UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Seed grants focused on human health and the environment now are available to Penn State faculty members and researchers. Pilot projects that exhibit innovative approaches to significant problems related to human health and the environment are encouraged to be submitted.
The request for proposals is being sponsored by the Penn State College of Medicine, the Penn State Cancer Institute, the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, the Social Science Research Institute, the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, the Materials Research Institute, the Institute for CyberScience and the Institutes of Energy and the Environment.
With such a wide variety of sponsoring Penn State units, proposals may range in topic, including environmental impacts on human health; environment-cancer linkages; the use of sensors or other devices to capture environmental influences on human health; population variations in environmental exposures and their impacts on human health; or the role of human behavior in health-relevant environmental exposures.
At least $400,000 of funding is available, with an average range from $25,000 to $50,000 for each project. However, for certain high-risk, high-reward proposals that are related to the mission of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, additional funds may be available.
Successful proposals should aim to build collaborations involving new interdisciplinary research teams whose research is aimed at attracting external funding. Priority will be given to cross-college, cross-campus (including all Penn State campuses) and cross-institute teams.
All Penn State faculty members who hold appointments of half-time or more at any Penn State campus are eligible to submit a seed grant proposal as principal investigator.
The deadline for pre-proposals is 5 p.m. on March 1.
For more details, read the full Request for Proposals.
A webinar on the pre-proposal process is scheduled for early February, with more details to follow.
Please direct any questions regarding the proposal process to the relevant institute director. General questions can be sent to iee@psu.edu.