and impartial review. An NIH Peer Review Scoring system will be used in which applications will be scored on a scale of 1.0 to 9.0 (Outstanding to Disapprove). Mean scores will be rank ordered. Final decisions will be made jointly by the VKC Director and Associate Director (providing no conflict of interest). The final decision of funding will be made by the VKC Director and Associate Director based on reviewer priority scores and consideration of the alignment of the proposed project with the overall VKC mission and priority and the assessment of novelty, feasibility, impact potential, and likelihood for future external funding.

Expectations of Nicholas Hobbs Discovery Grant Award Recipients

It is expected that the findings from this pilot research will be a basis for grant applications to federal agencies or substantial applications to private foundations. At the conclusion of their projects, recipients of funded applications will be asked to provide a brief written summary of their work and findings to VKC leadership and provide ongoing updates about federal or foundation grants that stemmed from their Hobbs Award. We also ask that any papers published be shared. Furthermore, awardees may be invited to present their study, results, and impact to the VKC community via lecture or the VKC podcast.

Acknowledging Funding Support

When reporting research findings from VKC Hobbs Discovery Grants, please acknowledge this support. Sample: Research reported in this publication was supported by an intramural Hobbs Discovery Grant from the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Development and Developmental Disabilities.

Inquiries

Inquiries are encouraged in order to clarify procedures or priorities. Questions regarding procedures should be directed to Tim Stafford. Substantive questions regarding research priorities should be referred to VKC Director Jeffrey Neul.

For more information contact:

Tim Stafford

For more information contact:

Tim Stafford