Frequently Asked Questions

The CTSI Pilot Translational and Clinical Studies Program provides seed funding for collaborative research, team-building activities and development of novel technologies and approaches. Descriptions of these opportunities can be found on our Funding page. Please click the “open” and “upcoming” tabs for information about current and upcoming opportunities.

Examples of past awards can be found by clicking the “Past Awardees” tab.

CTSI periodically awards vouchers of up to $10K worth of services from a large selection of research and service cores at UCLA-Westwood, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. Descriptions of the core voucher program can be found on our Funding page. If an RFA is currently open, it can be found by clicking the “Open” tab. Past RFAs can be found by clicking the “Closed” tab.

For information about cores that accept CTSI vouchers, please visit our Research Cores page. If you are interested in a particular core and don’t see it listed, please contact CTSI administrator Elvira Liclican at eliclican@mednet.ucla.edu.

UCLA CTSI KL2 Translational Science awardees receive salary support up to $75,000 a year for 75% effort to pursue interdisciplinary, mentored research with training. The award also provides annual amounts of up to $53,000 for scholar fringe benefits, research expenses, tuition/career development and statistical support and $2,000 for travel. It is renewable for up to three years. Continued fellowship support in years 2 and 3 will be contingent on performance during the prior year(s).

For additional details about the program, including past awardees, please go the KL2 Program page.

The TL1 Summer Fellowships provide training for dental, medical, nursing students in translational research. Predoctoral stipends are uniformly set for all trainees by the National Institute of Health. Currently, the summer stipend is $4,136 for the two-month summer program trainees. Trainees also are eligible to receive up to $700 for research project expenses.

For additional details about the program, including past awardees, please go to the TL1 Program page.

The CTSI Training Program in Translational Science provides courses that can be taken for a certificate or for a master’s degree in clinical research. Information about the program, along with a course catalog, can be found on the Training Program in Translational Science page.

Descriptions of CTSI programs, resources, tools, initiatives, collaborations and more can be found on the Boilerplates page. Descriptions of UCLA schools, departments and instructions for regulatory boilerplates (data safety, data monitoring and human subjects protection) can also be found there.

To obtain a Letter of Support, please go to the Letter of Support page. Please allow two to five working days for processing your request.

The Guide to CTSI Grant Writing Resources provides a collection of CTSI resources that can assist with grant writing. This includes references to:

• Online tools
• Writing consultations
• Drop-in biostatistical consultations
• Biostatistical consults by appointment
• K and R grant workshops
• Pre-submission grant reviews
• Project-specific consultations
• Cohort-finding tools
• Community engagement consultations
• Research Go

We coordinate grant reviews for basic science research grants that have a special-populations focus. By "special populations," we are referring to any of the following three groups: (1) pediatrics (children and adolescents), (2) older adults, and (3) populations affected by health disparities. Disparities occur across many dimensions, including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, location, gender, disability status, and sexual orientation. Please contact Dr. Nathalie Vizueta (nvizueta@mednet.ucla.edu, 310-794-2744) if you have questions about eligibility.

Internal Pre-Submission Grant Reviews are provided approximately 4-6 weeks before submission deadlines by CTSI's Integrating Special Populations (ISP) Program. Below are FAQs on the grant review services. You can see more of ISP's services on the ISP page.

CTSI provides support for every stage of research—from proposal development to study close-out. There are several ways to find the services you need.

Our Researcher Resources portal organizes services and resources: 

• ResearchGo - ResearchGO is CTSI's clinical research portal to resources, expertise and best practices for investigators, study staff, and partners/affiliates.
• The Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design Program provides integrated services and biostatistical support. Services include (1) contemporary data analysis methodology consultation, implementation, and epidemiology expertise; (2) the best available clinical data management software; (3) study design assistance; and (4) bioinformatics/computational biology data analysis.
• The Informatics Program (IP) of the UCLA CTSI provides researchers with access to data derived from patient care activities. Investigators can access patient count data using one of our self-service systems. If accessing individual-level data is desired, a consult from Informatics is required. More information can be found below.
• The CTSI Integrating Special Populations Program (ISP) increases the quantity and quality of research in children, older adults, and populations affected by health disparities at the UCLA CTSI partner institutions: UCLA Westwood, Lundquist/Harbor-UCLA, Cedars-Sinai, and Charles R. Drew University.
• A complete list of CTSI consulting services can be found on the Consultations & Advice page.
• A complete list of research cores that accept CTSI vouchers can be found on the Research Cores page.
• UCLA CTSI partners, Cedars-Sinai, Charles R. Drew University, Lundquist/Harbor-UCLA and UCLA each have a Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC). The four sites have a synchronized IRB approval process with one application for all sites, standard research procedures and mobile research units (off-site services).
• The Trial Innovation Network features a single IRB system, master contracting agreements, quality by design approaches, and a focus on evidence-based strategies to recruitment and patient engagement.
• Information about CTSI organization and programs can be found by going to the About portal.

If you cannot find information about specific services or resources, please contact the site representative at your institution. Their contact information can be found at the bottom of this page.

Biostatistical consultations are available at UCLA and appointments can be arranged at LA BioMed and Cedars-Sinai. See below for details or visit the CTSI Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design Program homepage. See flier for all services. 

CTSI archives a number of popular workshops, trainings, and seminars on this site.

