IDC Summary: The major goal of the Investigator Development Core (IDC) is (1) to provide significant research support to minority early career investigators and junior faculty with innovative pilot projects and (2) to offer the recipients a mentoring program that will improve their ability to achieve their long-term success as independent Investigators who obtain extramural funding (mentored K award and R series funding). The IDC will fund Pilot Projects to support senior research associates or junior faculty with grant support ranging from $30,000 to 50,000 annually for two years. Grantees will be able to use core facilities at no cost. The IDC will provide the awardees with resources, mentors, and other strategic components to ensure success in reaching their research career goals. The specific aims of this project are to (1) Provide a structured procedure for the selection of the pilot project awardees. 2) Provide awardees with grant support with a robust mentoring program for the development of successful researchers. 3) Provide a monitoring process to evaluate the IDC Investigators' Progress. The IDC committee (IDC, CEC, and other Core leaders) and RCMI Executive Committee will review the pilot project applications. Criteria for evaluating the pilot projects include scientific novelty, technical merit, significance/relevance to health disparities, experience and qualifications of the applicant, and record of accomplishments. Initial local evaluations of each project will be followed by NIH-style evaluations and scoring of the proposed work by three external evaluators (R01 scientists or equivalent levels) with similar research interests to the proposed project. Awardees will present their outcomes in progress quarterly with oral presentations to the committee and mentors of each awardee to obtain inputs on the scientific ideas and directions of the projects. The progress of the pilot projects will be reviewed and evaluated quarterly by the IDC committee. The pilot project awardees will closely interact with the Research Capacity Core and Community Engagement Core and attend monthly seminars/workshops with renowned external speakers. An investigator must make significant progress by the end of the first year to ensure funding for the second year is awarded. The committee will actively work with each awardee and mentor to prepare competitive NIH grant applications. The awardee is expected to publish at least two research articles in high-impact journals at the end of the two years of funding. By the end of the award's second year, awardees must submit research grants to federal agencies, such as mentored K award and R series proposals, using the preliminary data obtained from pilot project awards. Implementing the outlined plan is expected to result in successful minority scientists, well-trained in health disparities, with the knowledge and credentials to obtain mainstream external funding.