Faculty Seed Grants
The Center for the Environment's seed grant program awards research grants up to $300,000 to teams of faculty to seed large-scale, innovative, and exciting new projects on issues that address a major problem related to the grand challenges of energy and environment. The awards are intended to catalyze faculty collaboration on research that will have substantive impact on the world. The selection committee seeks proposals that represent a new collaboration among the faculty team members. Proposed research should also be in keeping with the objectives of a seed grant program: it should be innovative, risky, and distinct from what one might normally submit to traditional funding sources (e.g., NSF, NIH). At the same time, these grants are intended as a launching pad to allow large, collaborative projects to develop until they can compete successfully for outside funding.
The Stage 1 proposal deadline was in December 2010. Going forward, the Center will continue to accept seed grant proposals on a rolling basis. Learn more about the Academic Year 2010-2011 Award Recipients
The deadline for submitting proposals for Stage 2 is December 2011. The Center will announce awards within four weeks of this deadline.
Selection Process
Awards will be made in a two-stage competition open to all Harvard tenure-track faculty members, regardless of any affiliation with the Center. Collaborators from other universities are eligible to be part of a research team but are not able to receive any funds.
Stage 1: The Center recognizes that faculty proposing collaborative research on this scale benefit from support at an early developmental stage. The Seed Grant Program will therefore make awards in the range of $10,000- $30,000 available to offer faculty teams opportunities to build capacity and develop the strongest possible proposal. Funding may be used for facilitating meetings of collaborators – planning sessions, workshops, speaker series, etc. – as well as for preliminary data collection, including hiring research assistants. The Center’s administrative staff is available to help manage the logistics of all of these activities.
Stage 2: As a final product at the end of Stage 1 funding, research groups will have the opportunity to submit proposals for large-scale seed grants. Proposals at this stage will follow the guidelines below but require a longer narrative in the range of 10-15 pages.
To Apply
Faculty team members should submit:
1) A cover sheet that identifies all participants, including the team leader(s) and their contact information (department, address, phone number and email), title of the proposal, and amount of funding requested. We recognize that as part of the team-building process of Stage 1, new members will likely join as the research project develops. Thus, please also list additional potential types of collaborators, even if a specific individual has not been recruited or identified at the time of application.
2) A proposal of no more than three pages (12-point type, including illustrations) addressing the following:
• Purpose, goals, objectives and duration (both Stage 1 and 2) of the
proposed research;
• What is innovative about the proposed research and what makes it less
likely to receive funding at this stage from traditional sources; and
• Potential future sources of funding if the research is successful.
3) A one-page budget and justification. The awards cannot be used to support faculty salaries.
4) Curriculum vitae (2 pages) for each participating faculty member.
5) A brief list of current support from all sources including federal and foundation grants, corporate and private gifts, and endowments.
Click here for a printable program description.
Please submit proposals by email in PDFs or Word files to James Clem, the Center’s managing director, by the deadline listed above. Questions should also be directed to James Clem by email or phone (617) 496-5458.
Note: The Center recognizes that the need still exists for smaller grants to faculty to fund special research opportunities, especially those with time horizons too short for traditional outside funders. In such cases, faculty should send a short note to Center Director Dan Schrag outlining the opportunity. He will consider all requests on an ad hoc basis.
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