Who is Eligible to Apply

• All applicants must have a documented interest in and commitment to peripheral neuropathy research. 
• Candidates who hold an MD or PhD or MD, PhD, or equivalent degree (e.g., neurology trainee with a documented interest in peripheral neuropathies) or candidates with less than 3 years of a faculty position are eligible to apply.
• Applicants who are in the process of defending their doctoral thesis but who have not yet formally been awarded the doctoral degree will also be considered eligible to apply.
• The applicant must conduct the training in a center/institution where he/she has NOT been trained in previously.
• Those awarded a grant will be required to become a PNS member.

Mentorship

The mentors are peripheral nerve scientists or clinicians who are active members of the PNS Society (dues paid). The prospective mentor must be located in a center/institution where the applicant has NOT been trained in previously.

If the proposed project benefits from scientific exchange and training across two different centers, mobility between two mentors is allowed. This must be justified by the two mentors at the time of the application and the travel between the two labs should be covered by the mentors.

List of Approved PNS Mentors 

*Prospective applicants are required to select a mentor and to develop with the mentor the project to be submitted. If you would like to work with a mentor that is not yet listed, please refer to the criteria for mentorship listed below and contact info@PNSociety.com for pre-approval.

Paola Alberti MD, PhD – University of Milano – Bicocca
Email – paola.alberti@unimib.it

Craig Blackstone MD, PhD – Massachusetts General Hospital – Harvard Medical School
Email – cblackstone@mgh.harvard.edu

Alessandra Bolino PhD – IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele
Email – bolino.alessandra@hsr.it

Wendy Campana PhD – Univerisity of California, San Diego
Email – wcampana@health.ucsd.edu

Michael Coleman PhD – University of Cambridge
Email – mc469@cam.ac.uk

Felipe Court PhD – Universidad Mayor
Email – felipe.court@umayor.cl

Alexander Davies PhD – University of Oxford
Email – alexander.davies@ndcn.ox.ac.uk

Filip Eftimov PhD – Amsterdam University Medical Center
Email – f.eftimov@amsterdamumc.nl

Michael Gold PhD – University of Pittsburgh
Email – msg22@pitt.edu

Katrin Hahn MD – Universitätsmedizin Charité Berlin
Email – katrin.hahn@charite.de

Rita Horvath MD, PhD – Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge
Email – rh732@medschl.cam.ac.uk

Ruth Huizinga PhD – Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam
Email – h.huizinga@erasmusmc.nl

Zhahirul Islam PhD – icddr,b
Email – zislam@icddrb.org

Pall Karlsson PhD – Aarhus University, Danish Pain Research Center
Email – pall@clin.au.dk

Jonathan Leckenby MD, PhD – University of Rochester Medical Center
Email – Jonathan_leckenby@urmc.rochester.edu

Ying Liu MD, PhD – Department of Neurology of Johns Hopkins Medical School
Email – yliu41@jhmi.edu

Daniela Maria Menichella MD, PhD – Northwestern University
Email – d-menichella@northwestern.edu

Anne Oaklander MD, PhD – Harvard Medical School
Email – aloaklander@mgh.harvard.edu

Luis Querol MD PhD – Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau – Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
Email – lquerol@santpau.cat

Mary M Reilly MD – University College London
Email – m.reilly@ucl.ac.uk

Sandra Rieger PhD – University of Miami
Email – srieger@miami.edu

Simon Rinaldi PhD – University of Oxford & Oxford University Hospitals
Email – simon.rinaldi@ndcn.ox.ac.uk

Tobias Ruck, Prof. Dr. med., MHBA – Heinrich-Heine-University Dusseldorf, Department of Neurology
Email – tobias.ruck@med.uni-duesseldorf.de

Mario Saporta, MD, PhD – University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Email – mas638@med.miami.edu

Nathan Staff MD, PhD – Mayo Clinic
Email – staff.nathan@mayo.edu

Charlotte Sumner MD – Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Email – csumner1@jhmi.edu

John Svaren PhD – University of Wisconsin-Madison
Email – john.svaren@wisc.edu

Stefano Tamburin MD, PhD – University of Verona, Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences
Email – stefano.tamburin@univr.it

Camiel Verhamme MD, PhD – Amsterdam UMC, location AMC
Email – c.verhamme@amsterdamumc.nl

Mentorship Criteria:

• The mentor must be an active PNS member (dues paid) with a consolidated publication track record
• The mentor must have prior history with mentorship and students
• The mentor’s institution must have co-funding for the project available
• The mentor must be open to hosting a training grant candidate that has not been trained at the institute before
• The mentor’s project may not be funded exclusively by a company with commercial interests. The mentor must not have more than $10,000 USD in stock in a company that has provided funding for the project. The PI and host institution will retain the intellectual property rights.

Funding

Funding for these awards is designed to cover salary and a contribution to travel and living expense costs for the trainees up to $75,000 USD/year (see budget, application section). It is not intended to support the laboratory or mentor. It may provide some funding for the direct expenses of the project, but other funding will need to be available to demonstrate that the project can be accomplished.

Duration

The duration is one year (for a clinical-only project) or two years (for a clinical research or basic science project).

Additional Information

Evaluation Procedure

An ad-hoc selection committee including scientists and clinicians of the PNS Society will oversee the selection process. The evaluation will include two stages.

Stage 1: In the first stage, applications will be evaluated by reviewers who are scientists and clinicians, members of the PNS, and, if necessary, by ad hoc appointed reviewers selected from among internationally recognized experts.  Applications will be scored considering adherence to the PNS mission, originality, feasibility, and scientific excellence of the proposed project, along with candidate CV and mentor’s CV and host institution.

Stage 2: In the second stage, top scored applicants will be interviewed by the committee to defend their proposal and clarify the committee’s questions and concerns.

The PNS will award one training grant in clinical and one in basic science per funding year. Recipients of the PNS training grant program must be active PNS Members (dues paid).

To view the full grant scoring guidelines, please click here.

Monitoring

Both the grantee and the mentor(s) must submit separate reports at 6 and 12 months for the 1-year grant and once a year for the 2-years grant. Successful programs in basic science are expected to generate sufficient preliminary data to apply for other funding sources such as the NIH K08 programs, EU-individual fellowships or equivalent.

All grantees are expected to submit abstracts to the PNS annual meeting to report the progress of their training activities.

PNS Grants Committee Members

Chair:

Alessandra Bolino, PhD, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy

Vice Chair:

Luis Querol, MD PhD, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain

Members:

• Paola Alberti, MD PhD, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
• Margarita Calvo, MD PhD, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
• Catharina Faber, MD PhD, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, Netherlands
• Chris Gibbons, MD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA
• Ruth Huizinga, PhD, Erasmus MC University Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Satoshi Kuwabara, MD PhD, Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan
• Steven Scherer, MD PhD, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
• John Svaren, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
• Vincent Timmerman, PhD, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

Questions? Please contact info@PNSociety.com with any training grant questions.