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Thank you for considering a submission for our 2024 Pilot Grant Program!

The Center for Healthy Aging and the Stein Institute for Research on Aging (CHA/SIRA) 2024-25 pilot grant program solicits proposals for innovative research projects. We are an integrated, multi-disciplinary, cross-campus group that aims to advance and promote health and well-being in the field of healthy aging through research, education, and community outreach. The purpose of the pilot funding is to foster early-stage research focused on ideas that are related to the study and promotion of healthy aging. These awards are designed to help investigators generate pilot and feasibility data to support future extramural grant applications.

More details on the the call for proposals can be found here.

As your team considers the focus of your project, we encourage you to take advantage of the resources that CHA/SIRA has to offer, including:

  • Existing data from our longitudinal life-span aging cohort, the Successful Aging Evaluation Study (SAGE). The SAGE study is a prospective cohort study of 1,800 randomly selected, demographically representative of San Diego, community-dwelling individuals age 20 to over 100 years. The SAGE study is comprehensive mail-in survey that has 10 years of longitudinal data collected in domains of: physical activity, health behaviors, aging attitudes, emotion and well-being, physical and lifestyle functioning, diet and nutrition, psychological characteristics and traits, sexual health, social functioning and social engagement, spirituality, stress and coping, and wisdom. The specific assessments and the years that the assessment were collected can be found here.
  • A novel, first of its kind “living lab” in the Belmont Senior Living community on Nobel Drive, just a few miles from the La Jolla campus. This lab is embedded in the senior living community on the 6th floor in a studio apartment and provides researchers with an opportunity to collaborate with residents and conduct novel research on-site. This could include using the space to conduct research related to sensors, testing innovative technology, conducting physical assessments, utilizing it as a meeting space for participant interviews, etc. Proposals with plans to utilize the living lab space will be considered.
  • The Geroscience lab houses a fee for service core facility that provides support for aging biomarkers research, including biospecimen (blood) collection and processing. The Geroscience lab has a particular focus on mitochondrial bioenergetics, but can also facilitate research investigating other biological hallmarks of aging. The lab also supports basic assessments related to the physical, cognitive, and sensory abilities of older adults. These include NIH toolbox based assessments, instrumented measures of sensory performance, and a range of surveys and questionnaires related to healthy aging.

Proposal due dates to be announced...

Investigators interested in applying may contact Dr. Anthony Molina (ajmolina@health.ucsd.edu), Interim Stein Institute Scientific Director, to discuss project relevance and CHA/SIRA research resources

You may also contact Danielle Glorioso (dglorioso@ucsd.edu), the Executive Director of the UC San Diego Center for Healthy Aging and the Stein Institute for Research on Aging with any questions.