This opportunity supports high priority research at the intersection of HIV and substance use, and invites research projects with the potential to open new areas of basic and clinical HIV/AIDS research and/or lead to new avenues for prevention, treatment and cure of HIV among people who use addictive substances.
Amount: $11,325,000
Due Date: 08/15/2024
This program supports research that examines technology and its relationship to society through the lens of the humanities, with a focus on the dangers and/or opportunities presented by technology. NEH is particularly interested in projects that examine the role of technology in shaping current social and cultural issues
Amount: $150,000
Due Date: 09/12/2024
Obtaining funding from mission-driven agencies requires early, consistent engagement with stakeholders and program managers. The Military Health System Research Symposium (MHSRS) is the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) premier annual scientific research conference that brings together military providers, academia, industry and government officials—favorable circumstances for building connections within the DoD community. Abstract submission for the 2024 MHSRS opened January 8 and closes February 21, 2024 12 am EST. Click here for a list of 2024 MHSRS sessions and instructions for abstract submission.
The Office of Research announces the FY 2025 cycle for the Faculty Seed Grants in the Sciences and Engineering.
The goal of the Faculty Seed Grants in the Sciences and Engineering is to enable faculty to launch new, promising lines of research for which resources are currently not available. These seed grants are intended to fund pilot research generating preliminary data that will be leveraged to compete for externally funded grant/contract opportunities and contribute to a sustainable program of research and scholarship. Basic and applied research in the social, life, physical sciences, and engineering are eligible for funding through this program. (Note: The Office of Research funds research grants in Humanities and Arts through a separate program managed by the Willson Center).
All faculty (tenure-track and non-tenure track) with research EFT (equivalent full-time) are eligible with the following exceptions: 1) Applicants may not have access to more than $25,000 in institutional or discretionary research funding (e.g., start-up, salary returns, or IDC returns) during the award year (i.e., FY25); 2) Tenured applicants may not have received more than $50,000 in institutional research support in the past three years (FY22 or later). Examples of institutional research support include bridge funding, a Presidential Seed Grant or other internal seed grant; and 3) An applicant may not have received a Faculty Seed Grant from this program within the last three years (an FY22 grant or later).
See the guidelines on the Office of Research Internal Grants webpage. Answers to frequently asked questions, award conditions, and other information are on the Faculty Seed Grants FAQs page.
The deadline for proposal submission is Friday, March 1, 2024.
Grants for successful applications will be awarded with a start date of July 1, 2024 (FY25).
UGA’s Office of Research Safety (ORS) has adopted a new software for its Chemical Safety Plan (CSP) program that will streamline submission of CSPs for investigators and lab managers across campus. Called ChemSafeUGA, the new platform links to outside databases that make it easier for lab personnel to keep their CSPs up to date with information on chemicals and substances and their respective hazard categories, current rosters of lab employees, and building/location information.
The CSP program affects more than 500 investigators spread among 1,200 labs at UGA. Each lab is required to submit a CSP, which helps both employees and ORS to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place for storage, handling, usage and spill response of hazardous chemicals and waste products. CSP is part of UGA’s wider Environmental Health and Safety Management System.
Among ChemSafeUGA’s improvements are:
· Automatically linking a lab’s chemical inventory into hazard categories as defined by Chematix, and lists Particularly Hazardous Substances (PHS) for investigator and lab staff awareness.
· Connection to HR, Student Affairs and Facilities Management Division databases to streamline entry of laboratory staff and locations into the CSP.
· Connection to UGA Professional Education Portal to streamline reporting of training progress by lab personnel.
With the adoption of ChemSafeUGA, lab managers no longer will need to obtain personnel MyIDs to complete their CSPs, nor will they need to track down information about the training requirements for those personnel.
ChemSafeUGA was developed by the Office of Research Information Technology group in close consultation with UGA’s Research Safety Committee. ORS will roll the new system out during spring 2024 as it builds its calendar for lab safety inspections, reporting its progress and compliance back to the committee during the rollout.
If you have questions about ChemSafeUGA, contact ORS Director Zeke Barrera at 542-9373 or ebarr@uga.edu.
Over the last 30 years, cross-disciplinary research teams have grown in number not just at UGA but at universities around the country and the world. That’s because few, if any, real-world problems contain themselves neatly within the boundaries of our academic disciplines; they are complex. To combat and emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, we needed ideas assembled from a host of different perspectives.
