NIH Funding Acknowledgment on ACTRI Publications/Projects 

All publications/projects resulting from the utilization of any ACTRI resources are required to: 

• Credit the CTSA grant 
• Comply with NIH Public Access Policy and be assigned a PMCID 

Frequently Asked Questions 

• Who needs to cite the CTSA grant? 

• PIs and researchers who are Pilot grant awardees, KL2 scholars, ACTRI voucher awardees, and/or utilize ACTRI services are required to cite the CTSA grant (UL1 TR001442) on any resulting publications they are author or co-author for 

• How do I cite the CTSA grant? 

• Please use the following language to acknowledge the CTSA grant in publications: 

• “The project described was partially supported by the National Institutes of Health, Grant UL1TR001442. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.” 

• For KL2 scholars, they are also required to cite the KL2 grant, using the following language: 

• “The project described was partially supported by the National Institutes of Health, Grant UL1TR001442 and KL2TR001444. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.”  

For any questions, please reach out to actri-publications@health.ucsd.edu. 

Vision and Mission

The Vision of the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute (ACTRI) is to enable rapid clinical translation of discoveries and shape a future in which everyone, irrespective of their social, economic, or cultural background, can achieve their full health potential.

Our Mission is to provide research resources, infrastructure, training, and collaboration opportunities for ACTRI scientists, health care providers, and the community to advance health and health equity for all.

Established in 2010, the ACTRI is partially funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, a component of the National Institutes of Health, through a competitive, five-year Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), making us part of the national CTSA Consortium. Positioned along the culturally rich and diverse US-Mexico border region, the ACTRI strategically provides resources and infrastructure to support the development, implementation, and widespread dissemination of clinical and translational science (CTS) solutions in our region and beyond. We carry out our activities in collaboration with institutional and industry partners.

By continually innovating and translating science, the ACTRI has steadily grown over the last decade with a current funded base of $732 million and >1,500 faculty members across local biomedical, educational, and clinical institutions. Our affiliations stretch across UC San Diego and San Diego Community College District (Mesa College) to the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, Sanford Burnham Prebys, and the Salk Institute, to Eisenhower Hospital, El Centro Regional Medical Center, Rady Children’s Hospital and the VA San Diego Health Care System, to nonprofit and biotech/pharma.

The ACTRI building is a 360,000 sq. ft state-of-the art facility that serves as the hub of UC San Diego’s collaborative clinical and translational research environment, allowing investigators to exchange resources and ideas that improve collaboration on related research projects inside and outside the facility.

The ACTRI provides assistance with proposal development, study design, regulatory issues and submissions, biostatistics and informatics, ethics consultation, clinical trial coordination, genomics technologies, a biorepository, facilitation with an affiliated laboratory network, and training for medical students and early career investigators. More than 300 pediatric and adult clinical trials are currently run through the ACTRI every year.

ACTRI Organizational Structure

The organizational structure of the ACTRI plays a vital part in accelerating the translation of science by supporting unique infrastructure, improving processes, and providing services. The following ACTRI units enable us to achieve our mission:

Administration Unit
Director: Eric Mah, EdD, MHS

The Administrative efforts are seamlessly carried out by three integrated units: Operations & Research Services (ORS), Business & Finance (B&F), and Evaluation Unit (EU).

• The primary functions of the ORS Unit are to optimize research processes, service portfolio management, and process improvement; integrate data from across the ACTRI units, create and manage data dashboards, and assure data quality; deliver programmatic support and cross-functional communication within and across the ACTRI units and efforts. Additionally, the ORS unit provides consultative services and process mapping to other groups, including the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center.
• The B&F Unit provides efficient and compliant pre-award, post-award, and fund management services; it also trains staff, investigators, and institutions in the best grant management practices.
• The EU helps provide consultation and support for the ACTRI programs to develop goals and relevant metrics of success; develop an efficient evaluation platform to assess program performance and impact; strategically plan across the ACTRI and implement continual improvement activities.

