The Center for Suicide Research and Prevention

Funding Opportunities

Fostering a new generation of researchers in suicide prevention research

The CSRP is committed to creating space for individuals to grow and become acquainted with the tools developed for community use through center research projects and the Methods Core. Read more about current opportunities below!

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Open House Recording

CSRP Scholars Program

Applications are now OPEN and due January 24th, 2025 at 5:00 PM ET.

Apply today!

To expand the suicide prevention workforce and train the next generation of clinically-informed suicide prevention researchers, we will provide training, collaboration, and networking opportunities for young investigators (Emerging Scholars) and established (Advanced Collaborating Scholars). Emerging Scholars may be postdocs, residents, or graduate students. The rich and diverse training environment at Mass General Brigham and Harvard and the breadth and depth of expertise of our Center Faculty provide a unique and exceptional opportunity for fulfilling these goals.

Description of Award

The Center for Suicide Research and Prevention (CSRP) is a multidisciplinary, practice-based center aimed at advancing and implementing innovative new suicide prevention research. It will support the development, deployment, and evaluation of practice-ready and clinically focused interventions aimed at improving the identification and effective treatment of patients at risk of suicide. The CSRP is launching the Collaborating Scholars Program in order to support innovative early career and advanced investigators with an interest in suicide research.   

The CSRP Scholars Program will support both Emerging Scholars and Advanced Scholars.   

  • Emerging Scholars are residents, postdoctoral fellows, or graduate students. 
    • They will have a mentored research training experience, with guidance from a CSRP faculty mentorship team.  
    • Activities during the supported period could include participation in CSRP related research, attending academic/research related presentation offers, supervised reading.  
  • Advanced Scholars are faculty members with the rank of Instructor or higher. This may include researchers who might not be currently focused on suicide prevention but can offer complementary research perspectives/methods to advance suicide prevention science.  
    • They will collaborate with one or more CSRP faculty to pursue suicide-related research projects, formulate new collaborative proposals, and enhance the scientific diversity of the CSRP community.   

Scholars will be invited to attend and speak at CSRP activities (e.g., conferences, seminars). Scholars will have extensive opportunities to network, build relationships, and collaborate with a growing community of researchers, clinicians, and stakeholders. After the period of CSRP support, they will be invited to continue their affiliation with the Center and participate in Center activities and projects.  

Recipients will be selected by the CSRP Training and Workforce Development Committee and will receive up to $50,000 in salary support* (direct costs) for one (1) year and are expected to submit one application to the CSRP Pilot Grant Program during their period of support. Salary above the CSRP provided stipend must be supported by other sources of funding. Emerging scholars will be required to complete an initial Individual Development Plan (IDP) by the end of month 2 to ensure that goals are aligned with the Center’s priorities.  

* Indirect costs covered by the CSRP  

Eligibility and Review Criteria

Eligibility:

  • Applicants are required to have a Mass General Brigham or Harvard affiliation.  
  • U.S. citizens and noncitizens with a Social Security Number (SSN) or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) are eligible to apply.  
  • Women and those underrepresented in medicine (URiM) are strongly encouraged to apply.   

Review Criteria:

Applications will be considered based on: 

  • Demonstrated interest in suicide-related research;   
  • Scholarship, including record of publications and funding;   
  • Diversity of background and research approach;   
  • Alignment with CSRP mission and goals;  
  • Quality of recommendation;  
  • Capacity for future growth and leadership potential;  
  • Compatibility of research interests with available mentorship and data resources. 
Application Requirements

Application Deadline: Applications will be accepted until 5:00 PM ET January 24th, 2025, for the funding period starting June 1st, 2025 – May 31st, 2026.  

For Emerging Scholars

  1. Statement of background, research interests/experience, training goals, and long-term career goals (2 page limit);  
  2. Proposed mentor(s), description of plan for research within the CSRP (2 page limit).  
    • Plan of research can be a new proposal or an extension of an existing project.    

For Advanced Scholars

  1. Statement of background, experience, and interest in suicide-related research (2 page limit);  
  2. Proposed collaboration, description of plan for research within the CSRP (2 page limit). 
    • Plan of research can be a new proposal or an extension of an existing project.   

For ALL applicants

  1. A NIH-style biosketch.  
  2. One letter of recommendation commenting on the applicant’s qualifications and proposal. This letter cannot come from the proposed mentor or collaborator.  
  3. One signed attestation from the proposed CSRP mentor (for Emerging Scholars) or collaborator (for Advanced Scholars). Applicants must reach out to potential mentors or collaborators to ensure they are accepting mentees. 
    • A list of core faculty that may be accepting mentees can be found in the FAQ section below.  

