Seed funding for collaborative CEED projects
The USC Dornsife Center for Ecological and Evolutionary Dynamics aims to unite researchers interested in ecology and evolution. Our community is spread throughout USC and gets together biweekly for a seminar, socialization, and collaboration.
The Center presently includes 18 faculty, with diverse research specialties. Our community is open to all; we encourage new members to come check us out: https://dornsife.usc.edu/ceed/
Beginning in the Fall 2024, we will support small seed grants with funding from the USC Dornsife faculty-led initiatives program. These grants are intended to foster new collaborations, helping labs acquire preliminary data for new research grant applications. We will award up to nine $20,000 seed grants.
These grants require at least two PI’s to collaborate. Our whole goal is to catalyze new research directions that did not exist before. We will measure our success by the number of new grant submissions (NSF, NIH, etc.) that these seed grants enabled. For more information, please contact Matt Dean (matthew.dean@usc.edu).
Proposal guidelines:
1) Each proposal should be no more than 2-pages long, and contain clear descriptions of the proposed research, including the potential impact, aims, team, and budget.
2) Should include a list of target announcements for larger, long-term funding (e.g., NSF, NIH, etc.).
3) Proposals will be reviewed as they are received – our first set of decisions will be made by March 1st, 2025 and should be submitted to Matt Dean (matthew.dean@usc.edu). If you have questions about whether your proposal fits with the Center’s objectives, please contact Matt Dean (matthew.dean@usc.edu).
Eligibility requirements:
1) Each team must involve at least two PIs, at least one of which has a primary appointment in Dornsife.
2) Tenured, tenure-track, and research faculty are eligible to serve as PIs.
3) Requests can include student or postdoc support, or materials and supplies, but cannot include PI salary.
4) At least 50% of the planned funding should be spent in Dornsife investigator laboratories.
5) Non-CEED members are eligible to apply. Indeed, we hope this call identifies additional faculty aligned with the Center’s objectives. Funded researchers will be expected to join our community and participate in Center events