UCR School of Medicine Dean's Collaborative Seed Grant provides funds up to $25,000 in seed grant funding for collaborative interdisciplinary research projects aimed at developing proposals and preliminary data for full NIH or similar grant applications. To help clarify the process for these grant awards, these are the goals of the grants, review criteria, application and review process, and conditions for expenditures on awarded funds.

• Proposals are due by August 15, 2022.
• Awards will be announced by September 15, 2022.
• Expenditures from awards can being immediately and must be spent by October, 2023.

Goals of the Grant Awards

To encourage these discussions to develop beyond initial conversations, we will support further work on these ideas toward a few concrete outcomes:

1. Initiate a new active collaboration across two or more faculty with one being in Biomedical Sciences. Other collaborators can include researchers in the SOM Division of Clinical Sciences  (e.g., Social Medicine, Population and Public Health) or different UCR academic units. In some cases, collaborative projects can be between any SOM unit and a collaborating research group in another UCR research group, including non-SOM units.
2. Where appropriate, produce new preliminary data from this collaboration that can help test initial ideas and support development of a competitive research proposal.
3. Ideally, development of a formal research proposal and submission to an extramural funding agency such as NIH, preferably within a year or two of the grant award.
4. Additional outcomes, such as a research publication.

Review Criteria for Grant Awards

Serving the goals of the award, the review criteria are as follows:

1. Two or more research groups are involved as active participants in the project, with at least one PI from Biomedical Sciences. In some cases, projects involving any SOM unit and a collaborating UCR group may qualify.
2. A clear statement of the research plan, including a tentative working hypothesis, and a description of the research methods, including the types of data to be generated where appropriate.
3. A clear description or discussion of the type of intended research proposal that will result from this project such as an R01, R21, or other grant proposal, and the extramural funding agency to be targeted. 
4. A general budget justification for the expenditures of grant award funds. Funds cannot be applied to faculty salaries, or other scientific staff salaries, or research equipment. Allowed expenses include partial support for graduate student GSR (no more than 50% of the usual graduate student support over one quarter), research supplies, reasonable payments to research subjects. For any other categories of expenditures, a clear and detailed justification is required for review. All expenses must be reviewed and approved prior to spending.
5. There is no commitment to award a specific number of grants; awards will be based on merit and available funds.

Application Process and Review

Proposals must be submitted in a basic format similar to an R21 grant application: (1) A one page cover page with a list of the collaborating faculty and contact PI, brief abstract with specific aims; (2) a proposal no more than six pages, including literature citations and data figures, including the research proposal, as well as description of goals for an extramural grant proposal, with all text (body, figure legends, citations) in 11 point Arial font, and 0.5 inch margins; (3) a one-page budget justification in the same page format.

All proposals must be received by the senior associate dean, research, by the end of the day August 15, 2022. Reviews will take place with an ad hoc committee of at least three faculty from SOM. Awards will be announced by September 15, 2022.

Expenditures from awards can begin right away, but must be spent by the end of October 2023.