Workforce Development (WD) Unit
Director: Colin Depp, PhD

The ACTRI WD program implements novel initiatives across the career continuum, creates innovative and accessible training for CTS teams, improves retention of a workforce diverse in backgrounds and disciplines, and builds regional and national CTS capacity. Additionally, the ACTRI WD Unit promotes research training by organizing institutional Roadmap training programs (i.e., K12, Clinical Research Enhancement through Supplemental Training [CREST]); advancing mentoring through data collection and training; mentored experience for early-stage faculty helping them co-lead the ACTRI programs (ACTRI Leadership Academy), and programs to support researchers from under-represented (UR) backgrounds (Supporting Under-represented Scholars in Translational and Interdisciplinary Networks [SUSTAIN] program).

• Roadmap K12 program: A mentored research program that supports junior faculty.
• CREST program: Flexible options offered include individual “a la carte” courses, a 10-course certificate, and a Master’s in Advanced Studies (MAS) degree. The program offers hybrid, fully remote, and asynchronous delivery options and can be accessed by non-UCSD partners at the ACTRI, clinical trial coordinators as well as regulatory and industry professionals.
• SUSTAIN program (integrated with our K12 program): offers 1-2 years of protected time to support to researchers from UR backgrounds , individualized mentorship, and grant writing training. Additionally, SUSTAIN scholars have access to Translational Career Scientist (TSC) seminar series, a series aimed at clinicians, scientists, scholars and trainees at UC San Diego and our Partner/Affiliated Institutions by providing lectures and workshops on a broad range of CTS topics.
• Building Respectful and Inclusive Culture (BRIC): a three-session workshop that employs case studies to address inclusive communication strategies at the team level, game-based programs that teach systems thinking, and didactic and experiential training programs.
• ACTRI Bootcamps: Bootcamps to develop research professionals in clinical research coordination, regulatory affairs, research business management, and laboratory support. These Bootcamps address an identified unmet need faced by research centers in our region for well-trained CTS professionals, especially people who represent the communities they serve (e.g., Spanish speaking, American Indian).
• ACTRI Leadership Academy: 1-2 years of protected time to early-stage investigators, provide a mentored experience co-leading the ACTRI programs, such as bioinformatics and community-based research, and provide training in developing process innovation in CTS.
• ACTRI Pilot Projects Program: (Led by Murray Stein, MD, MPH) Pilot projects provide funding to early-stage investigators (ESIs) to accelerate innovative high-risk, high-reward CTS projects and help launch careers of these ESIs. Galvanizing Engineering in Medicine (GEM), an interdisciplinary pilot project program between the ACTRI and UC San Diego School of Engineering, provides funding to clinicians and engineers to develop innovative technologies that can be applied to solve challenging CTS problems in health care.
• Data Science and Support Training: Provide investigators training in biostatistics, advanced biomedical informatics, and omics via didactic and web-based programs.

Population Sciences and Community Engagement (PopSci) Unit
Director(s): Christina Chambers, PhD, MPH and Adriana Tremoulet, MD, MAS

The goal of the PopSci Unit is to facilitate research that is responsive to community-identified unique needs and priorities. The PopSci Unit integrates four complementary units that work with community advisors to provide crucial services and training to help investigators integrate culturally and linguistically appropriate community engagement and health equity practices from the earliest stages of project planning through dissemination of these strategies locally, regionally, and nationally. These units include:

• Center for Community Health (CCH): (Led by Blanca Meléndrez, MA) identifies community needs, facilitates our inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) principles, strengthens relationships with community members and organizations, and provides consultation for investigators who seek to engage study participants from specific communities.
• Community Research Partnerships (CRP): (Led by Edward Cachay, MD) supports the ACTRI Community Advisory Board and Community Research Council, and fosters institutional partnerships with the ACTRI.
• Population Research and Scientific Methods (PRSM): (Led by Gretchen Bandoli, PhD, MBA, MPH) develops, validates, and provides epidemiological/biostatistical methods training, consultation, and workshops for investigators performing community-based participatory research.
• Dissemination & Implementation Science Center (DISC): (Led by Borsika Rabin, PhD, MPH, PharmD) provides consultation on D&I science models, methods, and designs metrics for D&I efforts. In addition, DISC designs strategies on sustaining and assessment approaches to evaluate researcher-community partnerships. DISC also provides expertise in D&I strategies to scale successful programs and products and assess the impact of these activities.

