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

There are no current pilot opportunities. 

Questions can be sent to supra@uky.edu.

Thomas Prisinzano, Ph.D., Pharmaceutical Sciences

• Title: Investigating Cysteinyl Leukotrienes as a Druggable Target for Smoking Cessation. (Start Date: January 1, 2026)

Hannah Harris, Ph.D., Behavioral Science

• Title: Lung Health and Breath Biomarkers: Acute Effects of Combusted and Vaporized Cannabis Inhalation Compared to Tobacco Cigarette Combustion in the Human Laboratory. (Start Date: January 1, 2026)

April Young, Ph.D., Epidemiology

• Title: Barriers and Facilitators to Harm Reduction Kiosk Use, Implementation, and Scale-up in Kentucky. (Start Date: January 1, 2026)

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.”