# Pilot Project Program

> **NIH NIH P30** · COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · 2024 · $262,970

## Abstract

SUMMARY – PILOT PROJECT PROGRAM (PPP)
The goal of the Pilot Project Program (PPP) of the Center for Environmental Health and Justice in Northern
Manhattan (CEHJNM) is to provide seed funding and intellectual support to outstanding new research ideas
from existing members and potential new members. The PPP provides funding for research (≤$35K for full pilot
projects and ≤$10K for mini-pilots), access to CEHJNM state-of-the-art facility cores (FCs), and research
design, grant preparation, and intellectual support. The PPP specifically promotes projects that interact with
our local communities. We prioritize applications from (a) early-career faculty; (b) teams led by and/or including
scientists in key roles from groups historically underrepresented in science and academia; (c) faculty who are
not yet CEHJNM members. Funding advances our understanding of the health impacts of environmental
exposures with a focus on CEHJNM’s five scientific directions: Environmental Justice, Advancing the
Exposome, Environmental Data Science, Biological and Molecular Mechanisms, and Climate and Health. In
addition to supporting CEHJNM’s current directions, the PPP also encourages the development of research
outside of those directions as a way to develop novel areas of focus.
Over the lifetime of the CEHJNM, the PPP has been an extraordinary success. Between 2013 and 2021, the
PPP received 115 pilot proposals, of which 52 were funded. PPP awardees included investigators from 19
different departments across Columbia University (CU), thus fostering the development of new interdisciplinary
collaboration and the expansion of the CEHJNM community. More importantly, the PPP seeded novel ideas
that significantly advanced the impact of CEHJNM’s research. Innovations for this funding cycle include a new
funding mechanism, a change in leadership, and new review criteria to promote diversity. We will introduce a
new category of full-pilot awards, the Cross-Disciplinary Linked Pilots (Linked Pilots) soliciting two coordinated
pilot applications (≤$35K each) linking a mechanistic pilot to a human study. The PPP leadership now includes
a population scientist (Factor-Litvak) and a laboratory scientist (Re) to help support a full range of applications.
We will also modify our scoring criteria to formally include the diversity of the applicant team in the review
process.
The aims of the PPP are to: Aim 1. Foster innovative environmental health research that fills critical
translational gaps and fosters CEHJNM’s current and future research directions. Aim 2. Support early-career
faculty members, particularly those identifying with groups historically underrepresented in science and
academia, to develop creative, novel research projects. Aim 3. Attract faculty members from the CU
community with diverse backgrounds and expertise. Aim 4. Facilitate research on crucial environmental health
questions and concerns identified through multidirectional communications with community groups and
...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10851731
- **Project number:** 5P30ES009089-26
- **Recipient organization:** COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
- **Principal Investigator:** Diane Berengere Re
- **Activity code:** P30 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $262,970
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1998-07-01 → 2028-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10851731

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10851731, Pilot Project Program (5P30ES009089-26). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10851731. Licensed CC0.

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