External Partners Directed Research

Call for Proposals

 

PDF of Submission Details
Preproposal Deadline (required): December 12, 2024 | 11:59 p.m. CST
Full Proposal Deadline (by invitation only): January 27, 2025 | 11:59 p.m. CST
Funding available: up to $50,000.00 per proposal

Submit Preproposal via Qualtrics

The Personalized Nutrition Initiative, with the support of our External Partners Program, is seeking applications for multidisciplinary research proposals that have the potential to impact personalized nutrition and support health and well-being of healthy human populations across the lifespan. The goal of the External Partners Directed Research program is to fund research with the potential to provide new applied and translatable innovation in personalized nutrition to advance health or solutions to personalized nutrition-related barriers that meet shared and critical needs in companies of all sizes.

In this call for proposals, we invite proposals from interdisciplinary teams for projects using existing data sets to enhance personalized nutrition-related understandings. The secondary analysis may involve existing data sets on campus or All of Us, UK Biobank, NHANES, other large data sets, or a combination of data sets.  Examples of areas of interest are cardiometabolic outcomes (e.g., weight, heart health, blood glucose), cognition, and optimizing health biomarkers, but other areas will be considered.

Projects that will yield initial results in a relatively short timeframe (12 months) will be prioritized, with opportunities to share findings and garner input from the External Partners. A maximum of $50,000.00 may be initially requested over 12 months. To be eligible, the Principal Investigator (PI) must be an Affiliate member of the Personalized Nutrition Initiative. External collaborators can be part of the proposal, but funding is required to stay on campus (i.e., no sub-awards). If there are collaborations with researchers outside of academia or the Personalized Nutrition Initiative External Partners, please arrange a discussion before preproposal submission and include information in the submission; see instructions below.

The program expects that funded Investigative Teams will regularly interact with the External Partners. The PIs will be required to provide a 6-month progress report with an option to submit a competitive application for an additional year of funding (see Competitive Renewal Report instructions below). At 1-year, the PI will submit either a final written report or a written progress report (if awarded an additional year of funding). Reports will include milestones and deliverables, and either be an in-person or online presentation to the External Partners. An additional report will be due 1-year after completion of the grant, which will include information on dissemination (publications, presentations, social media impact), grant funding, and other innovation outcomes (e.g., patent disclosures). One expected product of the grant is the submission of an interdisciplinary research proposal to an external funding agency, such as USDA, NIH, NSF, DOD, DOE, or another federal agency, industry, or foundation.

We held an informational webinar with a Q&A session with external partners. Please contact Anna Keck (akeck@illinois.edu) if you would like to get access to the webinar recording.

Interested Investigative Teams should submit a preproposal via Qualtrics (see instructions below) by Thursday, December 12, 2024.

The External Partners will invite some Investigative Teams to submit a full proposal via Qualtrics by Monday, January 27, 2025, 11:59 PM, including a research plan and a budget (see instructions below). The External Partners Review Panel will evaluate proposals and forward a recommendation to the Steering Committee and the Director of the Personalized Nutrition Initiative for final approval. Funding decisions will be announced one (1) month after the submission deadline.

 

Preproposal Submission Details

1.Preproposal Submission Page online via Qualtrics: Fill out the Preproposal Submission Page with the following information:

1. Names and contact information of all project personnel. Clearly identify the PI or Co-PI(s) as appropriate. (If the team includes members from companies other than the External Partners, include a justification for their roles and what type of ingredients, products or services by the company is utilized in this project)
2. Project title
3. Project abstract (200-word max)
4. Data set(s) involved in the project
5. Estimated Budget (include access to databases costs. This cost might be shared with the Personalized Nutrition Initiative if there are enough access interests)

2.Scope of Work: Single-spaced, 11-point font, 1-inch margins, not to exceed 2 pages, including all the sections listed below:

1. A brief synopsis of what is already known on a subject and the gap(s) in knowledge
2. Motivation: problem or barrier
3. Approach to address the problem or barrier (brief description of the research design including study design and PICO (population, intervention, control, & outcomes)
4. Expected deliverables
5. Expertise of team members
6. Contributions to further the field of personalized nutrition and how they will be used

3.Competitive Renewal Report (max 2 pages, Required for PI’s who have ongoing funding and are requesting a no-cost extension or additional funding): The Report should contain:

1. Project accomplishments with comparison to the original timeline and deliverables
2. Proposed changes to the project goals and budget, if applicable
3. Spending report (use same spending categories as original budget justification submitted)

 

Convert the Scope of Work and Competitive Renewal Report (if applicable) sections to one PDF file and upload using the Qualtrics link above for Preproposal Submission Page.

Questions? Contact Anna Keck (akeck@illinois.edu) or Sharon Donovan (sdonovan@illinois.edu).

Find out more about how to become a Personalized Nutrition Initiative Affiliate