Templates for application materials can be found here, on the CSRP Dropbox.

How to Apply

Applicants should apply by utilizing the link below:
https://redcap.link/csrp-scholars-program-y2

Applications will be accepted until 5:00 PM ET on January 24th, 2025.

Recommendation letters will be accepted until 8:00 AM January 27th, 2025.

For other questions, please refer to the FAQ section below. All other inquiries can be directed to the CSRP email (MGHCSRP@mgb.org). 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions or any other characteristic protected by law.

CSRP Pilot Grant Program

Applications are now OPEN and due January 24th, 2025 at 5:00 PM ET.

Apply today!

Pilot grants provide a mechanism to catalyze promising and innovative ideas and new collaborations. Trainees, emerging scholars, and established investigators are eligible, regardless of their prior involvement with the Center. To advance the Center’s goals of building new collaborations and diversifying the suicide prevention workforce, applicants from minoritized communities are encouraged, as are applications that represent new interdisciplinary collaborations involving investigators from different research domains (e.g., data science and implementation science).

Description of Award

The NIMH-funded practice-based Center for Suicide Research and Prevention (CSRP) at Mass General Brigham and Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is a multidisciplinary center aimed at advancing and implementing innovative research. In alignment with the NIMH and CSRP’s mission to support burgeoning research in suicide prediction and prevention, the CSRP is now accepting applications for pilot grant funding.   

The CSRP Pilot Grant Program will support the development, deployment, and evaluation of practice-ready and clinically focused strategies for identifying suicide risk and improving prevention for those delivering care.  

This year, we particularly welcome applications that address the following areas that are priorities for equitable implementation of suicide prevention efforts: 

  1. Equity/Disparity  
  2. Implementation Science  
  3. Ethics/Algorithmic Bias  
  4. Risk Prediction Methods  
  5. Quality Improvement Projects  
  • Early career investigators with no previous funding and investigators without current funding focused on research in the area of suicide are encouraged to apply. 
  • Women and investigators underrepresented in medicine (URiM) are strongly encouraged to apply. 
  • Applications representing new interdisciplinary collaborations (e.g., data science and implementation science) are encouraged to apply. 

Up to two projects will receive a maximum of $50,000* (direct costs) to advance their research for one (1) year. Funds can be used flexibly to support salary or research costs. Recipients will be responsible for providing a milestone report at 6 months and a final report at 12 months. 

There may be opportunities for administrative, methods design and analytic support through the CSRP Administrative and Method Cores. 

* Indirect costs covered by the CSRP 

Eligibility and Review Criteria

Eligibility:

  • Trainees, clinician researchers, emerging scholars, and established investigators will be eligible for these awards, regardless of their prior involvement with the CSRP. 
  • U.S. citizens and noncitizens with a social security number (SSN) or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) are eligible to apply.  
  • Priority will be given to trainees and emerging scholars. 
  • Applicants are required to have a Mass General Brigham or Harvard affiliation. 
  • Clinical trials are not eligible for pilot grant funding. 

Review Criteria:

Applications will be considered based on:

  • Alignment with the CSRP mission and goals.  
  • Standard NIH grant ranking system, emphasizing:   
    • Feasibility  
    • Innovation  
    • Rigor and reproducibility  
    • Potential for enabling further funded research in practice-based suicide prevention
Application Requirements

Application Deadline: Applications will be accepted until 5:00 pm ET January 24th, 2024, for the funding period starting June 1st, 2025 – May 31st, 2026.  

  1. A cover letter including a description of how the CSRP Pilot Grant Program will fit into the applicant’s future career plans.  
  2. A NIH-style biosketch.  
  3. Research Strategy (5 pages max, excluding references), including:   
    • Project title.  
    • Project narrative (no more than 2 or 3 sentences, use plain language appropriate for a general audience).  
    • Specific aims: List project aims.  
    • Significance: Explain the issues and challenges preventing progress in the field that this project addresses.
    • Innovation: Explain how the project seeks to shift current research or clinical practice paradigms. Describe novel concepts or methods OR improvements to existing approaches and their advantage over current practices, if any.    
    • Approach: Describe the methods of the project, including how its feasibility has been/will be established. Include how data will be analyzed, potential issues and alternative strategies, and significant milestones of success.   
    • Timeline for completing the project during the year.
    • References.
  4. Budget and budget justification (1 page max).
  5. Demonstration of Principal Investigator (PI) privileges (see FAQ or application portal for more details).  
  6. Optional: A letter of support commenting on the applicant’s qualifications and proposal.  
    • All letters must be submitted with:   
      • Institutional/affiliation/organizational letter head,
      • recommender’s signature,
      • in PDF format.
  7. Optional: Letters of intent will be accepted for prospective applications up to 30 days before the application is due (December 24). The outline can be found in the Dropbox folder of resources on our website.   