Data Science and Support (DSS) Unit
Director: Mike Hogarth, MD

The DSS unit incorporates and improves access to data and computational expertise and resources across UC San Diego (e.g., Division of Biostatistics, School of Engineering, Department of Mathematics, Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute) and specialized quantitative expertise and resources at partner institutions such as La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), Salk Institute, and Sanford Burnham Prebys (SBP). Additionally, the DSS Unit provides and receives resources for network collaboration with the University of California Biomedical Research Acceleration, Integration, and Development (UC BRAID, a consortium of five UC CTSAs: Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego) and the national CTSA network.

The integrated approach to biostatistics, bioinformatics, and biomedical informatics service provision is achieved through the following complementary units:

• Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design (BERD): (Led by Lin Liu, PhD) follows "best practices" procedures, including rigorous statistical review, versioned code, data repositories, and reproducible research practices. Through pre-award services, BERD provides expertise on study design, statistical analysis plan, and sample size calculation and in post-award services, BERD performs various statistical analyses as well as writes and reviews manuscripts to ensure statistical works are properly represented. BERD experts also serve on the ACTRI Scientific Review Committee and review all pilot project and K applications.
• Biomedical Informatics (BMI): (Led by Mike Hogarth, MD) provides consultations, support, and access to cutting-edge software, including a clinical trial management system (i.e., Velos), specialized research functions in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) (e.g., Epic Research, ACTRI Clinical Data Warehouse for Research), secure data enclaves (i.e., Health Secure Research Cloud), a scalable big data platform (Databricks), data extraction concierge services, natural language processing (NLP) pipelines. BMI also provides a broad range of electronic data capture (EDC) for research, including REDCap, mobile EDC through a secure decentralized trial (DCT) platform, and EDC within the EHR that pulls data using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources.
• Center for Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (CCBB): (Led by Kathleen Fisch, PhD) provides study design consultation and analyzes large multi-omics datasets with an emphasis on systems biology, genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, single cell, and spatial technologies. CCBB leverages BMI’s secure scalable cloud computing environment to link genomics datasets with clinical data for research use, and it works with BMI and BERD in studies that integrate molecular, multi-omics, phenotypic, and clinical data.

Regulatory Knowledge and Support (Reg) Unit
Director: Anthony Magit, MD

The Reg Unit provides consultation, training, and a suite of services, documents, and tools to help our human-centered research be safe, efficient, and compliant. The efforts undertaken by the Reg Unit have a broad reach from prioritizing competencies for research for community health workers to building community trust to responsible mentoring.

• Consultations and Services: (Led by Anthony Magit, MD) unit provides services tailored to investigator needs including pre-reviews of protocols and IRB submissions as well as community services such as certified translation services and support for qualitative methods to evaluate the acceptability of culturally sensitive methods for consenting.
• Research Ethics Training: (Led by Camille Nebeker, PhD) provides education and consultations on ethical, legal, and societal implications of research. This group also provides consultation to the greater research community on matters that influence scientific integrity, often related to authorship disputes, collaboration challenges, mentor/mentee expectations, data management, and laboratory management.
• Quality Assurance (QA): (Led by Eric Mah, EdD, MHS) team identifies obstacles, develops institutional process improvements, and provides consultations to investigators. Progress is tracked by IRB reviews, responses, and approval times.
• Provides relevant trainings in Good Clinical Practice (GCP), Responsible Conduct of Research, animal care and use, privacy protections, lab safety, etc. as well as training in research concerning special populations (e.g., prisoners, pregnant persons, people with disabilities, children).
• Provides substantial 1:1 training for investigators new to human-centered research, and it uses the innovative tool “ACTRI Game Factory” to create, test, validate, and disseminate games such as “IRB, Please” and “Clinical Guidance” to improve understanding of research ethics and guidelines among staff and participants.

