Does the proposed project: Prioritize initiatives that address unmet needs address scientific, patient or population health needs advance in under-investigated areas of science address a unique research challenges or disincentives (e.g., currently untreatable diseases; de-risking targets Click below for help scoring 'Focus on unmet needs'
Produce generalizable solutions for common and persistent challenges Identify, develop and/or test solutions to common bottlenecks or roadblocks: scientific, operational, or administrative. Approach research challenges and develop solutions by seeking commonalities across a range of diseases or conditions. Enable development and testing of generalizable solutions through organizational policies, organizational structure, and shared resources. Click below for help scoring 'Generalizable Solution'
Emphasize creativity and innovation Develop and implement innovations in research methods, technologies, and approaches that increase the impact of the research. Advance innovations in research team interactions, leadership and management, partnerships, and operations. Enable creativity and innovation through policies that encourage innovations and do not penalize failures. Click below for help scoring 'Creativity and Innovation'
Leverage cross-disciplinary team science Engage colleagues from across disciplines, fields, and professions to advance research along the translational continuum (basic science to clinical applications). Integrate concepts, theories, methods, technologies, and approaches from the range of disciplines, fields, and professions that can contribute to advancing the research goals. Enable team science via organizational policies, team leadership and management, shared instrumentation and space, and recognition and reward systems. Click below for help scoring 'Team Science'
Enhance the efficiency and speed of translational research Develop and implement innovations in scientific approaches, methods and technologies that accelerate the pace of translational research. Implement evidence-informed practices to enhance speed at which collaborations / teams form, develop shared vision and goals, effectively communicate, and coordinate work tasks. Click below for help scoring 'Efficiency and Speed'
Use bold and rigorous research approaches Explore ambitious research goals that have the potential to produce major advances and/or paradigm shifts. Employ rigorous and robust approaches to generate reproducible findings and high-quality FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) data that will enable the research to advance translational progress regardless of whether the initial research objective is met (e.g., learning from failures). Click below for help scoring 'Bold and Rigorous'
Utilize boundary-crossing partnerships Form partnerships across government, universities, and industry to leverage varied expertise and resources. Implement evidence-informed practices for effective cross-sectoral partnerships. Involve impacted patients and communities as research collaborators to enable research advances across the translational continuum (e.g., via disease registries, clinical trials participation, intervention design). Implement evidence-informed practices for patient- and community-engaged research. Enable and incentivize boundary-crossing partnerships via leadership, policies, and recognition and reward systems. Click below for help scoring 'Boundary-crossing partnerships'
Focus on pursuing scientific goals that address unmet scientific, patient, or population health needs. Example approaches:
Scientific Needs : Contribute to research advances in under-investigated areas of science or on scientific questions that present unique research challenges or disincentives (e.g., currently untreatable diseases; de-risking targets).Patient and Population Health Needs : Advance research to develop solutions for unmet patient and population health needs. Not at all - Project does not appear to intentionally consider unmet scientific, patient, or population health needs, or addresses such a need on a coincidental basis rather than through deliberate prioritization.
Slightly - Project clearly identifies and addresses one or more unmet scientific, patient, or population health needs in its rationale or aims. While the justification for focusing on this need is presented in general terms, the project does clearly establish how it meets that need area.
Moderately - Project intentionally focuses on a defined area of unmet scientific, patient, or population health need, with rationale linked to factors such as high burden, lack of effective interventions, or limited prior research. Project framing and design reflect purposeful prioritization of serving this need area.
Very - Project focuses on an area of unmet need and explains how its aims respond to the scientific complexity, limited incentives, or structural barriers that have historically impeded progress. The project's design, methods, and implementation plan reflect an understanding of these barriers.
Extremely - Project demonstrably prioritizes unmet scientific, patient, or population health needs across all stages-from conceptualization through dissemination. Novel analysis of why this need has not previously been addressed drives the project design. Project is structured to stimulate interest, capacity, or future research in this area.
Develop innovations that address persistent challenges to advancing translational progress that are found across multiple research initiatives or projects, or span research on multiple diseases or conditions. Example approaches:
Across Multiple Projects or Initiatives: Advance research by identifying, developing, and/or testing solutions to common bottlenecks or roadblocks that have stymied multiple projects. These may be scientific, operational, or administrative in nature.Across Diseases or Conditions: Approach research challenges and develop solutions by seeking commonalities across research projects on a range of diseases or conditions.Organizational Environment: Enable development and testing of generalizable solutions through organizational policies, organizational structure, and shared resources. Not at all - Project focuses on a single disease, condition, or initiative; while broader relevance to other areas may result from such focus, that relevance is framed as a consequence of the project rather than an intentional part of its design.
