PRiME Fellowship Program Guidelines

The 2023-24 Competition is now closed.

Purpose | Areas of Focus | Eligibility | How to Apply | Award Amount | Use of Funds | Important Dates

Eligibility

There are two streams of eligibility for the 2023-24 PRiME Fellowship:

Stream 1

The proposed project must be a collaboration between two or more PIs based at the University of Toronto.

• PIs MUST have primary appointments at one of the following divisions:

  • Temerty Faculty of Medicine,

  • Faculty of Arts & Science,

  • Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy ,

  • Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, and/or

  • University of Toronto Mississauga.

• All PIs must be members of PRiME.

  NOTE: Preference is given to interdisciplinary, cross-divisional proposals.

Stream 2

The proposed project must be a collaboration between two or more PIs at least one having a primary appointment at the University of Toronto (in the above mentioned divisions) and one that is based at any of the participating academic hospital or partner institutions.

• Participating partner institutions:

  • Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR),

  • The Hospital for Sick Children,

  • Sinai Health System (SHS),

  • Unity Health Toronto,

  • University Health Network (UHN), and/or

  • Women’s College Hospital (WCH).

• All PIs must be members of PRiME.

  NOTE: Stream 2 is for a collaboration between University of Toronto divisions and PRiME partner hospitals and institutions

If a project team would like to confirm team and project eligibility prior to the submission deadline, please email: prime.initiative@utoronto.ca.

If a PI is interested in this program, but is not yet a member of PRiME, please sign up here and email your CV to prime.initiative@utoronto.ca

• The applicant must be either a full-time Postdoctoral Fellow (with less than 4 years PDF training at the time of application), Clinical Fellow or Senior Ph.D Student (completed 4 or more years) who is either currently appointed at one of the collaborating organizations, or whose appointment would follow from the award of the PRiME Fellowship; 

  • NOTE: It may be possible to defer the Fellowship funding to align with new personnel start dates – please contact the PRiME office to determine whether this is an option prior to the application deadline (prime.initiative@utoronto.ca)  

• PRiME funding is meant to create a unique opportunity and may be used in conjunction with other funding, but cannot duplicate an existing funding source for the project. 

• Applicants cannot hold a PRiME Fellowship award at the same time as any other external funding award.  Applicants holding an external award at the time of application must openly declare this and indicate the end date of the existing award. Fellows who accept another award during the term of the PRiME fellowship must immediately advise the committee of this and return the remaining award funds to PRiME.

• The proposed project cannot be already funded by a PRiME Fellowship Award at the time of the application or award. 

Additional Guidelines to note: 

• Usually, a PI may only be awarded one PRiME Fellowship per competition cycle;   

• Renewal of funding may be considered for projects making outstanding research progress during the term of the award but will not be given preference and will be judged together with new incoming applications in subsequent competitions; 

• A grant proposal to provide subsequent funding for the project is expected to be submitted during the term of the award. It is highly recommended that the grant proposal be submitted near the midpoint of the award. PRiME is able to provide support throughout the proposal compilation and submission process. 

How to Apply

Applicants must submit a Notice of Intent (NOI) to prime.initiative@utoronto.ca by November 17th, 2023. This can be submitted as a short email stating the intent to apply by the deadline, the stream, topic of the project, and the names of the collaborators (if possible).

Applications will outline the applicant and the collaboration’s outstanding potential of productivity working on cutting-edge, high-risk ideas. The application package must include the following components, and be submitted using a REDCap Survey. Applicants are advised to assemble all application pieces prior to commencing their submission: 

• Applicant details (contact, affiliation, trainee stage) 

• Information from up to three supervisors (contact, affiliation, trainee stage) 

  • Please list the supervisor who will manage the funding as the ‘first supervisor’ 

• Project summary information and survey 

  • Project title (15-word limit) 

  • Project survey (disease area, category) 

  • Lay summary/impact statement (150 words) 

• Research proposal (1000 words) 

  • Information on the proposed research, including: aim(s), background and preliminary data (recommend no more than 50% of the available word count), research plan and methodology, and how it advances knowledge in the field/anticipated impact(s) 

  • Information on the extent to which this project builds upon or is different from existing projects. 

  • Information on how the research project is high-risk, high-reward, and is made possible by the inter-disciplinary connection between two labs 

• Up to 10 relevant publications 

• Research proposal attachments 

  • Schematic describing research project (optional – max 1 page) 

  • Up to two figures of preliminary data (max 1 page each, combine into single file) 

• Applicant’s experience relevant to the proposed research (300 words) 

  • Information on the applicant’s experiences with the proposed methodologies and/or the plan to attain the experience. 

• Inter-disciplinary training and mentorship plan (300 words) 

  • Provide an overview of the inter-disciplinary nature of the research training experience and mentorship plan. 

• Applicant’s track record attachments 

  • Academic CV (max 4 pages) 

  • Letters of support 

    • One joint or two separate letters of support from the co-supervisors (max 1000 words each for separate, 1500 words for joint) 

      • Focus on the quality and impact of the researcher and the research environment  

      • To reduce the potential for unconscious bias in the evaluation process - please refer to applicants consistently by their surname(s) and use gender-neutral pronouns. 

      • Please combine into a single file, as applicable, prior to upload 

• Applicant demographic information (optional) 

Submission deadline: November 30th, 2023

Important Dates

Competition Announced: October 13th, 2023

Notice of Intent due: November 17th, 2023

Full Application due: November 30th, 2023

Anticipated Notice of Award: February 6th, 2024