Examples of the types of projects this pilot grant can support include the following: 

  • Pilot or feasibility studies 
  • Secondary analysis of existing data 
  • Small, self-contained research projects 
  • Development of research methodology 
  • Development of new research technology 

Templates for application materials can be found here, through the CSRP Dropbox.

How to Apply

Applicants should apply by utilizing the link below:
https://redcap.link/csrp-pilot-program-y2

Applications will be accepted until 5:00 PM ET on January 24th, 2025.

Recommendation letters will be accepted until 8:00 AM ET January 27th, 2025.

For other questions, please refer to the FAQ section below. All other inquiries can be directed to the CSRP email: MGHCSRP@mgb.org.

FAQs

Please email us at mghCSRP@mgb.org with any questions not answered below.

When will applications reopen for the 2025-2026 funding period?

Applications are now open for the 2025-2026 funding period. All applications are due January 24th, 2025 at 5:00 PM ET.

When will applicants be notified of the final decision?

The deadline for applications is January 24, 2025. Final decisions will be made on or after March 3, 2025.

Will I be penalized for not disclosing my demographic information?

Demographic information is optional. The Center for Suicide Research and Prevention (CSRP) will not penalize applicants based on disclosure (or lack thereof) of demographic information.

How should the biosketch, research plan, budget, and/or justification be formatted?

We provide templates here through the CSRP Dropbox. Please email MGHCSRP@mgb.org if you are unable to access these documents.

How do I know what to add to my biosketch if I’ve never made one before?

The NIH provides a comprehensive guideline on creating a biosketch here. Please reach out via email if you are unable to access the website or require further elaboration.

What is the indirect cost rate for the grant?

The indirect cost (IDC) is covered by the Center for Suicide Research and Prevention, and will not subtract from the award. If you are applying from a Harvard institution, please use your institutional IDC rate.

Is there an effort requirement for either funding opportunity?

There is no effort requirement for the Pilot Grant Program. For scholars, the effort funded will be based on the home institution’s base salary.

Is there an education requirement for either funding opportunity?

Applicants are required to have a doctoral degree or be in a doctoral program (e.g., Medical students, PhD graduate students). Applications will also be accepted from clinicians (e.g. nurses, social workers) across the Mass General Brigham and Harvard systems.