The complexity of the world’s challenges and the need for highly functional teams is why we have devoted significant resources to programs that encourage team members to think BIG by visioning beyond the technical bounds of a single investigator. UGA’s Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants and the Office of Research Teaming for Interdisciplinary Research Pre-Seed program, along with other programs overseen by our Integrative Team Initiatives group, are intended to provide funding and support for those faculty who want to collaborate in pursuit of a larger research goal.
Most importantly, guidance and assistance are provided to researchers to allow them to spend “pre-teaming” time, first learning about each other’s expertise, perspective, angst and approach to problem solving. It is this all-important ingredient for collaboration that is most often overlooked but is paramount to healthy outcomes and high impact.
Federal agencies recognize the power of interdisciplinarity and have ramped up incentivization of team science—in the form of very large research awards which can reach into the eight and even nine figures in order to support many team members and an array of organizations. Indeed, in recent years UGA has been the lead recipient or prominent partner for large team awards in flu research (two awards, in fact), plant genetics and marine science, to name a few.
Last year the National Science Foundation (NSF) launched an entire directorate premised on the idea of collaborative research and translation. The agency’s Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate was created in early 2022 to advance research and education across all fields of science and engineering; the inclusion of the word “partnership” in the directorate name underscores the priority of collaboration to TIP.
Soon after the directorate was launched, TIP announced its first major funding initiative, the NSF Regional Innovation Engines program. Innovation Engines are intended to be coalition-based projects that leverage use-inspired technology innovation, workforce development and community member collaboration to catalyze new innovation ecosystems, particularly in regions where such ecosystems are underdeveloped or non-existent. “Type I” engine development awards are funded at relatively modest levels, solely for the purpose of planning, but each project team is encouraged to apply for a Type II award, which could mean as much as a $160 million investment by the NSF toward the execution of the team’s plan.
UGA is involved in four Type I awards, devoted to agriculture, biomedicine, cybersecurity and electric mobility. The UGA-led Next Generation Agriculture project, or NextGA, pulls together an alliance of more than 30 public and private organizations, all committed to fostering the adoption of “Agriculture 4.0” technologies and practices in a 20-county region of southwest Georgia. Working closely with local community members through UGA Cooperative Extension, the project’s goal is to build a framework that will serve as a national recipe for inclusive, community-driven collaboration to facilitate “innovation in place” in the rural communities that feed the United States and the world.
My point in detailing this new NSF directorate and the exciting Innovation Engines initiative is that funding for team research projects is rapidly growing at a very high rate. The need for interdisciplinarity through team science is clear, and the opportunity is now.
Leading an interdisciplinary team is not easy; most teams start with great enthusiasm but fade away before winning significant research awards or embarking on collaborative projects, which is why UGA has invested so heavily in resources to fund the initial steps of team formation. This investment helps investigators learn the all-important skills of leading research teams whose members have a wide distribution of perspectives, experiences and goals.
Associate Vice President Larry Hornak leads the Office of Research Integrative Team Initiatives, and I encourage you to reach out to him to learn more. We recently published a Q&A interview with Dr. Hornak in which he discussed many options available for aspiring team researchers. Also, earlier this month he led a Research Live webinar that included multiple faculty members who have led or been part of successful research teams.
The world has many complex challenges. So, as you pause and reflect during the winter break, consider those challenges as well as the potential impact that your research or creative works might have by connecting with other scholars who share a common passion for problem solving. When a team of committed researchers pulls together, appreciating each other’s talent and importance to a common goal, the impact can be monumental.
I wish you all a refreshing, reflective break. See you in 2024!
Karen J.L. Burg
Vice President for Research
Harbor Lights Chair in Biomedical Research
This program will support multidisciplinary translational research Centers focused on generating, validating, and advancing medical countermeasures against bacteria or fungi listed in the NOFO with known and emerging resistance to current therapies.
Amount: $37,750,000
Due Date: 03/29/2024 (LOI);04/30/2024 (Full Proposal)
This program enhances and extends existing research relevant to substance use/misuse and addiction and HIV. Centers are expected to transform the scientific field of study by facilitating research, providing administrative support and a rigorous research climate that promotes new and creative directions.
