Congratulations to the Georgia CTSA 2019 Pilot Grant Recipients


The Pilot Grants program awarded studies which either generate preliminary data and refine research strategies for subsequent extramural grant applications or develop the best approaches and methodologies to address complex translational and clinical research problems. The categories included: 1) grants that focused on translational and clinical research, 2) grants that address a translational research question which could provide insights generalizable to other projects/diseases, and 3) grants to support novel methodological research in biostatistics, epidemiology, or health economics to advance clinical and translational research.

Round #86 Georgia CTSA

6 awards funded

  • I-Vector Based Voice Quality Examination System ($39,971.60 funded by Innovation Catalyst Program)
    • David V Anderson, Ph.D., Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Building Artificial Intelligence Solutions in Radiology Using Routine Clinical Data ($39,996.89)
    • Jinho D. Choi, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Emory College of Arts and Sciences
  • Collaborative to Overcome Barriers in Access to Liver Transplantation ($39,790.98)
    • Raymond J Lynch, MD, MS, Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery, Emory University School of Medicine
  • Development of an ex vivo 3-D human brain organoid model to study severe malaria pathogenesis ($40,000)
    • Jonathan Stiles, PhD, Professor, Microbiology, Biochemistry and Immunology-MBI, Morehouse School of Medicine
  • NaCl nanoparticles for bladder cancer therapy ($39,940.51)
    • Jin Xie, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Georgia
  • Interferometry-based rapid detection of antibiotic resistance ($40,000)
    • Peter Yunker, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Physics
    • David Weiss, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Emory University School of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Director, Emory Antibiotic Resistance Center

Round #88 Georgia CTSA (BERD)

2 awards funded

  • A pilot investigation of the development of a prediction algorithm for a non-invasive measurement of Hemoglobin Levels among adults. ($20,000)
    • Amita Manatunga, Professor, Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Rollins school of Public Health, Emory University
  • Assessment of Bias in LexisNexis Residential History with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) patients in Georgia ($15,309)
    • Jeffrey M. Switchenko, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor, Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University

Round #89 Georgia CTSA (Informatics)

2 awards funded

  • Automated Behavior Assessments through Body-Worn Movement Sensors and Machine Learning ($15,000)
    • Thomas Ploetz, PhD, Associate Professor, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Development and validation of an Artificial Intelligence based approach for drug efficacy prediction ($15,000)
    • Jeffrey Skolnick, Ph.D., Director, Center for the Study of Systems Biology, Professor, Biological Sciences and the Mary and Maisie Gibson Chair and GRA Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology
    • Dennis Liotta, Ph.D., Executive Director, Emory Institute for Drug Development, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor, Department of Chemistry, Emory University