The CBC Affinity Groups are cross-institutional communities centered around specific topics, which promote collaborative exploration of the community’s delineated key scientific questions. Based on Team Science concepts, the Affinity Group will engender collaborations which the community funds through inter-institutional $250,000 awards.
The CBC Affinity Groups Affinity Groups are cross-institutional communities centered around specific topics, which promote collaborative exploration of the community’s delineated key scientific questions. Based on Team Science concepts, the Affinity Group will engender collaborations which the community funds through inter-institutional $250,000 awards.
This overarching goal of the Neuroscience Affinity Group is to provide a framework for selecting high-risk/high-reward research projects in the Neuroscience space. The Chicago Biomedical Consortium (CBC) is committed to funding some of the top ideas but anticipates that other funders will be interested if the platform is built to engender new collaborations for high-impact ideas.
The Affinity Group is an inclusive community of Chicago neuroscientists. It is organized into different layers that determine the community’s most important questions and propose collaborative lines of inquiry for CBC, and potentially other foundation funding.
The goal is to build a collaborative platform where the CBC funds several high-priority collaborations, but which articulates a longer list of curated, vetted, collaborative approaches to fundamental questions that are attractive to many different funders. The members of the Affinity Group will have the opportunity to submit proposals for CBC funding, in return we ask for a commitment from the Affinity Group of approximately 14 hours over a three-month period time.
The layers are as follows:
Steering Committee (3-4 people) The community rules of engagement are set by a Steering Committee of senior scientists from across the institutions who are committed to building the community. The Steering Committee is establishing an inclusive and diverse community for the next generation of scientists and should be foremost conscious of this goal.
Neuroscience Affinity Group (30-50 people) This layer is the community of the Steering Committee, the Ambassadors, and the Neuroscientific teams as follows:
Neuroscience Ambassadors (20 people) Ambassadors are committed to inter-institutional collaboration and pledge to shepherd junior professors and trainees as they explore approaches to high-risk/high-reward scientific questions. To ensure a diversity of technical approaches, Ambassadors recruit core facility representatives and researchers whose expertise is orthogonal to mainstream neuroscience
Neuroscientific Teams are formed between 2-3 collaborative scientists to develop projects that address key questions.
At least one of the Principal Investigators (PI) in the Scientific Team needs to be a tenure-track faculty member affiliated with a CBC member institution: Northwestern University, The University of Chicago, and/or University of Illinois Chicago.
The majority of the award will go to a salary for a postdoc employed at a CBC member institution at a salary base of $90,000 plus benefits for two years.
There is incremental money for experiments, however if a PI is not affiliated with a CBC member institution, the member institution PIs can sub-contract these monies for specific experiments.
The Scientific Team must show the collaborative nature of the given project by providing a detailed research plan with shared resources.
The Scientific Team’s participants should each be affiliated with a different home institution.
A detailed plan for the postdoc’s training should be submitted focusing on techniques and resources.
A justification on how the training will help progress toward the postdoc’s next career stage or future grant applications (e.g., K99/R00 award or faculty position) should be provided.
Each Scientific Team should identify the postdoc who will be developing the submitted research project.
Whenever possible a designated postdoc should participate in the Affinity Group.
The Scientific Teams should not already be funded for closely related research activities.
Research projects submitted by Scientific Teams cannot be pending or under review at federal funding institutions/agencies.
Funding is not expected to be distributed evenly among the CBC institutions.
Multiple applications can be submitted from each institution.
Applications should show both innovation and scientific merit. Call for proposals that will be reviewed based on:
CBC Affinity Group awards can range up to $250,000 total for use over one to two years. Given the limitations in finding and hiring personnel, the majority of the CBC Affinity Group award funding should be used to support a joint postdoc at a competitive salary ($90,000 base) and their experiments in support of the Scientific Team’s proposal.
The funded projects should have no expectation of continuation or renewal by the CBC.
Please note that the three CBC institutions have waived all indirect costs. CBC does not allow facilities & administrative (F&A)/ Indirect Costs on any funded project.