• Educational workshops, trainings and seminars, including K- and R-series grant writing workshops, can be found on our Educational Videos, Tools and Workshops page.
• Archived classes in the Training Program in Translational Science can be found by going to the Training Program in Translational Science portal.
• Archived seminars and presentations relating to community-based and health services research can be found on the Community-focused Workshops, Tools and Trainings page.
• Dissemination, Implementation and Improvement Science (DII) videos can be found on the DII page.
• Find more CTSI videos on the UCLA CTSI YouTube Channel including past CTSI seminars, UC Center for Accelerated Innovation presentations and grants submission tips.

REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) is a secure, web-based tool for designing surveys and capturing data. For information or to access the software, use the contacts below:

• UCLA: Martin Lai at mylai@mednet.ucla.edu
• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center: GroupEISREDCapSupport@cshs.org
• Lundquist/ Harbor-UCLA Medical Center: Liz Chen at lchen@lundquist.org

The UC Profiles directory can be searched by keyword. Please go to the CTSI Faculty search page and follow the instructions there.

For special populations such as (1) pediatrics (children and adolescents), (2) older adults, and (3) populations affected by health disparities, please contact Dr. Nathalie Vizueta (nvizueta@mednet.ucla.edu, 310-794-2744) if you have questions about eligibility. Disparities occur across many dimensions, including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, location, gender, disability status, and sexual orientation. 

We coordinate grant reviews for basic science research grants that have a special-populations focus. By "special populations," we are referring to any of the following three groups: (1) pediatrics (children and adolescents), (2) older adults, and (3) populations affected by health disparities. Disparities occur across many dimensions, including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, location, gender, disability status, and sexual orientation. Please contact Dr. Nathalie Vizueta (nvizueta@mednet.ucla.edu, 310-794-2744) if you have questions about eligibility.

Internal Pre-Submission Grant Reviews are provided approximately 4-6 weeks before submission deadlines by CTSI's Integrating Special Populations (ISP) Program. Below are FAQs on the grant review services. You can see more of ISP's services on the ISP page.

The Informatics for Integrating Biology & the Bedside (i2b2) Cohort Discovery System contains data from over 4.9 million unique patients at UCLA. i2b2 is a secure online tool designed for UCLA investigators to conduct searches on clinical data from Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center and other UCLA-affiliated clinics and departments. The search results provide a numeric count of patients that are based on de-identified data extracted from UCLA’s clinical data warehouse. Search criteria include demographics, diagnosis and procedure codes (ICD-9, ICD-10 and CPT), labs, medications, visit details (including site locations), vital signs and vital status.

To get more information, visit the Informatics for Integrating Biology & the Bedside (i2b2).

Los Angeles Data Resource (LADR) is a joint project of major Los Angeles healthcare provider organizations, including UCLA, Cedars-Sinai (CSMC), Charles Drew University (CDU), USC, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and the City of Hope, aimed at enabling research that improves the health of all people in the region using data representing the continuum of care across the region’s major health systems. LADR allows investigators to conduct interactive searches across the participating organizations on patient demographics, diagnosis and procedure codes (ICD-9, ICD-10 and CPT), labs, medications, visit details, vital signs and vital status and will be available to you and your research team for recruitment purposes for your study. LADR formally launched in May 2014 with two organizations, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (CSMC). Since then, Keck Medical Center of USC, City of Hope and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles have also gone live, and investigators can now search a total of 8.6 million patient records. Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science has joined the LADR consortium and will become functional in the near future. LADR allows investigators to conduct interactive searches on demographics, diagnosis and procedure codes (ICD-9), labs, medications, vital signs and vital status.

To get more information, visit the Los Angeles Data Resource (LADR) page.

REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) is a secure, HIPAA compliant web-based application for quickly building and managing online surveys, data collection forms and databases. REDCap provides audit trails for tracking data manipulation and user activity, as well as automated export procedures for seamless data downloads to Excel, PDF, and common statistical packages (SPSS, SAS, Stata R).

Learn more at REDCap. You can also request a consultation or advice on online survey tools.

The ACT Network is a real-time platform allowing researchers to explore and validate feasibility for clinical studies across the NCATS Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) consortium, from their desktops. ACT helps researchers design and complete clinical studies, and is secure, HIPAA-compliant and IRB-approved. ACT was developed collaboratively by members of NCATS’ Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) consortium, with funding from the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

To get more information, visit the Accrual to Clinical Trials (ACT) page.

CareConnect is UCLA's electronic health record (EHR) program. The system integrates functions of approximately 65 software applications into a single system accessible across the health system and is available around-the-clock to clinical faculty and staff members. Services include scheduling, registration, referrals, and authorizations for UCLA managed care members at all clinics, clinical applications - pharmacy, Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE), documentation, radiology, rounding lists - at all hospitals, Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) and documentation at a group of clinics and procedure areas in our hospitals (Wave 0), and CareConnect Lite as a replacement for cView at all clinics (except those in Wave 0). Clinical applications (CPOE and documentation) and the patient portal (MyUCLAHealth) were also rolled out to clinics in waves.

To get more information, visit the CareConnect page.

UCLA’s Integrated Clinical and Research Data Repository (xDR) is OHIA’s large scale clinical data warehouse that supports data analyses and extractions for research as well as analytics to support clinical quality management functions of the UCLA Health System. The xDR contains data derived from multiple clinical systems including a full copy of the CareConnect Clarity data warehouse, which is linked to disease registry data, other data from systems in Radiology, Pathology and other departments, and “legacy” data from older outpatient and hospital billing and managed care systems. The UCLA CTSI serves as the “storefront” for research access to xDR data.

To get more infomration, visit UCLA's Integrated Clinical and Research Data Repository (xDR) page.