NC TraCS has offered a variety of pilot funding opportunities since 2008, awarding over 1,100 pilot grants totaling over $27M. TraCS-supported pilot studies have resulted in over 520 external "follow-on" grants, totaling over $435M in research funding at UNC and our partner institutions.

Recently, the funding agency for NC TraCS' CTSA grant, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), has shifted the priorities of the CTSA Program to advance the field of Translational Science more explicitly. In response to this new initiative, our pilot program has developed and released a new pilot funding opportunity in Clinical and Translational Science.

Clinical and Translational Science (CTS) Pilot Program

• We are seeking proposals that focus on understanding a scientific or operational principle underlying a step of the translational research process with the goal of developing generalizable principles to accelerate translation. This Clinical and Translational Science (CTS) pilot award is intended to support Clinical and Translational Science, the field of investigation focused on understanding the scientific and operational principles underlying each step of the translational process. Next submission deadline: July 8, 2025

  UPDATED: RFA version 4/14/25: RFA and FAQ (pdf)

Additional Funding

• Pilot Program Partnerships — Partnering with the UNC School of Medicine Office of Research for two programs: Translational Team Science Awards (TTSA) and Emerging Challenges in Biomedical Research (ECBR).
• Research Capacity Building Grants — With an explicit focus on building sustainable and high impact research teams focused on southeastern coastal North Carolina health concerns and populations, grants of up to $500k total expenditures over 2-3 years will be awarded in 2025.

CTS Research Program

K12 Career Development

Patient & Community Engagement Voucher

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