Program Director: Douglas Hanahan

The Pilot & Feasibility Program at the Diabetes Center was established in 2002 to encourage the pursuit of highly novel research for understanding and treating type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The program has been targeted towards all members of the UCSF community - the existing faculty of the Diabetes Center as well as other investigators from other departments and institutes at UCSF - in order to capitalize on the many and varied opportunities within the institution that have pointed relevance to diabetes.

The P&F program implemented at UCSF provides investigators with two years of support at $25,000 per year to support conceptually innovative studies. As importantly, these awards are hoped to provide seed funding that will generate sufficient data to pursue additional research efforts through other funding mechanisms.

The DERC Program places a high priority on providing support for young unfunded faculty wishing to establish research programs with particular relevance to diabetes. Priority will be given to those young investigators whose proposed research lies within the purview of the proposed DERC programs, in order that they will benefit from the interactive and collaborative nature of the DERC environment.