Last year the University Research Foundation (URF) was temporarily suspended so that all funds could be directed to the Research Resumption Program, which helped faculty mitigate the impact of the pandemic on their research program. This year, Penn is resuming the URF, which provides seed funding for research activities that are expected to lead to external sponsorship and/or peer-reviewed research publications. 

Some changes to the program have been made for this year, including streamlining the application to make it easier for both applicants and reviewers. Only one URF cycle will be offered with a fall deadline of October 22. Note that although there will be only one cycle, there will not be a reduction to the amount of funding for the program. Due to the pandemic, Impact Seminars, which are designed to be large-scale multi-disciplinary events on campus, will not be offered this year. Three categories of grants are being offered: Research and Conference Support Grants; Research Opportunity Development Grants, Phase 1; and Research Opportunity Development Grants, Phase 2. 

Each program has its own guidelines and budget requirements. Details are below, and more information is available online at: https://research.upenn.edu/urf.

Research and Conference Support Grants

This program provides up to $50,000 for research support and up to $3,000 for conference support. (Please note that for the biomed panel full professors can only apply for conference support.) The objectives are to: (a) Help junior faculty undertake pilot projects that will enable them to successfully apply for extramural sources of funding and aid in establishing their careers as independent investigators; (b) Help established faculty perform novel, pioneering research to determine project feasibility and develop preliminary data to support extramural grant applications; (c) Provide support in disciplines where extramural support is difficult to obtain and where significant research can be facilitated with internal funding; and (d) Provide limited institutional matching funds that are required as part of a successful external peer-reviewed application. 

The Conference Support Program is designed to provide funding for meetings to enhance existing research and scholarly programs, particularly in disciplines where external funding is difficult to obtain. Conferences that promote interdisciplinary and multi-school participation are given priority. 

Research Opportunity Development Grants (RODG)

The Research Opportunity Development Grant program (Phase 1 and Phase 2) was designed to facilitate the intersection of the forward trajectory of Penn’s research frontiers with the trajectory of the national and global research priorities. RODG applications must include faculty from 2 or more disciplines and schools and should explicitly consider emerging research areas with new opportunities for support. Awards from these programs should be used to develop preliminary information and data for new and competitive applications to continue the research in these emerging research areas. The two programs are described below. 

Research Opportunity Development Grants: Phase 1

With an identified new research area in mind, Phase 1 grants provide up to $10,000 to enable a team to articulate a research focus, map Penn’s intellectual assets in the new area, coalesce the appropriate group of scholars, identify Penn’s potential contributions in the area in the context of national and international research initiatives and identify a funding target. 

Research Opportunity Development Grants: Phase 2

Phase 2 grants offer extensive support ($50,000-$200,000) over 2 years to enable specific outcomes in support of a multi investigator proposal in an emerging research topic in the context of national or international research initiatives or grand challenges from external sponsors in which Penn can stake out a leadership position. Applicants should identify their future funding opportunity targets in their research proposal. Activities include research workshops, preliminary studies with data, networking in the relevant research community, asset mapping, etc. Cost sharing for this grant will be viewed favorably.

Note that Phase II grants are not intended to support the development of proposals that respond to regular solicitations such as those for NIH RO1 grants or NSF Division programs.  Applications should identify future funding opportunity targets.

Disciplinary Areas

Faculty members are invited to submit their research applications to one of four disciplinary areas: Biomedical Sciences, Humanities, Natural Sciences and Engineering, and Social Science and Management.

­—Office of the Vice Provost for Research