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Dear CCTSI Research Community,
With Thanksgiving just a few weeks behind us, I am still focused on gratitude. Looking back over 2025, and its intense set of challenges for individual researchers and educational and healthcare institutions overall, what I am impressed by is the resilience I have witnessed. Time and again, I see investigators finding a way to pursue and persist with the work they believe in, committed to advancing science, and ultimately improving health for all. For this, I am grateful.
Kudos
Our Director of Translational Informatics Jayashree Kapathy-Cramer, PhD was recognized as a Fellow of the Medical Image Computing and Assisted Intervention Society. Individuals who receive this honor demonstrate exceptional scientific achievements and embody the spirit of innovation. Congratulations to Dr. Kalpathy-Cramer! We are thrilled you are part of our CCTSI leadership team and look forward to your future accomplishments in ophthalmology, medical imaging and biomedical informatics/AI.
At the fall Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) national meeting, Neil Aggarwal, MD, MHSc, presented in a plenary session on CCTSI’s Pragmatic Electronic Health Record (EHR) Embedded Trials or PEET. He and Bethany Kwan, PhD, MSPH, co-lead this initiative. His talk, CTSAs Leading the Way: Resilience, Innovation, and Impact, explained our institute’s leading role in pragmatic large-scale trials conducted in clinical care settings. These trials involve interventions delivered within the electronic health record by health care personnel using usual processes and care systems; and evaluations of outcomes using data collected as part of routine clinical care. Our partnership with UCHealth and its information and technology teams are crucial for the success of our PEET trials. Congratulations to Dr. Aggarwal on your outstanding presentation!
Funding
The CCTSI has released this year’s Request for Applications (RFA) for the Pragmatic EHR-Embedded Trials (PEET) Program. Researchers are eligible for 2-year awards of up to $300,000 to conduct a trial within the UCHealth EHR and investigators from CCTSI-affiliated institutions are eligible. The goal of the CCTSI’s PEET Demonstration Projects are to support pragmatic clinical trials conducted within UCHealth and integrated with Epic. You may contact Sarah Kautz with question or for more information.
There is still time to submit your Intent to Apply form for CCTSI’s Translational Methods (TM) Pilot grant award, due December 15, 2025. The TM-Pilot Program supports the development of novel methods and innovative technologies for clinical and translational medicine. CCTSI’s Community Engagement Pilot Intent to Apply form is due January 26, 2026. The CE-Pilot program supports community-academic partnerships to perform pilot studies that will strengthen relationships and produce preliminary data for future competitive grant applications, as well as address a translational science roadblock.
Research Ethics
Did you know that the CCTSI sponsors free research ethics consultations for investigators who are designing studies and have critical ethics questions to tackle? Moreover, each November, CCTSI also sponsors a Research Ethics Conference in partnership with the Center for Bioethics and Humanities. The conference this year featured a fascinating mix of presentations on the ethical issues inherent to wearable devices and the data they generate. Thank you to CCTSI Research Ethics Director Matthew DeCamp, MD, PhD, for leading the development of this important conference.
Cite the Grant
Before the year ends, take a moment to be sure you have cited all publications, patents or projects that make use of CCTSI funding, (including our UM1, K12 and T32 grants) and resources, including REDCap. Learn more here.
Wishing you all a happy and safe holiday season,
Ron
