What it is
ColaboFest is a collaborative challenge run by the UAB Systems Pharmacology AI Research Center. It exists to help investigators move a disease mechanism, a clinical observation, a candidate therapy or a valuable dataset toward a defined drug discovery solution.
Proposals can address any of three pillars, or connect them end to end. Targets, meaning what to treat. Chemicals and biologics, meaning what to give. Patient cohorts, meaning who to treat and how.
What teams receive
Three selected teams each receive a jointly developed package of in-kind services from SPARC and Southern Research, worth up to $40,000. These are services rather than cash: assay development, computational analysis, medicinal chemistry, cohort work and similar support scoped to what the project needs.
The aim is pilot evidence strong enough to support a future grant, a publication, a partnership or UAB intellectual property.
Who can enter
Teams need at least one co-investigator whose primary affiliation is UAB or a UAB-led CCTS Partner Network institution. Other team members can be from anywhere.
No team is expected to have every asset. The readiness checklist is advisory, not an eligibility screen, and teams with gaps are encouraged either to recruit collaborators or to explain how the gap will be closed.
How to enter
Submissions are a three page proposal covering the unmet need, the central hypothesis, the scientific foundation, the proposed solution, the SPARC support requested, team readiness, and a validation plan with the next milestone.
Proposals close on 30 September 2026. Winners are announced by 20 October, computational work completes by 15 December, experimental validation is collected by 1 April 2027, and teams present at the ATTIS symposium in spring 2027.
The full RFA, the service award guide and the team readiness checklist are on the ColaboFest site. Questions go to Dr. Swathi Thaker at snthaker@uab.edu.