Human-Centered Research (HCR) Unit
Director: Mark Wallace, MD

The HCR Unit helps accelerate ethical and high quality human-centered research, including services that support the clinical translation of basic science discoveries. The clinical research infrastructure and personnel are supported by UC San Diego and a cost recovery mechanism. The efforts of the HCR unit are critical to ensure proper development and implementation of protocols, safety, and adherence to good clinical practice. The HCR Unit faculty and staff also train undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate learners in best practices of HCR, including clinical trial conduct, sample management, and high containment research methods.

The HCR Unit encompasses following service units to help CTS researchers with clinical investigation:

• Center for Clinical Research (CCR): (Led by: Kathryn Gold, MD & Mark Wallace, MD) provides comprehensive clinical research services (e.g., clinical space, nursing, pharmacy, research coordination). Other activities include working with the ACTRI BMI unit to use EHR tools, like MyChart, to assist with trial recruitment and identify other UC sites performing the same protocol using TrialQuest, which facilitates reliance agreements. Plans are in place to diversify and increased clinical trial recruitment by opening new clinical trial sites at Rady Children’s Hospital in 2024, at El Centro Regional Medical Center in 2025, and close to downtown San Diego in 2026.
• Translational Research Technology (TRT): (Led by: Prof. David Boyle and Kathleen Fisch, PhD) provides a one-stop-shop for lab-based services, including sample processing, assays, and storage. The biorepositories provide a full chain of custody from curation to distribution and ensures security and monitoring. They prospectively collect, curate, and house human tissues and other biological samples from healthy individuals and those with selected diseases. Repository management is available to the ACTRI members. Affiliated biorepositories include samples from patients with HIV/AIDS, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and rheumatic diseases.
• Pandemic Response to Emerging Pathogens, Antimicrobial Resistance and Equity (PREPARE): (Led by Davey Smith, MD) For studies with high-containment laboratory needs, PREPARE provides reagents, supplies, and services for diagnostic and drug development, and testing of clinical samples to evaluate for pathogens of pandemic potential. Planning is underway for UC San Diego to build a new high containment laboratory, which PREPARE will manage.

Funding and Facilities

ACTRI receives funding from various sources, including extramural support from the NIH through a Clinical and Translational Research Award ($52 million) and through the individual research funding of members (more than $90 million); intramural support from UC San Diego for infrastructure and education; income from recharges for services provided to members; and philanthropic and intramural support for new buildings.

The ACTRI building is a 360,000 sq. ft translational research facility totaling seven floors, which includes both wet and dry research labs, laboratory support space, and clinical spaces for translational research participants, research offices, a large-scale auditorium (144 seats) for presentations on clinical and translational research and a café for building occupants, visitors and the campus community.

All the ACTRI units have access to the following:

• Huddle/Conference Rooms: Access to dedicated huddle and conference rooms situated on the second floor of ACTRI. These rooms are equipped with advanced videoconferencing capabilities, facilitating seamless collaboration with partners and collaborators situated remotely.
• Administration Materials: Office materials such as retractable banners and portable tables. These materials are invaluable for off-site marketing sessions, enabling units to engage with faculty, staff, and students and other potential program participants effectively.
• Computing and Software Tools: Cutting-edge computing and software tools for various purposes, including the creation of forms, surveys, and efficient management of ticket requests. This software streamlines administrative tasks and enhances the overall operational efficiency of ACTRI initiatives.
• Media Support: Comprehensive support from the ACTRI media department for the dissemination of events and accomplishments.
• Web presence: The ACTRI consultation request system is housed and maintained on the ACTRI website.

