Internal Funding Opportunities

The Accelerator Award: Innovate2Impact Commercialization Fund is dedicated to identifying and accelerating early-stage Lurie Children’s innovations toward market entry. This fund is open to any Lurie Children’s employee and will support medical device, therapeutic/diagnostic, or digital health technologies developed at Lurie Children’s with awards ranging from $25,000 to $100,000. This investment aims to rapidly bridge the gap between innovative ideas and successful commercialization, ultimately enhancing outcomes for children and families.

The award can be used for activities such as:

• Medical device prototype development, refinement, and benchtop validation
• Drug screening, target validation, and medicinal chemistry
• Digital health wireframe development, prototyping, iterative testing and refinement
• Pre-clinical studies, including pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic or animal efficacy studies
• Human data collection and clinical studies
• Market assessment, regulatory assessment, or voice of customer data 
• Reaching another pre-clinical or clinical milestone which significantly de-risks the medical device, therapeutic/diagnostic, or digital health technology in its path toward commercialization. 

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The Catalyst's Spark Award is a one-year award for up to $100,000 to support novel population health, implementation science, or community-engaged research. This should be an innovative research project that results in pilot data to support a competitive future extramural funding application with a community, population health, or outcomes focus.

Priority Criteria for Award Selection:  

• Proposal engages diverse collaborators including communities, patients, and families.
• Proposal clearly articulates meaningful partnership with SCHORE Catalyst. Investigators without significant pre-existing funding.
• Investigators without evidence of long-standing research effort in direct line of the proposed area of study.

Eligibility & Key Requirements:

1. Must be a faculty member or other person who has PI-eligible status. 
2. Each investigator may only submit one application per award type as the program lead.  
3. Previous IGA recipients must have provided progress reports for all prior IGA funding. 
4. A Catalyst service proposal must be included with the application materials.

• Interested investigators must contact Catalyst for an intake meeting to discuss the project and how to include Catalyst’s expertise and resources.
• All requests for an intake meeting must be submitted to Catalyst at least two weeks prior to the application deadline.
• The intake meeting must take place at least one week prior to the application deadline.

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The diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of acutely ill and injured children is complex and unique. 
Addressing these challenges requires a new approach to bring together teams from multiple disciplines. 
The PACCRI Spark Challenge Grants aim to catalyze high-risk, high-reward multidisciplinary research 
that can transform outcomes for acutely ill and injured children. These grants are designed to support 
bold ideas that challenge conventional paradigms and accelerate the development of impactful 
solutions in pediatric acute and critical care. This may include (but is not limited to) developing and/or 
testing a new medical device, validating the clinical utility of a novel biomarker or diagnostic platform, or 
developing new computational models for predicition or precision problems. Basic science proposals with 
a clear and near-term translational pathway or proposals that include both basic science (e.g., cellular or 
animal models) with a clinical translalational component (e.g., clinical validation in human biospecimens) 
will be considered. 

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Grainger Research Awards are supported by the Grainger Research Initiative in Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. These awards are designed to advance the division’s research mission by supporting innovative projects in pediatric emergency medicine and generate preliminary data for larger grant applications. Application and eligibility requirements are detailed in the Requests for Applications (RFAs) for each award type.

Available Opportunities

• Transformation Grant is a one-to three-year award of up to $50,000 to support substantial scholarly projects that advance knowledge generation, implementation, or dissemination in pediatric emergency medicine. Awards may be structured as $25,000 per year for two years or $50,000 for one year.
• Small Research Grant is a one-year award of up to $3,000 (fellows, advanced practice providers) or $5,000 (faculty) to support unfunded or underfunded research projects within the division.

Applications are accepted year-round and are reviewed on a rolling basis.

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The Interdisciplinary Colloquia Award is a one-year award for up to $5,000 to bring together multi-disciplinary investigators from Stanley Manne Children's Research Institute, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and Northwestern University to share scientific knowledge and envision future research related to children’s health. Support may be justified for recurring group meetings with food, visiting faculty costs relevant to the group's area of interest and mission, and/or mini-symposium costs designed to bring together the working group and scientists in the area of focus. 

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The Kenneth C. Griffin Research Catalyst Award is a one-year award for up to $100,000 to support novel preclinical and translational research. This award supports early-career researchers to pursue translational discoveries, which will ultimately lead to significant, long-term grant funding from federal agencies and the private sector.

Priority Criteria for Award Selection 

• Investigators without significant pre-existing funding
• Investigators without evidence of long-standing research effort in direct line of the proposed area of study
• Well-articulated translational scientific potential 
• Distinction from other areas of funded investigation

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The Program Accelerator Award is a one-year award for up to $75,000 to support planning and development of program project-related applications expected to lead to a submission within 18-24 months of the start of funding. Support justification may include administrative and grant writing support, material support for preliminary data generation, and personnel support. 

Priority Criteria for Award Selection 

• Novel clinical, translational, and basic scientific synergy (does not need to be a new line of scientific inquiry to the principal investigator or research team). 

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The Proposal Revision Award is a one-year award for up to $100,000 to support the preparation of a revision and resubmission of an application for federal research support. The prior extramural application must have received a priority score and full review by the sponsor within the past two years. Training grants (e.g., K08, K23, TL2) and R03 submissions do not qualify for this award. 

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The Schreiber Family Center for Early Childhood Health and Wellness announces the Generating Research on Outcomes of exposures and experiences from Womb to age 5 (GROW to 5) Planning Grant initiative. The center will support grant awards, allowing for the collection of pilot data that will increase the competitiveness of extramural proposals for career development K, R, P, and U-series, NIH awards, philanthropic awards or industry awards. 

Available Opportunities

• Cultivate Award is for up to $50,000 for a one-year project period to engage family or community members to establish or enhance research partnerships.
• Flourish Award is for up to $150,000 for a one-year project period to develop a multi-project research program or cooperative agreement proposal.
• Nourish Award is for up to $100,000 for a one-year project to support the advancement of junior faculty pursuing mentored career development awards (K01, K08, K99/R00) from the NIH, AHRQ, or similiar opportunities from other national organizations, philanthropic, or industry funding.
• Thrive Award is for up to $100,000 for a one-year project period to collect pilot data for an R-series proposal, philanthropic award, or industry award. 

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The Scientific Advocacy Award provides up to $1,000 per year to advocate for children's health research at the regional and national level and raise the stature of Stanley Manne Children's Research Institute and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago investigators in scientific advocacy. 

Priority Criteria for Award Selection 

• Evidence that the proposed role and engagement by the awardee will have influence on children's health research
• National level advocacy
• A sustained advocacy plan 

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The Visionary Award is a one-year award for up to $75,000 to support potentially paradigm shifting research. This should be a visionary idea with a new, multi-institutional team supporting it. 

Priority Criteria for Award Selection 

• A new line of research for the investigators without significant pre-existing funding or evidence of a long-standing research effort in direct line of the proposed area of study 
• Distinction from other areas of funded investigation 
• Clearly articulates the translational nature of the research area

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