View Current & Past Williams, Jahnigen, & GEMSTAR Scholars
Specialty Scholars
NIA GEMSSTAR Program (funding opportunity for junior faculty)
The National Institute on Aging’s (NIA) Grants for Early Medical/Surgical Specialists’ Transition to Aging Research (GEMSSTAR) awards support early career physicians trained in medical, surgical subspecialties and early career dentist-scientists through an R03 mechanism. The award is an early career award with the goal of helping researchers establish a research track record in the field of aging or geriatrics-focused research.
GEMSSTAR Applicants are encouraged, but not required, to include a Professional Development Plan (PDP) as a component of their application that provides protected time and mentoring for young investigators to develop the leadership and research skills that they will need in their careers. AGS serves as liaison between applicants and specialty societies to help secure funding for PDPs. The PDP can include formal classroom education, exposure to geriatrics-related activities, or other means of career development.
The GEMSSTAR website lists valuable information on the GEMSSTAR program and application process. Interested applicants should sign up for the NIA Training and Career Development newsletter to receive notifications.
American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR)’s Clinician-Scientists Transdisciplinary Aging Research (Clin-STAR) Coordinating Center
Advancing geriatrics expertise for researchers, clinicians, and educators is more than a mission-critical priority for us all as we age. It requires structure and support from across health care to build synergy and share best practices.
Through a grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) established the AFAR/NIA Clinician-Scientists Transdisciplinary Aging Research Coordinating Center (Clin-STAR CC) to do just that. The Clin-STAR CC brings together clinician-investigators from across the United States who are committed to careers focused on aging research. The Clin-STAR CC provides career development opportunities and fosters transdisciplinary connections, with a particular focus on early-stage investigators who will become future leaders in their fields.
Rising Stars in Aging Research Webinar Series
Under a subaward from the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), the AGS offered a series of virtual workshops that are focused on grant writing tips, how to respond to grant review comments, and resubmissions. The virtual workshop series recordings can be found here.
This series was offered under a subaward from the Clinician-Scientists Transdisciplinary Aging Research (Clin-STAR) Coordinating Center that AFAR leads with funding from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Under the subaward (active 2020-2025), AGS provided mentoring and career development resources to early stage investigators (ESI) in medical and surgical specialties who wished to focus their research in aging and/or geriatrics. The goal of these short-term mentoring relationships was to help ESIs to improve competitiveness for future funding. Successful Rising Stars received one-on-one mentoring with a senior aging research mentor from geriatrics or another specialty and connected with a current GEMSSTAR scholar who provided advice on application revisions and re-submissions. The Rising Star program had a total of 36 Rising Stars and 12 successful applicants received a GEMSSTAR award through the NIA after re-submission with 4 other participants going on to compete successfully for other awards from the National Institutes of Health.
GSI GEMSSTAR Conference Series
AGS’ GSI was awarded a NIA GEMSSTAR U13 conference grant (2014-2019), jointly funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the John A. Hartford Foundation. The grant included funding for three conferences over five years for all past and current GEMSSTAR scholars.
The conference series provided GEMSSTAR grantees with opportunities for in-depth discussion of important topics, small group working sessions to explore areas of common interest, and opportunities to bring grantees from across the country together to network and collaborate with each other and invited geriatric-focused specialty mentors.
To access conference reports, slides, and other publications, click the tabs below.
