OVPR Incubator Planning Grants

• 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 a time and may not propose new Incubators while being considered for, or being funded through, another Incubator.
• Proposals from all scholarly disciplines and methodologies will be considered.
• 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. 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 NSF Engineering Research Centers, National Institutes of Health P or U funding mechanisms, and major research mechanisms offered by the National Endowment for the Humanities or Arts. NIH R01s are not eligible target opportunities, regardless of scope or scale. PIs seeking support to develop an NIH R01 are encouraged to consider OVPR’s R01 Writing Groups.

The maximum planning grant amount is $20,000 although proposals are not required to seek the maximum amount.

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

Interested research teams should 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.

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 "Documents Required for Submission" below). Applications are accepted using our online submission portal.

The formal proposal will be reviewed by the Program Director and OVPR leadership, with input from college/school 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 Incubator skill-building programming, including 1:1 consultation with an OVPR Research Development officer.

Please submit using the proposal template.

Download RFP/Proposal Template

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 planning grant 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.