Dear Researchers,

It is August already—time sure flies! I hope you enjoy these final moments of summer before the academic year begins, the leaves start to change color, and the "craziness" ensues.

Please review the events and opportunities below, and mark your calendars for upcoming dates and deadlines. The Indiana CTSI has so much to offer! Of special note are the annual meeting on September 18 in Indianapolis (“Genetic Medicine from Sequence to Solution”) and the Notre Dame summit on October 21 at the Morris Inn on campus (“Advancing Mental Health Through Translational Research and Partnerships”). We're confident you'll find both events rewarding.

All the best for the upcoming academic year and everything a new year brings!

Sincerely,

Melanie DeFord, Deputy Director and Assistant Vice President for Research
Prakash Nallathamby, Notre Dame Navigator of the Indiana CTSI

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Regenstrief Institute Social Hub (1101 West 10th Street Indianapolis, IN) and online

This session will cover a mix of how to use GenAI, including specialized Gems, agents, and other tools. Dr. Mary Bourke will also explain how she has integrated each into her instructional design.

Friday, September 18, 2026

8:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Hine Hall, IU Indianapolis Campus, 875 W North St, Indianapolis, IN

The Indiana CTSI’s 2026 Annual Meeting is on Friday, September 18. This year, our theme is “Genetic Medicine from Sequence to Solution.” Renowned muscular dystrophy researcher Kevin P. Campbell, PhD, the winner of the 2026 August M. Watanabe Prize in Translational Research, will deliver the keynote address. Additional agenda details and more information about the speakers will be available soon. The meeting will be held exclusively in-person. The keynote presentation will be recorded and shared after the meeting. 

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

All Day

University of Notre Dame, Morris Inn, Notre Dame, IN

Save the date and please join colleagues from across the Indiana CTSI for an all-day summit on the beautiful campus of the University of Notre Dame. This year theme will focus on "Advancing mental health through translational research and partnerships." The summit will feature insights from Indiana CTSI leadership, presentations from partner institution investigators, and a keynote address by Matthew K. Nock, Ph.D.,Professor and Director at Harvard University. Full details regarding the agenda, speakers, and poster session will be released soon.

The Indiana CTSI Commercialization PDT is designed to provide early guidance to academic and clinical investigators interested in advancing their discoveries to the market. The programs are open to investigators from Indiana University (IU), Purdue University, or the University of Notre Dame; and includes a pool of advisors across these universities and industries around the state to provide investigators with a wide range of expertise and perspectives.

Letter of Interest: September 17, 2026

Submission Deadline: October 1, 2026

Indiana CTSI Community Health Partnerships (CHeP) is soliciting proposals for the development of community-university partnerships to improve the health of Indiana residents, to result in future collaborative research proposals. The award can be used to establish new partnerships or to strengthen/expand existing community-university partnerships to solve critical health problems affecting Indiana residents. This award will not fund research pilot projects; instead, it will fund activities to help develop partnerships between individuals and organizations that have potential to later engage in joint research projects to improve the health of Indiana communities. The expected outcome of this award is the development of a future research proposal for opportunities such as the Community Health Partnerships Trailblazer Award. This RFA accepts applications which propose to serve residents in any of the counties of Indiana.

Contact: chep@iu.edu

Submission Deadline: September 28, 2026

The mission of the Grants Linking University–wide Expertise (GLUE) awards is to support “the planning and team building across campuses to develop of large multi-investigator and/or multi-project, milestone-driven, translational research teams who are planning to eventually submit a multi-year extramural grant applications with annual budgets of $300K or higher in direct costs per year”. Examples of such grants include (but are not limited to) PPGs, U series, multi PI R01s, STTRs and SPORE grants.

Applications for GLUE grants are accepted for review at any stage of their development. It is expected that these planning/seed grants will increase multidisciplinary collaborations, institutional competitiveness, opportunities for extramurally funded training grants and overall institutional funding.

Contact: jybe@iu.edu

Submission Deadline: November 3, 2026

The overall objective of this program is to foster and encourage activity-based therapy programs for the treatment of spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries, including acute management, medical complications, rehabilitative techniques, and neuronal recovery.

The initiative for funding activity based therapy programs consists of two funding mechanisms:
1) an RFA for programs providing rehabilitative clinical care and employing “activity based” approaches for traumatic spinal cord injury persons, and
2) an RFA for programs providing rehabilitative clinical care and employing “activity based” approaches for traumatic brain injury persons.

Contact: trnsldev@iu.edu

Submission Deadline: Rolling submission

Commercialization Project Development Teams (PDTs) are groups of experienced entrepreneurial faculty located on each of the Indiana CTSI campuses who will connect you with resources and collaboration opportunities to support commercialization of your technology.

There are commercialization office representatives and regulatory experts on each team, and other experts are added to the team as needed when your application is discussed. You will have access to the expertise and knowledge you need all in one place. Full-time faculty (i.e., tenure-track, research, and clinical faculty) at any campus of Indiana University, the University of Notre Dame, or Purdue University who have submitted all relevant invention disclosures to their university’s commercialization office are eligible for funding. Awards are typically up to $15,000.

Contact: karagarc@iu.edu and pportono@iu.edu

Submission Deadline: Rolling submission

Research Project Development Teams (PDTs) are groups of experienced senior faculty located on each of the Indiana CTSI campuses who will connect you with resources, collaboration opportunities, and small (typically up to $15,000) awards for preliminary or additional data. Each PDT is designed around a common research theme.

There are biostatisticians and regulatory experts on each team, and other experts are added as needed when you meet with the team to discuss your application. You will have access to the expertise and knowledge you need all in one place.

Contact: tsajdyk@iu.edu

Submission Deadline: Rolling Submission

Submission Deadline: October 5, 2026

Rolling Submission

Rolling Submission

Take a moment to explore our past newsletters and summits. At Indiana CTSI, we’re committed to uniting Indiana’s life sciences community to drive research forward and improve health across the state.

The Indiana CTSI has experts across a wide variety of fields and research areas of interest. Click the button below to have the latest research discoveries and developments making news and positively impacting health in Indiana delivered right to your inbox. 

The Indiana CTSI includes Indiana University, Purdue University, and the University of Notre Dame as the major academic partners along with a number of other institutions and entities in the state.

It is funded by a Clinical and Translational Sciences Award from the National Institutes of Health amounting to some $38 million for the current seven-year funding period of 2023-2030. This funding is supplemented by additional support from many other institutional and corporate partners.

Funding is provided to researchers by many mechanisms to promote translational and collaborative research among the partner institutions.

For more information, please visit: indianactsi.org

If you have any questions about Indiana CTSI grants, programs, or upcoming events please feel free to reach out to navigator Prakash Nallathamby.