Work shoulder-to-shoulder with a team of experienced mentors guiding you through your first research project or skillful fine-tuning of a major grant submission/resubmission.

The next cohort of MeRIT and FIT investigators will gather June 21–25, 2021, on the campus of the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy in Lexington, Kentucky. Application information for both programs is available at www.accpfoundation.org/investigator/. Letters of intent to apply are due February 28, and applications are due March 31, 2021. Accepted applicants from the 2020 investigator training programs that were canceled because of COVID-19 should contact Sheldon Holstad ([email protected]) if they wish to reapply for 2021.

MeRIT is the Foundation’s latest support mechanism for investigator development, with a rapidly expanding record of participant success. This 2-year longitudinal program uses a combination of live and virtual teaching/mentoring methods to provide participants with the tools and guidance they need throughout the research experience (i.e., from research question, proposal writing, funding application, and IRB approval to results, presentation, and publication).

MeRIT is designed to help pharmacists develop the abilities necessary to conduct investigator-initiated research, either independently as a principal investigator or collaboratively as an active coinvestigator within a research team. Ideal candidates are pharmacy practitioners or faculty with limited research experience who are:

• Committed to incorporating research into their professional careers,
• Interested in generating research themes or obtaining preliminary data for larger funding opportunities,
• Aspiring to be active principal investigators or coinvestigators within a research team, and
• Able to commit at least 10% effort to research.

FIT is a 5-day, intensive, hands-on program to help investigators succeed in the current research funding environment. Each experienced investigator-participant takes the necessary steps toward maximizing the competitiveness of a K, R01, or similar investigator-initiated application for submission to the NIH or other major funding source. Investigators are challenged to carefully examine research aims and explore individual professional research goals and, by the end of the program, will have taken critical steps toward fine-tuning their applications to meet study section reviewers’ expectations. The program’s experienced and funded faculty mentors deliver a curriculum that offers:

• Small-group proposal development sessions,
• Tip-rich discussions,
• One-on-one mentor/statistician appointments, and
• Protected time for proposal development and revision.

The ideal FIT applicant is a tenure-track or research-focused pharmacist in the final stages of preparing a grant application for submission/resubmission.