CIMIT Offers Young Clinician Research Grants Worth $50,000
Site Miners From Consortium Hospitals Will Nominate Candidates

The CIMIT Young Clinician Research Award Program has made a call for nominations, with a deadline of Tuesday, April 15.

The program is being sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, and each award is worth $50,000. Applicants must be nominated by site miners from the CIMIT consortium member hospitals.

Through a $250,000 gift to CIMIT from Johnson & Johnson’s Corporate Office of Science and Technology, the Young Clinician Research Award Program has been renewed to continue to encourage physicians, new in their careers, to create novel life-saving medical devices and technologies.

Judges are seeking promising projects examining medical-device development as it relates to tissue engineering, generative medicine, minimally invasive surgery, metabolic disease and biomaterials.

Those eligible include clinical researchers early in their careers, such as Fellows, Instructors and Assistant Professors. A key criterion is the clinician’s desire to solve complex health-care problems.

Nominations will be made by site miners from CIMIT consortium member hospitals. They will forward the names of their two top candidates. Call for nominations is March 19, and deadline for nominations is April 15. The award date is May 1, and funding is scheduled to start Aug. 1.

The nomination process involves an announcement being sent to the site miners of the CIMIT consortium member hospitals requiring the nomination of two top candidates of each institution. Once all the paperwork has been gathered on each candidate, it will be forwarded to CIMIT Chief Development Officer Beverly Brown by the deadline.

Submission of a candidate’s application will include a personal statement of career goals and why they seek this award; a letter of recommendation from the Chief of Service; a basic research proposal of two-to-three pages identifying a clinical problem and the potential impact on the patient; and current CV.

Criteria include fitting with the CIMIT Mission; the relative potential impact of clinicians work on patient care; the collaborative nature of the planned work; the innovativeness of the research; the academic excellence of the candidate; and the potential of the candidate to become a “rising star” with a future as a clinical leader in the field.

The Selection Committee will be composed of representatives of the CIMIT Awards Committee, the Chief Development Officer, and the Director of the Industrial Liaison Program. The Selection Committee will review the nominations and provide a ranking for final selection of four awardees from different institutions by the Director of CIMIT.

Site miners for the consortium hospitals are the following: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Steven Schachter, MD; Boston Medical Center, George O’Connor, MD; Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Fred Schoen, MD, PhD, and Joseph Bonventre, MD, PhD; Children’s Hospital Boston, Martha Murray, MD, and Frank Pigula, MD; Massachusetts General Hospital, (David Rattner, MD, temporary); Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Keith Isaacson, MD.