Recognizing innovation and accomplishment

In 2016, the Buffalo Translational Consortium (BTC) developed a competition designed to showcase and honor outstanding accomplishments in clinical and translational research. It was hoped that this consortium-wide initiative would help raise the profile of clinical research among BTC institutions (including the University at Buffalo Clinical and Translational Science Institute) while also properly recognizing clinical researchers who exhibit innovation, creativity, and scientific advancement in their work.

A little more than seven years later, the BTC Clinical Research Achievement Awards are part of the fabric of translational research in Western New York.

“Innovative clinical research is the hallmark of the Buffalo Translational Consortium,” states Awards Committee Chair Anne B. Curtis, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Charles and Mary Bauer Professor and chair, Department of Medicine, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. “Our Clinical Research Achievement Awards are designed to highlight the clinical research studies that have the greatest potential impact on the care of patients. The advances in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions that result from this research improve the health and wellbeing of patients in our community and far beyond.”

“By submitting your research and by being part of this process, you are contributing to raising the level and the importance of clinical research in the region,” says CTSI Director Timothy F. Murphy, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor. “This raises the impact of your research, and it helps teach and inform people of the importance of this kind of work.”

Nominations for the 2022 awards are due by October 28; read on for additional details on the submission process.

‘Recognizing advances that will make a difference in healthcare’

Murphy says the inspiration for the awards came from seeing “top 10” research awards at the annual Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) conference (now called Translational Science) and the Clinical Research Forum.

Murphy saw the idea of consortium-wide awards as way to highlight how clinical research “moves the needle” and changes lives in the Western New York community and beyond.  

“This award recognizes taking that important step of moving research from the laboratory into advances that will make a difference in healthcare,” he says. “An example would be a study that results in a change in treatment guidelines.”

Murphy also sees the awards as key elements in the dissemination and implementation of research: “Let’s say we do a great clinical trial. How do we implement that in the trenches? How do we get it so that patients are receiving the latest treatment from their providers?”

How to submit nominations

Nomination packets must be submitted to CTSI Senior Research Administrator Erin O'Byrne in PDF form by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, October 28. See scoring criteria and guidelines here.

Eligible studies must have been published or be in press in a peer-reviewed journal during the calendar year 2022, with research performed at a Buffalo Translational Consortium institution and University at Buffalo or Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center investigators having served as a principal author.

Award recipients are invited to present their research at the CTSI Annual Forum in March 2023. In addition, awardees may receive a travel stipend to Translational Science 2023, the annual ACTS Conference, scheduled for April 18 to 20, 2023.

Nominees are also encouraged to enter the 2023 Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Awards, a national competition presented by the Clinical Research Forum. Nominations close November 21.

Murphy states, “We need to recognize the important work in our own environment, and we need to be able to talk about and present our work in ways that resonate with people. I think it will raise the level of what we do in Buffalo and move us forward nationally.”

For a complete list of past awardees, see the CTSI website.