UC davis clinical and translational science center

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health awarded a cooperative agreement totaling $11.51 million to the University of California, Davis on June 1, 2026, to establish and operate the UC Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center under the NCATS program (CFDA 93.350).

The award funds a seven-year effort through May 31, 2033, to advance clinical and translational science by integrating expertise across six UC Davis schools and four colleges, UC Davis Health, rural cooperative extension sites across California, and community partners. The center will synergize existing systems and infrastructure with new multi-sector leadership and team science–focused evaluation; proactively coordinate workforce, trainees, and core collaborators through services, pilot awards, and data science approaches; and implement projects addressing clinical and translational science gaps in community and clinical settings, with dissemination of successful processes and findings to the broader field.

Performance occurs in Davis, California. The University of California, Davis is the recipient organization and principal investigator for this award.

Abstract

The mission of the UC davis clinical and translational science center (ctsc) is to advance clinical and translational science (CTS) by coalescing the expertise within our premier, comprehensive university and core collaborators to improve human health. We have been the home for CTS researchers at UC davis for nearly 20 years and have exceeded the essential characteristics of successful ctsa hubs, both locally and nationally. For the proposed grant period, the UC davis ctsc will integrate the broad knowledge and expertise of our public, land-grant, research-intensive academic institution and the geographic reach of our university to generate broad knowledge translation. Our ctsc will build transformative teams to uniquely tackle CTS barriers by coalescing the expansive expertise in six UC davis schools and four colleges, our leading healthcare system at UC davis health, rural cooperative extension sites across the state, and community partners representing our broad catchment areas. The specific aims of our proposal are: aim 1: synergize our existing ctsc systems and infrastructure with new multi-sector leadership, empowered team and staff management, and team science- focused evaluation (a: overview and b: strategic management); aim 2: proactively coordinate staff and trainee as well as core collaborators with our services, pilot awards, and data science approaches to support the day-to-day and future work of transformative CTS teams (C1: workforce, C2: engagement, D1: resources, D2: CTS pilots, D3: data science); aim 3: implement new projects and teams that address CTS gaps, in both community and clinical settings, and with a focus on dissemination of successful processes and findings back into our center's unified suite of assets and to the broader CTS field (e: CTS research). To achieve these aims, we strategically developed structures and activities to facilitate CTS within and across every element of the application and have: 1) elevated all core collaborator audiences to the leadership board, including academic, healthcare system, rural cooperative extension partners, and community members representatives (b: strategic management); 2) rooted our training in transdisciplinary and team-centered knowledge creation and standardized our broad array of programs with foundational skill development (C1: workforce); 3) RE-focused our engagement activities on CO-creation of scientific questions and long-term partnerships across the spectrum of research processes (C2: engagement); 4) linked cross-cutting offerings and developed new communication strategies to ensure researchers gain access more efficiently and holistically across disciplines, while maintaining rigor, reproducibility, and high ethical standards (D1: resources); 5) redesigned the ctsc pilot awards to support these alignments across research teams and collaborator audiences (D2: CTS pilots); and 6) emphasized continuous iteration and improvement of core ctsc resources, innovation within implementation and data science methodologies, and upfront multi-sector collaborator engagement to speed up impact into real- world settings (D3: data science).