As stated in the Collaborations and Partnerships section (page 170), critical components of the HU RCMI Program collaborations and partnerships efforts are to provide funds for collaborative studies, provide HU investigators training on Team Science or the Science of Collaboration, stimulate enhanced collaboration among HU core facilities, and provide enhanced access to RTRN and GHUCCTS collaboration support opportunities. Providing funds to support collaborative studies of HU faculty will occure via the pilot projects program which is discussed in this section, while the other collaborative activities are discussed in section 2.2. As a result, both the Pilot Projects and Collaborations and Partnership Key Activities collectively comprised HU's collaboration effort and are responsive to specific aim 3 of this proposal. This key activity will foster the development and enhancement of collaborative research efforts at Howard University by providing pilot grant funding for HU faculty collaborative research projects. Funding support will be provided on a competitive basis and will be focused on investigations of those diseases that disproportionately impact minority and disadvantaged populations. Requests for support from the Pilot Project Key Activity will be subject to NIH grant preparation instructions, review, and scoring procedures. A critical challenge for HU scientists in securing external funding is obtaining sufficient preliminary data for a competitive grant proposal. The primary objective of this key activity is to provide HU researchers' opportunities to obtain support needed to generate preliminary data and better position HU faculty for increased competitiveness in obtaining extramural funding support for their research efforts.