Collaboration and Opportunities Component

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Project Summary—Mentored Collaborative Opportunities Mentored collaborative opportunities provided by C-STAR include sabbaticals and pilot grant awards. The Specific Aims of this Center's mentored collaborative opportunities component are to: (1) Match junior rehabilitation researchers with senior scientists at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab (SRAlab) for sabbaticals; (2) Develop the mentoring skills of senior scientists to assure successful collaborative opportunities; and (3) Develop plans with home institutions of visiting researchers to share responsibility for candidates' visits. Achieving these aims will allow us to promote, support, and prioritize interactions between visiting researchers and C-STAR investigators. We will develop agreements with the home institutions of visiting researchers that specify plans to share responsibility for financial support of candidates' visits. In addition, we will draw on the mentor training expertise of Northwestern University's Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. The Research Plan for mentored collaborative opportunities draws on scientist-mentors at laboratories to support visiting rehabilitation researchers conducting pilot projects. A critical resource is the translational research model of the SRAlab. Five unique Ability Labs™ focus on distinct aspects of human performance. Within these Labs, 37 principal investigators collaborate with 71 physicians and 361 therapists as well as investigators at numerous academic institutions across the United States. Several centers, including the Regenstein Center for Bionic Medicine, the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research, and the Center for Aphasia Research and Treatment, have extensive experience mentoring early-career and junior investigators. In developing this application, we considered critical issues such as the structure of mentoring relationships and incentives to assure that they are sustained. We have budgeted two 0.5 FTE personnel for implementation and outcomes per year for mentored collaborative activities. All SRAlab senior scientists will contribute 5% effort to the P2C per year, which will be funded by SRAlab. This effort will include mentoring of C-STAR clients. We will provide an honorarium for scientists from Northwestern University as compensation for their mentorship. We will negotiate the logistics of on-site mentored collaborations with visiting researchers' home institutions and the home institution's financial support of visiting researchers. We anticipate a 1:4 cost sharing arrangement with host institutions covering 80% of visiting scientists' expenses, with exceptions for institutions serving historically disadvantaged populations; we will provide up to $50K to support sabbaticals for individuals from such institutions. We will make substantive and sustained efforts to recruit scientists from minority backgrounds, including those located at historically black colleges and universities and from Native American and Hispanic backgrounds, as well as trainees with disabilities. Applications from visiting researchers will include a career development plan that specifies the skills they wish to develop, their planned research project, and formal plans for promoting, supporting, and prioritizing on-site interactions.