Slightly - Project identifies a challenge with potential relevance beyond a single disease or context. Generalizability is stated as a project aim but is not central to the project design nor is apparent consideration given to testing in multiple settings.
Moderately - Project targets a persistent challenge that affects multiple diseases, research contexts, or operational domains. The project design includes disease-agnostic features intended to enable broader applicability.
Very - Project develops a solution to a persistent challenge that affects multiple diseases, conditions, or research contexts. The project includes an evidence-based approach for demonstrating how its solutions can be successfully adapted or reused in other domains.
Extremely - Project seeks to develop a novel, disease-agnostic solution that addresses a persistent barrier to translational progress in multiple research areas. It contributes meaningfully to the translational science field by advancing tools, methods, or frameworks that enable future solutions across diseases, conditions, or research domains to be developed.
Leverage creativity and innovation in research design, conduct, and facilitating factors, with the goal of increasing the impact of the research. Example approaches:
Research Design and Implementation : Pose innovative research questions and develop and implement innovations in research methods, technologies, and approaches that increase the impact of the research, such as pursuing paradigm-changing goals or innovations that are generalizable to advancing research across multiple initiatives, diseases, and conditions.Research Processes and Structures : Develop and implement innovations in research team interactions, leadership and management, partnerships, and operations that facilitate and support the quality and impact of the research.Organizational Environment : Enable creativity and innovation through policies that encourage innovations and do not penalize failures. Not at all - Project is anchored in established research designs, methods, or operational structures. Analytic methods and operational processes adhere to standard approaches.
Slightly - Creativity is not a primary project focus, but at least one component of the project-such as an exploratory method or structural modification-utilizes an innovative approach.
Moderately - Project leverages a creative approach to its research design, methods, or structure. Innovation is salient in at least one aspect of the project (e.g., a novel analytic method, unconventional team structure, or operational process), though innovation is not the project's central feature.
Very - Project applies creative approaches across multiple aspects of its design, implementation, or operations (e.g., team structure) in ways that can demonstrably advance the impact of its research.
Extremely - Project is designed around an innovative approach that challenges conventional assumptions or research practices in ways that will not only increase the impact of this project, but also potentially inform innovative practices across other settings.
Engage team members with expertise across disciplines, fields, and professions to produce research that advances translation along the translational research continuum. Example approaches:
Leverage Broad Expertise: Engage colleagues from across disciplines, fields, and professions to advance research along the translational continuum. This may involve leveraging scientific, administrative, financial, and operational expertise.Integrate Knowledge: Integrate concepts, theories, methods, technologies, and approaches from the range of disciplines, fields, and professions that can contribute to advancing the research goals. Leverage knowledge integration to produce more holistic research designs and findings that are therefore more relevant to real-world applications.Organizational Environment: Enable team science via organizational policies, team leadership and management, shared instrumentation and space, and recognition and reward systems. Not at all - Project principally relies on a limited group of participants from a single discipline, field, or profession in the team's composition or project approach, who interact on a task-specific or ad hoc basis.
Slightly - Project includes contributors from more than one discipline, field, or profession who interact regularly in order to accomplish the project goals. Team involvement is focused on a particular aspect of the project's scope, role, or timing.
Moderately - Project membership includes personnel from multiple disciplines, fields, or professions, articulating how each one's expertise will uniquely contribute to the team's work. The project facilitates frequent communication among team members.
Very - Project engages team members from multiple disciplines, fields, or professions and team composition in a sustained and coordinated manner. Team cohesion is fostered through structured mechanisms (e.g., shared leadership practices, communication norms, collaborative workflows) that are designed to advance translational research.
Extremely - Project is co-executed by a team representing multiple disciplines, fields, and professions, with each member's expertise fully integrated across the project. The team's composition is designed to produce novel insights, reflecting a "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" approach to team selection and laying the groundwork to advance team science beyond the current project.
Implement evidence-informed practices and scientific and operational innovations to accelerate the pace of translational research. Example approaches:
Scientific Efficiencies: Develop and implement innovations in scientific approaches, methods and technologies that accelerate the pace of translational research.Collaboration Efficiencies: Implement evidence-informed practices to enhance the speed at which collaborations and teams form, develop a shared vision and goals, effectively communicate, and coordinate work tasks.Project Management Efficiencies: Implement milestone-based decision making to enable rapid agreement on go/no-go decisions, to enable resources to be used most efficiently.Organizational Environment: Reward efficiency, enable rapid failures and encourage redirection of resources to subsequent attempts. Not at all - Project uses established research methods practices without deliberate emphasis on improving translational efficiency. Acceleration of the speed and efficiency of research is not a primary aim or design element.