Amount: Unspecified
Due Date: 08/25/2024 (LOI); 09/25/2024 (Full Proposal)
I want to give all of you an update on where we stand in terms of research security and UGA’s efforts to comply with recent, far-reaching federal policy changes that affect the majority of researchers on campus. I also would like to convey why research security is so important to all of us.
National Security Presidential Memorandum 33 (NSPM-33) is a directive from the president of the United States that requires all federal funding agencies to strengthen their requirements concerning the disclosure of potential conflicts of either interest (one’s personal interests that conflict with those of their employer) and/or commitment (one’s external activities that conflict with their responsibilities to an employer) that could represent a threat to U.S. security.
Since the issuance of NSPM-33 in January 2020, other federal agencies have released related guidance. For example, the Department of Defense (DoD) soon will require all DoD-funded research projects to undergo risk-based security reviews.
Why is this happening? As the memo itself explains, “The American research culture is intentional in its strong commitment to openness. Yet maintaining that open research culture also requires being clear-eyed that certain governments seek to exploit our openness and disrupt the integrity of our research.”
A year ago, I described UGA’s plans to comply with NSPM-33 and how they dovetail with the university’s long-running efforts to improve research security. The memo directs all institutions receiving at least $50 million in federal funding to certify that they have implemented a research security program that covers four aspects:
The good news is that UGA has been building compliance programs in each of these areas for years, even if the programs have not yet been coordinated under the banner of a single research security program. Regarding foreign travel requirements, for example, UGA’s Accounts Payable Travel Policy requires prior approval of an international travel authority, and that travel authority includes registration of international travel with the Office of Global Engagement to provide a centralized record of travel.
Likewise, UGA launched its export control program in 2014 to abide with legislation that regulates the export of goods, software and technology that might be used for purposes harmful to the United States. Reviews for export control compliance are built into multiple Office of Research processes, such as sponsored project submission, requests for material transfer and non-disclosure agreements, international travel registrations, and visiting researcher and scholar questionnaires, and visa sponsorship.
The university has a strategic goal to increase the number of successful funding proposals to U.S. mission agencies such as the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, and Homeland Security. In 2022, we created the UGA Research Institute (UGARI) to support that goal. The aims of UGARI are to provide resources to the institution and its researchers to allow us to be better partners for mission agency research. UGARI, for example, is a conduit for the university’s relationship with the Battelle Savannah River Alliance (the five-university alliance of which UGA is a member that, led by Battelle, co-manages the Savannah River National Laboratory).
UGARI deliverables will include the provision of secure research practices that are critical for garnering mission agency funding. Through UGARI, we are contracting with Fischer & Associates, a private firm that specializes in helping universities improve their research security practices, to conduct an assessment of UGA’s capabilities for doing the various types of classified, restricted and controlled unclassified research often involved in mission agency contracts. There can be significant costs in establishing the infrastructure required for such work, and the Fischer assessment will help us chart the best path forward.
We are committed to finalizing and establishing a user-friendly research security program, and to providing the required certification to the federal government in order to continue efforts toward our research goals.
Some of the content covered by NSPM-33 is familiar to UGA, while some is brand new to all research universities. Indeed, this summer the National Science Foundation announced a “Research on Research Security Program” to help U.S. policy makers and investigators understand the nature and scope of this field, including the four critical areas listed above.
The requirements of NSPM-33 will mean additional effort, both by research administrators and by investigators. Please know we will make every effort to streamline the process and allow you to maintain focus on your research and creative works. These regulations would not be in place if the work we do were not so critically important to our nation and world.
I look forward to working with you to develop a research security program that accommodates your needs, while safeguarding the interests of the U.S. research enterprise.
Karen J.L. Burg
Vice President for Research
Harbor Lights Chair in Biomedical Research
The Office of Research is offering two workshops in the coming months for grant writing and promotion dossier preparation, specifically for research scientists considering a grant promotion application in the next year. For both topics, there will be an informational webinar, followed by an in-person workshop to get direct guidance and feedback on documents. More detailed information on the workshops can be found at the link.
Grant writing workshops. The Offices of Research Personnel and Proposal Enhancement are hosting a two-part grant writing workshop in December to help research scientists build grantsmanship skills with an emphasis on issues specific to research scientists, including space and independence.
Promotion Dossier workshops. The Office of Research is hosting a two-part promotion dossier workshop to help research scientists understand the promotion process and prepare promotion materials.
Guidelines for Appointment and Promotion of Research Scientists.
