Pilot Projects
The Pilot Projects Program (PPP) provide an important benefit to members of the Center for Human Health and the Environment (CHHE) and a mechanism to recruit new scientists into environmental health research. The PPP will support innovative basic, applied, clinical and public health research, with a major emphasis on research into the effects, potential consequences and prevention of environmental exposures on human health. Consequently, the PPP will be the nexus for promoting an expansion of environmental health research at NC State. Dr. David Threadgill is the Director of the Pilot Projects Program.
The over-arching objective of the PPP is to provide pilot funding to Center members and other NC State investigators to collect preliminary data that will support applications for external funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and other agencies supporting environmental health research. An important goal of the PPP will be to increase collaborative links between NC State researchers and the Agricultural Health Study (AHS; http://aghealth.nci.nih.gov/), a large population-based study of farming families in Iowa and North Carolina, that is part of the Integrated Health Science Facility Core (IHSFC). Additionally, the PPP will work with appropriate pilot applicants to secure matching funding from NC TraCS Institute, a component of the IHSFC; NC TraCS is home to the University of North Carolina NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Award, which includes participation by NC State as part of the UNC system.
The objectives of the PPP are to support:
1) Junior investigators, especially those being mentored by the Career Development Core, initiating research careers that will have an environmental science component;
2) Established investigators interested in expanding their research into new environmental health research areas; and
3) Established investigators who are initiating new interdisciplinary collaborations in environmental health research with a special emphasis on collaborations including the AHS.
David W. Threadgill, PhD Director Pilot Projects Program, Professor and Head Department of Genetics