Department of Surgery Pilot Grant Program
Jefferson’s Department of Surgery launched its Pilot Grant Program in 2017 to help fund the independent research of surgical faculty, residents, and fellows.
“One of the key goals was to allow faculty members the opportunity to get ideas from bench to bedside,” says Dr. Charles Yeo, the Samuel D. Gross Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Thomas Jefferson University. “Every brick that we build, every foundational element that we put together in the sciences of surgery and medicine, gives us the opportunity to improve the care we deliver to our patients over time. They may be paradigm-changing discoveries; or may be small steps toward improving, for example, the care of a patient with cancer or the care of a patient with a heart disease.”
“Research is important—not only for our clinicians, but also for medicine itself, because we’re always striving to see how we can improve our patients’ health and the management of their care,” says Dr. Hien T. Dang, J. Wallace Davis and Gail G. Davis Chair in Surgery, Vice Chair for Research, and Director, Division of Surgical Research. “Our clinicians are always thinking about how they’re treating their patients, their observations, and whether what they’re doing is helpful or harmful. Research is really important to answer these questions to prove in an evidence-based way that what they’re observing is real. Through the research pilot grant, we can help them look for data and answer the questions that they need to help patients to achieve specific outcomes.”
“Being a recipient of a grant is one of the most difficult things to achieve as a researcher,” says Jefferson surgeon Dr. Sami Tannouri, a previous awardee of a Pilot Grant as a resident in 2015. “And being able to have access to a grant to explore budding interests in research at an early stage in the career is a huge opportunity and a privilege.”
Philanthropy is the lifeblood of the Pilot Program. There are many faculty who apply for grants, but in a recent cycle, of 11 faculty applications, only six were able to be funded. “With philanthropy, we’re able to essentially fund all of these projects, with the idea that they will eventually lead to not just publications, but also how our attendings treat their patients,” says Dr. Dang. Dr. Tannouri concurs. “Knowing that research interests are being supported by patients and their families tells me that there’s a whole community of people looking for answers and wanting to make medicine better, more robust, and to help understand how best to treat patients.”
With your support, we will continue to transform the future of surgery at Jefferson, nurturing the creativity of our surgeon-scientists and providing the critical resources they need to realize their discoveries.