Bold Inquiry Incubator

• Only principal investigators (any UT faculty or permanent staff with PI status) are eligible to apply. Adjunct and visiting faculty, postdocs, and research support staff are not eligible to serve as PI or Co-PI but may be named as investigators in proposals. Any individual investigator may participate in only one active Incubator team at any time, and may not propose new Incubators while being considered for, or being funded through, another Incubator. 
• Proposing teams must include three or more PIs from at least two different disciplines (e.g. nursing and psychology, or biomedical engineering and aerospace engineering), but no more than seven PIs. Teams are kept small to ensure that all team members fully participate and remain accountable to their teammates.
• Proposals from all scholarly disciplines and methodologies will be considered. Note that different departments, colleges, schools, or units may be used as a proxy for different disciplines, but that teams still should articulate how the investigators’ areas of study differ from and complement each other in the context of the proposed research project of interest.
• Collaborations must have a central research question or scholarly goal at the core and have identified at least one external funding opportunity at the center grant level to which they plan to apply. Examples of appropriate external funding opportunities include Engineering Research Centers, Physics Frontier Centers, National Institutes of Health P or U funding mechanisms, and non-prototyping funding mechanisms in the National Endowment for the Humanities or Arts.

Application to the Incubators program is a three-step process:

• Step 1. Interested research teams can email the Incubators Program Director at vpr.rdt@austin.utexas.edu to assess if this opportunity aligns with their team’s research needs. The Program Director will meet with the PI team to discuss their concept, planned external funding targets and plans for use of Incubator funds. Incubators programming and OVPR Research Development support also will be discussed at this meeting (see Program Benefits and Participation below).
• Step 2. If the concept is aligned with the Incubators program, the Program Director will invite the PI team to develop a brief, formal proposal for Incubators funding. (See Application Components below for proposal requirements.) Applications are accepted online via the Infoready submission portal.
• Step 3. The formal proposal will be reviewed by the Program Director and OVPR leadership, with input from CSU leadership if deemed necessary. If accepted for Incubators program support, the PI team will then receive Incubators funding and will be included in 12 months of Incubators skill-building programming, including 1:1 consultation with an OVPR Research Development officer.

All application documents should be formatted using 1-inch margins and no smaller than 11-point font. Recommended fonts are Arial, Georgia, Helvetica, and Times New Roman. The documents listed below are required, unless otherwise noted, and must be submitted together and in full for the application to be considered for funding. 

Please submit the following items in the order specified below as a single PDF or Word document:

1. Lay Summary: In 200 words or less, describe for a general audience the proposed research idea and its potential impact.
2. Proposal: Limit to two (2) pages articulating your interest in participating in the Bold Inquiry Incubator program. Organize the proposal in the specified order using the section headings and content guidelines below. Please write this section to an audience of educated non-subject matter experts.
   1. Team: List team members and their affiliations (at least three but no more than seven team members).
   2. Potential for Impact: Briefly describe the research or scholarly vision or creative work the team intends to pursue. Explain the innovative nature of the proposed research approaches and describe the potential impact on the areas of study. Highlight what makes the project team and the nature of the research interdisciplinary. Describe why your team is uniquely suited to pursue your specific line of inquiry (e.g., what you think makes your team the best group to conduct this research, anything your team has done to prepare for this type of funding opportunity, prior collaborative experience, etc.).
   3. Work Plan: Explain why a planning grant is required to initiate your project, emphasizing the barriers (technical, procedural, etc.) that currently hinder your research progress and how a planning grant will impact the probability of research success in securing external funding or advancing scholarly pursuits.
3. Biosketch or Curriculum Vitae for each team member.
4. Budget and Budget Justification: Provide a high-level description of the anticipated budget, how those costs will support planning objectives, and justification for the funds requested.
5. Internal Funding Support (If applicable): List of each team members current and recently ended (within past 24 months) internal grants/support from all other UT sources, including:
   1. College or department level seed funding
   2. Start-up package funding
   3. Discretionary funds/endowment support

The maximum grant amount is $20,000. Proposals are not required to seek the maximum allowable amount. Provide a high-level description of the anticipated budget, how those costs will support planning objectives, and justification for the funds requested.

Allowable Costs

• Convening costs such as space rental (for space outside the OVPR suite), catering, speaker fees/travel, etc.
• Contracted or consulting expertise (if not available at UT and not in the form of a subaward)
• Materials/supplies/consumables related to planning activities (not research materials)
• Travel or registration expenses if strictly required to enhance collaboration, learn required skills, or gather intelligence to build out the team’s joint research agenda
• Benchmarking visits to funded centers at peer institutions

Unallowable Costs

• Faculty salary (summer or otherwise)
• Any expenses related to conducting research. This is not a seed grant to conduct research.
• Fringe or overhead (funds are internally sourced, so these expenses do not need to be budgeted)
• Academic conference travel

Proposals should be written in a manner accessible to educated non-experts. The following evaluation criteria will be used and given equal weight:

1. Evidence that funding will enable the project team to overcome identified barriers and/or further develop the proof of concept thus increasing their competitiveness in the external funding landscape, with clearly identified external funding targets of appropriate scale/scope.
2. Innovation and interdisciplinary nature in the team’s approach to addressing the core scholarly question. It should be clear how the interdisciplinary approach provides a new approach not previously possible without each team member’s contribution.
3. Potential for research impact in the study area.
4. Sound merit and rationale of the proposed planning activities, and the scope of the proposal is feasible for the performance period.

Incubator teams will produce mid-term progress reports and a final report detailing the results of their funding pursuits one year after program completion. Awardees may be asked to review future Bold Inquiry Incubator proposals.