Pilot Grants for Faculty

The SUPRA Pilot Grants invest resources in faculty-led substance use pilot projects. Ideally, these pilot projects will increase the competitiveness of extramural applications and expand UK’s federal substance use research portfolio. Pilot projects must align with SUPRA’s mission and support innovative, collaborative substance use research from a basic science, clinical, or community research perspective. Requests for Applications (RFAs) will be released every 12 to 18 months.

SUPRA Faculty Pilot

Deadline to Apply: October 17, 2025.

The purpose of this pilot funding mechanism is to provide resources to support innovative and collaborative substance use research from a basic science, pre-clinical, clinical, and/or community research perspective. Applications should align with SUPRA’s mission to prevent and reduce the burdens of substance use disorders through conducting and translating transdisciplinary and innovative research to inform and augment drug discovery research, clinical services, public health practice, and policy. All applications must address how the pilot project will lead to future extramural applications.

More information and application here!

Questions and applications can be sent to supra@uky.edu.

Anna Smith, Ph.D., Statistics

• Title: High-Risk Connections: Large Scale Social Network Modeling of Opioid and Benzodiazepine Coprescriptions in Kentucky (Start Date: January 1, 2025)
• “Our team is leveraging Kentucky's prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) to construct opioid prescribing "social networks" and using advanced latent embedding techniques to map patients' probability of high risk benzodiazepine coprescriptions.” 

Waren Alilain, Ph.D., Neuroscience

• Title: Identifying Brainstem Neuronal Populations Driving Respiratory Depression After Fentanyl Treatment (Start Date: January 1, 2025)
• “Our funded SUPRA research project aims to understand the mechanism behind a recently discovered drug here at UK which can provide significant pain relief without accompanying respiratory depression.”

Hartley Feld, Ph.D., Nursing

• Title: Building Recovery Capital by Reducing Barriers to Reproductive and Perinatal Health for People with a Substance Use Disorder (Start Date: April 1, 2023)