Seed Grants

Call for Proposals – 2024 Seed Grants

Submission Deadline: January 22, 2024 | 11:59 p.m. CT
Funding available: up to $50,000 per proposal

Submission Instructions

This is a special joint call for proposals with the Center for Social and Behavioral Science (CSBS) and the Healthcare Innovation Program Office at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

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Personalized Nutrition Initiative seed grants aim to catalyze unique interdisciplinary personalized nutrition-related research across the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. The Personalized Nutrition Initiative at Illinois was launched in 2020 and is supported by the leadership of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation in partnership with the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.

We are seeking proposals from interdisciplinary teams for projects with the potential to provide new transformative innovations in personalized nutrition or solutions to personalized nutrition-related barriers. A maximum of $50,000 may be requested over 2 years. To be eligible, the Principal Investigator (PI) must be an Affiliate member of the Personalized Nutrition Initiative. The proposal must involve Co-PIs from at least two different departments/colleges.

 The goals of Seed Grants are for Affiliates to:

  1. Develop exploratory research ideas that require the involvement of multiple disciplines
  2. Develop research ideas that have the potential to impact human health
  3. Identify a research question(s) that relates to one or more of the Personalized Nutrition Initiative research themes and cross-cutting areas
  4. Collect preliminary data or other relevant information to address research questions
  5. Conduct sample data analysis or create visualizations that can be used as a proof-of-concept
  6. Prepare, develop, and submit research proposals for external funding

Projects will be expected to achieve proposed milestones. Progress reports will be required at the end of the first year, which may affect continual funding. The expected product of the seed grant is a 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.

Interested parties should submit a Research Proposal, including a research plan and a budget (see Submission Instructions for more details). A review panel will evaluate proposals and forward a recommendation to the Director of the Personalized Nutrition Initiative. Funding decisions will be announced within 6 weeks after the submission deadline.

 

Funded Seed Grants