PILOT AND FEASIBILITY PROGRAM: PROJECT SUMMARY The Pilot and Feasibility Program is directed by Atul Bhan. In this role, Dr. Bhan will evaluate letters of intent for suitability, assist the Center director with identification of appropriate reviewers, and examine reviews received. Dr. Bhan is charged specifically with reviewing these initial funding proposals in the context of the overall programmatic goals of the Center in fostering new digestive disease investigators and advancing understanding of IBD. He will also chair the meeting of the CSIBD Executive Steering Committee that ranks the proposals for funding. The specific aims of the Pilot and Feasibility Program are to (1) recruit new investigators into IBD research by providing funding for IBD related nascent research programs, and (2) generate new ideas related to IBD research by providing funding for innovative high risk high payoff lines of investigation. As detailed in the Research Strategy of this program, achievement of these goals is evident in the success that P/F recipients have had in bringing pilot projects to the juncture at which they have led to ongoing research funding by external peer-reviewed agencies as well as results warranting publication in peer-reviewed journals. In the last ten years of funding (2005-2014), 35 Pilot and Feasibility Program award recipients have gone on to become independent investigators; 10 of these transitions to independence occurred since the last competing renewal in 2009.