Scholars Program FAQs

Which faculty members are able to mentor scholars?
  • Stephen Bartels, MD, MS
    Dr. Bartels has focused several decades of research on the interaction of physical and mental health for outcomes, including integrated models of mental health and physical health care with both developing interventions and specialized expertise in implementation science. He also has expertise as a geriatric psychiatrist in developing models of care for older adults, including integrated models of care for depression, serious mental illness, and the prevention of suicide.
  • Kate Bentley, PhD
    Dr. Bentley’s research is focused on leveraging new technologies to improve prediction and prevention of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. She is especially interested in using mobile devices for real-time monitoring and just-in-time interventions for patients at elevated risk for suicide in clinical settings.
  • Tianxi Cai, ScD
  • Nicholas Carson, MD
    Dr. Carson’s current research interests include the study of suicide prevention among underserved youth in community health settings. Dr. Carson is focused on how available healthcare data can be combined with other sources of data for predictive tools to improve safety for patients.
  • Jocelyn Carter, MD
    Dr. Carter is an MGH Division of General Internal Medicine (DGIM) Physician-Scientist and Internal Medicine Hospitalist, Albright Medicine. As the Director of the MGH Community Care Transitions (C-CAT) Initiative and Director of Research Equity within DGIM, Dr. Carter is passionate about transformational change via scalable, evidence-based initiatives and leveraging technology to drive the redesign of patient-centered care. As an awardee of a 2017 Mass General Brigham Healthcare Center for Population Health Delivery System Innovation Implementation Grant and the 2017 Healthcare Transformation Lab Innovation Grant, Dr. Carter and her team study the impact of 30-day patient-community health worker pairings at the time of hospital discharge on health care outcomes in high-risk populations.
  • Walter Dempsey, PhD
  • Maurizio Fava, MD
  • Rebecca Fortgang, PhD
  • Andrea Foulkes, ScD
  • Ronald Kessler, PhD
    Dr. Kessler’s current relevant research includes: (1) Large-scale community epidemiological studies through the World Mental Health Initiative; (2) A series of observational and intervention studies related to the STARRS program of research on suicidal behaviors among US Army soldiers and Veterans; (3) A series of precision medicine trials in which suicidality is a secondary outcome.
  • Richard Liu, PhD
    Dr. Liu conducts research focused on suicide and depression in youth and young adults, including with racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender minority populations. He is currently the Principal Investigator of three NIMH-funded studies involving computational modeling of ecological momentary assessment data and ambulatory measures of psychosocial stress, sleep, and physiological arousal, as well as neurocognitive markers of short-term risk for suicidal behavior in adolescents.
  • Matthew Nock, PhD
    Dr. Nock’s research is aimed at advancing the understanding of why people behave in ways that are harmful to themselves, with an emphasis on suicide and other forms of self-harm.
  • Kerry Ressler, MD, PhD
  • Mark Schechter, MD
  • Benjamin Silverman, MD
    Dr. Silverman’s current research interests include the ethical, legal, and social implications of returning individual research results in digital phenotyping research and in improving equitable access to research for vulnerable populations, including people with disabilities and cognitive or intellectual impairments. His team is also exploring ethical issues arising in the application of generative artificial intelligence algorithms, including protecting data privacy and confidentiality, mitigating bias and promoting fairness, and promoting explainability, transparency, and open science.
  • Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD
    Dr. Smoller is a psychiatrist, epidemiologist, and geneticist whose research focus has been understanding the genetic and environmental determinants of psychiatric disorders across the lifespan and using big data to advance precision mental health including improved methods to reduce risk and enhance resilience. His work includes a focus on prediction and prevention of suicide-related behavior through data-driven methods including machine learning and artificial intelligence.
  • Philip Wang, MD, DrPH
    Dr. Wang is a Professor of the Practice of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He directs a new Learning Health Systems Center at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital that helps systems integrate digital and real-world data (RWD) to continuously improve access, quality, outcomes, and equity of psychiatric care.
  • John Weisz, PhD
    Dr. Weisz’s research involves the development and testing of interventions for child and adolescent mental health. In addition, he and his students conduct meta-analyses to characterize and improve the state of knowledge about youth mental health care.
  • David Williams, PhD, MPH
Can I apply even if I have no background in suicide prevention research?

Yes! Any applicants with a strong interest in suicide prevention are encouraged to apply. Applicants with complementary experience that could potentially enhance suicide prevention science are also encouraged to apply.

What is the signed attestation requirement?

A signed attestation is a form that your proposed CSRP mentor/collaborator will complete upon submission of your application. Please ensure that you have communicated with the CSRP faculty member prior to completing your application.

How do I get a signed attestation from the CSRP faculty member I want to work with?

Prior to submitting the application, applicants should reach out to the CSRP faculty member they are interested in working with. CSRP faculty will discuss the potential collaboration and, if interests align, agree to serve as a mentor/collaborator.

An automated email requesting faculty attestation will be sent to the indicated CSRP faculty member after your application is submitted. Faculty members will then be asked to confirm that they have spoken with you regarding a mentorship/collaboration.

Are scholars required to submit a pilot grant during their funding period?

Advanced scholars are required to apply for a pilot grant during their year of funding in collaboration with their chosen CSRP faculty member(s). Emerging scholars are encouraged to submit a pilot grant with their mentorship team during their funding period.

Pilot Grant Program FAQs

What topics of interest are there in this year’s call for applications?

This year, we are focusing on equity/disparity, implementation science, ethics/algorithmic bias, risk prediction methods, and quality improvement projects in suicide research.

Is a letter of recommendation required to submit an application?

Recommendations are optional. The CSRP will not penalize applications that do not have associated recommendation letters.

What are Principal Investigator (PI) privileges?

PI privileges are permissions from your institution/university to allow someone to serve as the main investigator on their research proposal.

How do I know if I have PI privileges/How do I obtain PI privileges?

Institutional policies regarding Principal Investigator privileges vary. We’ve included some information for affiliated institutions below. If you are unsure about your eligibility, please contact your institution.

Does the letter of intent’s page limit include references?

No, references are excluded from the page count when submitting a letter of intent.

Can you submit an application for the Pilot Grant Program with other collaborators?

Applicants are welcome to list co-investigators or consultants on the proposal.

Are applicants not affiliated with Harvard or MGB able to apply for the Pilot Grant Program?

Applicants not inside the Harvard or MGB network will need a collaborator with MGB or Harvard appointments as the Principal Investigator.