UCLA Multidisciplinary Seed Grants – The UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics

UCLA

Academic Senate Council on Research
Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research

TO: Deans, Directors, Department Chairs, Administrative Officers, and Faculty

RE: Announcement of New Seed Grant Opportunity to Enhance Transdisciplinary Research/Scholarship

The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR) and the Academic Senate Council on Research (COR) are pleased to announce a Call for Proposals for seed grants in furtherance of transdisciplinary research/scholarship.

Purpose: To facilitate transdisciplinary research/scholarship that extends and sustains linkages between the humanities, arts and sciences.

Available Resources: $250,000 in total funding is available to fund seed grants of up to $25,000 per project.

Criteria: Applications must meet the following conditions to be acceptable for review:

The lead PI must be a UCLA faculty member from a humanities, arts or social sciences discipline. The co-investigator(s) may be from any campus or non-campus unit.

The collaboration must be between at least 2 two (2) faculty members. The collaborating faculty may be from any discipline or academic institution but the collaboration must represent the joining of two distinctly different disciplines/approaches.

The proposed area of inquiry or collaboration should be new to UCLA.

Timely submission of proposal that does not exceed three (3) pages by the April 30, 2011 deadline.

The goal of this novel grant mechanism is to provide significant resources to faculty from the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences for the purposes of exploring new areas of research scholarship across disciplines. The OVCR and COR wish to stimulate the faculty (through the availability of these competitive seed grants) to seek collaborations beyond their own disciplines. We believe that these humanistic disciplines, the core of any great research university, can more broadly interact across the campus to enhance creation of new knowledge and scholarship. Some illustrative examples of projects/themes might include cyberpoetry, medical narrative, art applied to engineering design, performance and medicine, digital embodiments and learning, neurolinguistics and pattern recognition, diversity research, poverty, evolution environment and human migration, a symposium about a particular theme with specific expected collaborative research outcomes, etc. This list is merely intended to provide suggestions and is not intended to be restrictive.

To facilitate collaboration, the identification of a theme and the connection with potential collaborators, a website has been established [website no longer active] The website is available for researchers seeking partners and input on ideas. In addition, the website has a database for potential collaborators to enter information about their research interests. To log in to the website, you will need your UCLA Logon ID and password.

More details regarding the proposal requirements, budget requirements, review criteria, and availability of competitive renewals will be published on the TSGF website on March 1, 2011 [website no longer active]. Please note that the three (3) page limit of the seed grant narrative is designed to encourage applicants to concentrate on:

making convincing arguments about the novelty and importance of the proposed collaboration to create new forms of transdisciplinary scholarship on our campus;

explaining how the proposed team is suitable for the proposed collaboration; and

explaining how the collaboration contributes to the pursuit of external funding or further scholarship in a specific area of inquiry.

Our review committee looks forward to reviewing the proposals.

Sincerely,

Paul Davis
Chair, Council on Research James S. Economou
Vice Chancellor for Research

TO:		Deans, Directors, Department Chairs, Administrative Officers, and Faculty
RE:		Announcement of New Seed Grant Opportunity to Enhance Transdisciplinary Research/Scholarship

Purpose:		To facilitate transdisciplinary research/scholarship that extends and sustains linkages between the humanities, arts and sciences.

Available Resources:		$250,000 in total funding is available to fund seed grants of up to $25,000 per project.

Criteria:		Applications must meet the following conditions to be acceptable for review: The lead PI must be a UCLA faculty member from a humanities, arts or social sciences discipline. The co-investigator(s) may be from any campus or non-campus unit. The collaboration must be between at least 2 two (2) faculty members. The collaborating faculty may be from any discipline or academic institution but the collaboration must represent the joining of two distinctly different disciplines/approaches. The proposed area of inquiry or collaboration should be new to UCLA. Timely submission of proposal that does not exceed three (3) pages by the April 30, 2011 deadline.