Developmental Research Project Program (DRPP)
In September 2023 RI-INBRE circulated the 2024 funding year Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) to the network institutions. The 2024 FOAs solicited letters of intent (LOIs) for Early Career Development (ECD) awards at both Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUI-ECD) and at URI/Brown (UB-ECD), Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) awards at the PUIs, Collaborative Research (CR) awards. Notably, RI-INBRE also solicited LOIs for the new Pilot Project – Proposal Development (PP-PD) mechanism, which is designed to support production of competitive, extramural grant applications for investigators of any rank and any career stage.
The 2024 solicitation drew significant interest, with 47 LOIs received, which is double the number of LOIs submitted in the 2022 (23 LOIs) and 2023 (24 LOIs) proposal years. For the 2024 funding year, 21 investigators were invited to submit full proposals. Following external reviews, 17 proposals were selected for funding. The new awards include 8 SURF awards, 4 PP-PD awards, 2 PUI-ECD awards, and 3 UB-ECD awards. We are excited about the increased
interest in RI-INBRE funding mechanisms and the diversity of the biomedical project topics represented. We are optimistic that the research funded by these awards will continue to transform the biomedical research landscape at our network institutions and in the state of Rhode Island.