UC San Diego Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute (ACTRI) is pleased to offer vouchers for ACTRI research services. These vouchers are designed to support early-stage projects that need preliminary data for subsequent applications for federal or foundation grants and to supplement federally funded studies. They are not cash awards and can only be used for in-kind services, including those related to the clinic, biostatistics, bioinformatics, coordinator, and labs. Services are contingent upon resource availability.

To apply for a voucher, please fill out a ACTRI Voucher Request Form.

Eligibility

Unfunded projects that are designed to gather preliminary data for a grant submission and NIH-funded studies are eligible and the primary focus of the program. In addition, ACTRI Pilot Projects, Career Development Awards (K-series only; UC San Diego only) and ACTRI KL2 awardees are also eligible.

Vouchers can potentially be used to supplement two types of NIH-funded studies for ACTRI clinical services only.

• Type I use the vouchers to supplement the NIH-approved funds for clinical services required for the project.
• Type II use the vouchers to expand on the project to collect new data that will be used for renewal or new grants.

For any project requiring IRB or IACUC approval, the voucher application should be submitted in conjunction with the IRB/IACUC submission. Except for Pilot Projects and Type I NIH-funded studies, all studies involving direct patient contact will require an ACTRI Scientific Review Committee evaluation for scientific merit before granting an ACTRI voucher. Voucher applications can be submitted at any time during the year. Awarding the ACTRI voucher is contingent upon the availability of the services requested.

The ACTRI voucher amount will depend on the services being performed – see the table below. Qualified investigators are limited to one voucher in a 12-month period (grant budget period). Investigators with an awarded voucher in a budget year will have their other voucher applications rejected. Once the current year ACTRI voucher budget is expended, vouchers will not be approved. All vouchers expire on the same day as the CTSA grant budget end date, and no extensions will be granted.

PI Voucher Eligibility Guidelines:

• ACTRI members; currently limited to junior faculty (at assistant level, but exceptions may be made for early associate level professors). Vouchers may be opened to senior faculty pending future fund availability.

• Clinicians, basic scientists, immunologists, etc. who are getting into research.
• Associate-level professors may also qualify if funding is limited.

• Grad students, PhD students, post-doc trainees, or residents that are sponsored by faculty members that meet above criteria.

Three levels of support are available:

Application

Investigators should submit an application for ACTRI Vouchers by submitting a ACTRI Voucher Request Form.

Questions about ACTRI Vouchers should be directed to the CTRI Finance Team (ctri-fin-recharges@health.ucsd.edu)

ACTRI Terms and Conditions for Support

AWARDS

Awards may take several forms, including, but not limited to pilots and grants.

A) Responsibility of the award recipients, also known as the Principal Investigators (PIs)

1. The pilot award is supported in whole or in part by federal funds. As a result, the PIs must follow all federal guidelines on allowable expenses, including those pertaining to NIH salary support: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/salcap_summary.htm.
2. When making purchases for your pilot project, it is important to use the unique Oracle chart string, paying special attention to the Task Number and Project Number associated with your pilot project.
3. No funding is permitted for travel, clerical help, office supplies, books and subscriptions, graduate student support and tuition remission, or publication expenses.
4. PI home department procurement card charges are not allowed on ACTRI awards. However, the ACTRI Business-Finance office may use their procurement card on a case-by-case basis.
5. All reimbursements must post during the project period and any expenditure requests made after the Expenditure Deadline for the project will be rejected. This date is found on the Award notification.
6. It is a requirement of our CTSA award to recognize the grant supporting your effort and intellectual work in manuscript submissions and publications. To that end, you agree to include the following citation in manuscripts and/or publications that result from projects using ACTRI services: The project was partially supported by the National Institutes of Health, Grant UL1TR001442. The content is solely the responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
7. If PIs overspend the awarded amount, the PIs are responsible for any deficits accumulated; PIs understand that it is their responsibility to manage the award so that no deficits will result. PIs with questions about proper spending and use of funds or have specific questions should contact the home department fund manager or the ACTRI fund manager below.

