“Pitch for Funds” rounds seek to promote cross-disciplinary research and provide an informal platform for clinicians and scientists with similar research interests to interact on an informal basis. We aim to promote a new form of interaction combining informal discussion with the opportunity to pitch for small project funding and through this, encourage junior clinicians to participate in scientific research.

Award
S$10,000 (cash) project grant and certificate 

Terms and Conditions
• The winner has up to 4 months to obtain the necessary ethics approval.
• This award funding will be administered by the NLAM CSU Office.
• The funds can only be used for academic purposes as stipulated in the NUS guidelines, and it must have the approval of the supervisor.
• Funding period: 29 Sep 2011 - 10 March 2013.  The first 25% funding must be utilised by 10 March 2012.

Deliverables by the Winner
•  The winner must present an abstract, and an oral or poster presentation at an international conference within 12 - 24 months from date of winning.
•  Winners, together with their supervisors, are strongly encouraged to apply for external grants with the pilot data they generate. 

Application Criteria
1)  Applicant must be an NUHS Registrar or Associate Consultant.
2)  Research must be multi-disciplinary with collaborations between at least 2 Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine departments. Clinicians are encouraged to collaborate with pre-clinical staff.
3)  Project duration may be up to a maximum of one year.
4)  Research topic must be new.
5)  Supervisors must be NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine staff. 

Abstract
Applicants must submit an abstract to be shortlisted for presentation.

The guidelines and instructions for abstract submission are as follows:

i.  Submit the abstract using the abstract submission form.
ii. Abstract Content - The abstract must answer the following questions:
   - Why is your project important?
   - What is known about this area of medicine/science?
   - What is the Question you are asking?
   - What is your hypothesis?
   - How do you intend to answer this Question?
   - What is novel about your research idea?
   - State why your project should be funded.

Abstract Format :
iii. The word limit is 250 words (excluding Title, Authors and Affiliations) and the number of authors should not exceed 7.
iv. The font to use is Times New Roman font size 10.
v.  Do NOT include figures, graphs, tables or references.
vi. Late abstracts will not be considered.

Format
•  4 abstracts will be shortlisted for oral presentation. Each participant will be given 10 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for Q&A.