The School of Public Health Pilot Awards are designed to support faculty members for whom preliminary data would help secure extramural funding for a larger scale project. Priority is given to proposals that include early-stage investigators or represent new collaborations between School of Public Health faculty members.

Accelerator Award

The School of Public Health Office of Research is excited to announce the renewal of the Accelerator Award. The Accelerator Award is a School of Public Health Pilot Award designed to support faculty members for whom preliminary data would help secure extramural funding for a larger scale project. Priority is given to proposals that include early-stage investigators or represent new collaborations between School of Public Health faculty members. Awardees will receive up to $10,000 to pursue the proposed work through September 30, 2025. Funds may not be used to cover faculty effort.

Learn more about the 2025 Accelerator Award Opens a PDF.

Apply: Accelerator Award

Our faculty are driving research excellence in almost every discipline of public health. To learn about their career paths, ongoing projects, future directions, and why they chose the UAB School of Public Health, visit our archive of Faculty Research Spotlights.

The SOPH Office of Research invites all UAB SOPH undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, staff, and faculty to present, attend, and take part in the annual Public Health Research Poster Session. The Poster Session is held during National Public Health Week.

Alumni, community, and university collaborators are welcome to attend the poster session and learn about ongoing research at the UAB SOPH.

Learn more

Grant Writing Course (3 credit hours): The Office of Research supports a school-wide grant-writing course for SOPH doctoral students (PUH 703: Public Health Grant Writing). This course provides in-depth exposure and hands-on experience with scientific grant writing. Students address the development of testable research hypotheses, prepare a specific aims page, draft the research strategy (significance, innovation, and approach sections), and develop a biosketch using ScienCV. This course is offered annually in the Spring.

Grant Writing Workshop (1 credit hour): The Office of Research supports a workshop (PUH 704: Public Health Grant Submission Workshop) for SOPH doctoral students who successfully completed PUH 703 and are interested in submitting their research strategy to NIH (or another relevant funding agency). The overall goal of the workshop is to walk students through the preparation of the entire grant package, including the administrative or “non-scientific” documents (e.g., budget, budget justification, applicant background and goals for fellowship training) and further refinement of the proposal draft developed in PUH 703. This course is offered immediately following PUH 703 during the summer (full-term) semester.

The goal of this plan is to bring resources to the School of Public Health by incentivizing the submission and award of extramural research funding. There are four incentive categories available to full-time faculty with primary appointments in the School of Public Health.

Learn more about FY24 SOPH Research Incentive Plan