Slightly - Project incorporates ad hoc or one-off practices that advance localized efficiency in at least one domain (e.g., scientific methods or project management), but these practices are not central to the project design.
Moderately - Project implements evidence-informed practices to improve translational efficiency in domains including scientific innovation (e.g., platform development), collaboration (e.g., shared vision, coordination tools), or project management (e.g., milestone-based decisions).
Very - Project applies a coordinated set of evidence-informed practices across multiple domains (e.g., scientific, collaboration, project management, organizational environment), and includes mechanisms for achieving continuous improvements in quality and efficiency.
Extremely - Project not only applies evidence-based efficiency practices but also collects data to disseminate new implementation practices. Project design demonstrates a commitment to continuous improvement and excellence in translational performance.
Develop ambitious research questions and address them with rigorous and robust methods toward generating reproducible findings that contribute to advancing translation. Example approaches:
Bold Scientific Approaches: Explore ambitious research goals that have the potential to produce major advances and/or paradigm shifts. These may be in areas of research that have been historically intractable or where there are high risks of failure.Rigor and Reproducibility: Employ rigorous and robust approaches to generate reproducible findings and high-quality FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) data that will enable the research to advance translational progress regardless of whether the initial research objective is met (e.g., learning from failures). To the maximum extent possible, disseminate all parameters utilized to conduct the research (e.g., materials, subjects), research methods and conditions, authentication of reagents and biological resources, data sets, metadata, analytic approaches and statistical tools used for experimentation and data interpretation, results and conclusions, to facilitate reproducibility and/or inform future study designs.Organizational Environments: Enable rigorous testing of bold, paradigm-challenging ideas, including high-risk high-reward opportunities. Encourage reporting of information necessary for reproducibility toward informing future studies. Not at all - Project applies a conventional research design to address a defined question using standard methods that are sound and appropriate to the scientific aim. Project makes incremental advances in scientific progress without aiming to produce shifts in scientific paradigm or challenges to conventional thinking.
Slightly - Project incorporates exploratory elements or novel directions that extend beyond standard practice, though these are not central to the overall design. Efforts to ensure rigor and reproducibility are present, reflecting conventional practices.
Moderately - Project articulates a research aim that advances translational research and applies appropriately robust methods to pursue it. The methodology reflects a clear and intentional commitment to rigor, with transparent documentation and processes designed to ensure reproducibility.
Very - Project centers on a willingness to engage in research in an area where prior history or complexity indicates a potential risk of failure. Project incorporates mechanisms to report data sources, analytic tools, and methodological parameters in order to enable reuse, replication, or learning, even if failure were to occur.
Extremely - Project pursues a high-risk, high-reward research direction that challenges conventional assumptions and aims to shift scientific paradigms. It utilizes novel but rigorous methods that generate FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) data and comprehensive, transparent documentation to the maximum extent possible, so that the project contributes to future translational research and methodological advancement regardless of outcome.
Leverage collaborations across agencies and sectors and engage patients and communities in research to advance translational progress. Example approaches:
Cross-Sectoral Partnerships : Form partnerships across government, universities, and industry to leverage varied expertise and resources to accelerate translational progress. Implement evidence-informed practices for effective cross-sectoral partnerships.Patient and Community Engagement : Involve impacted patients and communities as research collaborators to enable research advances across the translational continuum (e.g., via disease registries, clinical trials participation, intervention design). Implement evidence-informed practices for patient- and community-engaged research.Organizational Environment : Enable and incentivize boundary-crossing partnerships via leadership, policies, and recognition and reward systems. Not at all - Project operates within a single institution or health system, without structured involvement from other sectors or from patient or community groups.
Slightly - Project discusses, in general terms, partnerships with other sectors (e.g., government, industry, private sector) or patient/community groups. Partner involvement is chiefly in a consulting or advisory capacity.
Moderately - Project names partners from both other sectors (e.g., government, industry, private sector) and patient/community groups and discusses how partnerships can advance the project aims. Partner participation is anchored on certain project phases (e.g., implementation but not design).
Very - Project describes structures for fostering ongoing engagement with multiple sectors (e.g., government, industry, private sector) and patient/community groups. Partner involvement is meaningfully incorporated across all project phases.
Extremely - Project is collaboratively developed with partners across multiple sectors and patient/community groups, articulating how the partnership's composition will advance research across the translational continuum. Partner involvement extends across all project phases, and positions how the collaboration will enable future engagement with other translational researchers.
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