B) Responsibility of PI Home Department

1. All services charges and costs transfers – payroll, non-payroll, and vacation credit – to use any remaining balance must be posted before the Expenditure Deadline. This date is found on the Award notification.
2. The PI Home Department is responsible for proper and reasonable monitoring of use of funds and expenditures to ensure they comply with University policy and these Terms and Conditions.
3. The PI Home Department will promptly notify the ACTRI if the fund it projected to, or actually, overspend; or if improper expenditures occur. The PI Home Department will correct and make adjustments to the fund as needed.
4. The PI Home Department will contact ACTRI there are any questions or problems about allowable expenses that are permitted on the award.
5. Any fund changes and cost transfers will be performed by the PI's home department. The PI's fund manager must obtain approval from ACTRI prior to any fund change, direct retro, or cost transfer.
6. The PI Home Department will provide audit records promptly to ACTRI upon request. 

C) Responsibility of ACTRI

Depending on the type of award or support, ACTRI's responsibilities vary. The ACTRI has overall responsibility for managing and supporting the project's funds/expenses. ACTRI will work with the PI and Home Department to move expenses to the correct award or PI's other funding source to ensure no deficit.

VOUCHERS

A) Responsibility of the voucher recipients

1. Vouchers may only be applied for NIH-funded or underfunded institutional research. Vouchers may not be used for industry or commercial-funded research.
2. Voucher recipients must provide an Oracle chart string prior to utilizing ACTRI services. This includes the Task Number and Project Number associated with your project. You will be informed prior to being charged for work which exceeds your voucher.
3. PIs are ultimately responsible for the use and spending of the funds and any billable work which exceeds the amount of the voucher.
4. It is a requirement of our CTSA award to recognize the grant supporting your effort and intellectual work in manuscript submissions and publications. To that end, you agree to include the following citation in manuscripts and/or publications that result from projects using ACTRI services: The project was partially supported by the National Institutes of Health, Grant UL1TR001442. The content is solely the responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

B) Responsibility of recipient Home Department

1. If the voucher recipient overspends and provides an invalid chart string, the Recipient's home department will apply this deficit to other department funds and may hold the Recipient responsible.

C) Responsibility of ACTRI

1. As the voucher is fully spent, the ACTRI Business Finance team will provide accounting of hours used.

RECHARGE SERVICES

The ACTRI provides a variety of services on a recharge basis, which are often subsidized through institutional support mechanisms. The ACTRI will provide service and invoice for those services. After an invoice is issued, a PI has 60 days to contest any charges. After that, the invoice is considered accurate.

When receiveing any ACTRI service, including recharge services, please cite the grant. 

Acknowledge NIH Funding on all ACTRI Publications: The project described was partially supported by the National Institutes of Health, Grant UL1TR001442. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

Last Updated: July 27, 2023

Pilot Project Grants

One-year competitive cash awards to obtain preliminary data. Funding priority is given to early-career faculty members. Several award categories are offered. Calls for proposals occur annually. Click here for more information

Galvanizing Engineering in Medicine (GEM)

is a collaboration between UC San Diego Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute (ACTRI) and the Institute of Engineering in Medicine (IEM). GEM projects identify clinical challenges for which engineering solutions can be developed and implemented to improve health care ($50,000 to $100,000 for up to 18 months). These competitive awards are intended to leverage UC San Diego's strengths in clinical care and engineering. Calls for proposals occur at least annually. Click here for more information

KL2 and SUSTAIN

The ACTRI KL2 Grant Support program is a research training grant for junior faculty, provides up to three years of research career development support and up to $120,000 for UC San Diego instructors or assistant professors. Click here for more information

Diversity Supplement Awards

Click here for more information