Innovative Seed Grant Program Application

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The 2010-2011 Innovative Seed Grant Competition is not yet open.
The deadline will be November 30, 2009.

Select from the following links, or scroll down the page, to learn about the Innovative Seed Grant application details, requirements, and process.

• Eligibility
• Application Preparation
• Apply Now
• Review Process

Eligibility 

• All Boulder campus faculty members (including instructors and research faculty) who hold an appointment of half-time or more, and who are eligible to submit a grant as a principal investigator (PI) to the Office of Contracts and Grants, are eligible to participate. 
• Please note that while interdisciplinary applications are encouraged, there can only be one responsible PI/Project Director for each application. (There can be no Co-PI's.)
• Applicants may submit no more than one proposal as a PI. 
• The recent 2008 awardees are not eligible to apply this year.
• Projects with a scientific or budgetary overlap with your active research support are not eligible.

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Application Preparation

• Deadline: Applications will be accepted starting November 1, 2009. The deadline is 5 p.m., Monday, November 30, 2009. 
• Online application form: You must use the online submission form at http://innovation.colorado.edu/ apply/igp_seed_grant.php. 
• Preparation: It would be advisable to prepare much of the following information in advance so that you may paste the content into the appropriate fields. The "research plan" and the "budget" may be uploaded as MSWord, Excel, or .pdf documents.
• Please DO NOT utilize the resources of the Office of Contracts and Grants in the preparation of these seed grant proposals.

The application requires the following information:

• Project Title
• Principal Investigator and Project Director (if different) names, phone numbers, department and college (only one PI per project; no Co-PIs)
• Email: The log-in data will automatically be sent to the e-mail address that you provide for the "Project Director", so please be absolutely sure it is the correct address for managing your IGP application.
• Collaborators and their roles if applicable (name, institution, Unit/Dept) whose participation significantly expands the scope and or direction of your research or creative
• Project Summary: Provide a concise lay summary of the project and explain how it will foster future research vitality - scholarly and/or artistic - at CU-Boulder. (2000 character limit)
• Amount Requested (no overhead or indirect costs allowed)
• Desired Review Venue: Art & Humanities, Natural Sciences & Engineering, or Social Sciences/Professional School
• Biosketch of Principal Investigator: name, highest degree, department/unit, and rank
• Selected honors and awards (500 character limit)
• Representative Scholarly Work or Publications Relevant to this Proposal: Be sure to highlight those published works that are directly relevant to your ability to carry out the proposed project. (700 character limit)
• Other Research Support: Identify currently active support, or support that will be active as of July 2008. Include agency, amount, project title, and award duration. (500 character limit)
• Project Budget: Clearly itemize, by category, the major expenditures that will be required to carry out the proposed. (2000 character limit) This may also be uploaded separately as a spreadsheet or other document.          
• Budget Justification: Concisely provide a justification of the items requested in the budget. Focus particular attention on providing a justification of items listed in your budget that may not be obvious to reviewers who are familiar with but are not experts in your specific field of research or creative work. Include how much/who/what.  (2000 character limit)                
• Research Plan/Project Plan: Attach a Research Plan or Project Plan per the following specifications that briefly describes the aims, significance, methods, and expected outcomes of the project, highlighting how it involves a new and creative direction for the researchers and has the potential for establishing new research directions and/or for high future payoff.   Proposals should use clear writing appropriate for non-specialists and make a strong case for the importance of the project to those outside the area of study.
        Remember, the projects may take any variety of forms but must represent an investment in the future research, scholarly, or artistic vitality of the university and demonstrate promise for expansion of the project goals in the future. The projects can come from all and any disciplines at the university, with those involving interdisciplinary work particularly welcome.
  - Attachments may be in Microsoft Word .doc or Adobe Acrobat .pdf form
  - Length of Research Plan / Project Plan may not exceed 3 pages, including illustrations
  - Length of references and literature cited may not exceed 1 page; please include at the end of 3-page Research Plan
  - Single-spaced text is permitted
  - The MINIMUM font size permitted is Arial 11.  Applications using smaller fonts will be administratively disqualified from review.
  - For figures and accompanying legends, font sizes smaller than Arial 11 are permissible.  However, if the text in figures and legends s not easily legible on-screen, this will negatively influence the review of your proposal.

As you work on each page of the 2009 Innovative Seed Grant Application, it will be automatically saved after you click on the "Next/Submit" button, so that you may return to complete it at any time before the deadline without losing any of your previous work. The log-in data will automatically be sent to the e-mail address that you provide, so please be absolutely sure it is the correct address.

If you are ready, click here to complete the online application now.

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Review Process

We hope to complete the proposal review process and to make funding decisions in March 2009. The procedure for evaluating the proposal will be as follows.

• Faculty review committees will review proposals in three general areas: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences and Professional Schools, and Natural Sciences and Engineering.
• The review committees will evaluate proposals not only for their intellectual merit and broader impacts, but also for their innovation and potential for establishing new research directions, including those created by new interdisciplinary collaborations.

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For additional information, contact the Innovative Seed Grant Team at
innovation@colorado.edu.