Read about our 2019 Young Innovators Team Award (YITA) recipients.  Click here to read the full press release.

In 2014, the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (ALCF), in collaboration with the Van Auken Private Foundation, launched an innovative, new funding mechanism to support novel, transdisciplinary and translational team research with potential of high clinical impact in lung cancer, the Young Innovators Team Awards (YITA).

The objective of this ALCF funding mechanism is to identify brilliant, young “out of the box” thinkers/researchers who can collaboratively deliver a meaningful and measurable result that helps ALCF move towards our goal of making lung cancer a chronically managed disease by the year 2023.

About the Young Innovators Team Awards

  • The Young Innovator Team Award will provide up to a total of $500,000 per team over a duration of 2-3 years, depending on the proposal and final decision by the Scientific Review Committee.
  • The award will cover direct research costs only.
  • The focal key words of this funding mechanism are:
    • Out-of-the-box – high-risk, high-impact research that will typically not be selected for federal funding, is creative and has potential for near-term benefit to lung cancer researchers
    • Collaborative – research that fosters collaboration among young researchers who haven’t worked together in the past, preferably across-institutions
    • Translational – research with outcomes that can be quickly moved from the lab to the clinic, or from the bench to bedside
    • Multi-Disciplinary – projects that involve multiple academic disciplines/specializations in their approach to solve a problem in the field of lung cancer
  • Each selected team will comprise of at least 2 young innovators that propose to conduct first in field, innovative, transdisciplinary and transformative treatment sciences research with a high probability of near-term benefit to lung cancer patients.
  • Young Innovators will be guided by mentors at their institutions, but will be the chief investigators actually driving the research project.

View Previous Young Innovators Team Award Recipients

The idea is to encourage out-of-the-box thinking
and foster leadership skills among young innovators, instilling
confidence in them to drive breakthrough, transdisciplinary science
under a collaborative, cross-institutional paradigm.