Summer is here! Wow—we go from rainy and chilly to pool weather in a flash! We hope your summer allows for a different pace and at least some relaxation. Please see the funding opportunities below and other resources and opportunities available to you as a member of the Indiana CTSI. There are lots of ways you can connect, engage, and create impact! See the Indiana CTSI website for more information.

Enjoy your summer. The Fall semester and its hustle and bustle will be here before we know it.

Sincerely,

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

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.

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

1101 W 10th Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202 

This lecture will introduce participants to the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence (AI) and its transformative potential in health research. The session begins by demystifying key AI concepts, including machine learning, deep learning, large language models (LLMs), and generative approaches, before diving into real-world applications in clinical research.

Attendees will explore practical use cases such as automated chart summarization, natural language querying of clinical databases, and diagnostic image analysis. The lecture also outlines the core infrastructure and deployment strategies—whether in the cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments—needed to support successful AI integration.

Through illustrative case studies in COVID-19 and chronic disease management, the session highlights how AI has already improved clinical workflows, triage, and population health analytics. The talk includes a discussion on effective prompting strategies, fine-tuning for domain specificity, and the ethical and competency considerations vital for responsible AI use in healthcare research. Registration is now open.

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.

Submission Deadline: September 30, 2025

he 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.

The GLUE funding is available to collaborative teams where the lead PI of the research team is from IUB, and the other members of the team are from Indiana CTSI affiliate campuses.

Contact: Jybe@iu.edu

Letter of Intent Deadline: September 17, 2025

Submission Deadline: October 1, 2025

The Indiana CTSI Community Health Partnerships (CHeP) is soliciting proposals for the development of community-university partnerships to improve health, examine social determinants of health (SDoH), or enhance health equity, 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 organizations that have potential to later engage in joint research projects to address health, health equity, or SDoH. The expected outcome of this award is the development of a future research proposal for opportunities such as the Community Health Partnerships Trailblazer Award (Trailblazer Award). Examples of partnership development activities we are interested in funding include meetings, conferences, travel expenses, stakeholder interviews, and quality improvement assessments.

Contact: chep@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

Deadline: November 3, 2025

Submission Deadline: Rolling Submission

Rolling Submission

Rolling Submission

These virtual sessions are open to anyone affiliated with an Indiana CTSI partner campus. Attendees will hear from an expert on a specific topic, and then there will be time for conversation and questions.

If you have questions, contact Dr. Tammy Sajdyk. 

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

12:00 - 1:00 p.m

Wednesday, August 6, 2025

7:00 - 8:00 a.m.

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

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 co-navigators Jessica Brookshire or Prakash Nallathamby.