This call for proposals is now open.
Proposal timeline:
- Proposals are due on or before January 31, 2025
- Awards announced in February 2025
Fund information:
The Program offers faculty the opportunity to engage in research by forming teams across disciplines, combining expertise from diverse fields. This program provides funding to foster synergy between unexpected pairings and help research teams take creative risks. The Program may support exploratory work in its early stages on untested, but potentially transformative, research ideas or approaches - especially "high risk, high payoff" in the sense that it involves radically different approaches, applies new expertise, or engages novel disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives.
A total budget of $300,000/year will be allocated to support selected projects, allowing for a broad scope of transformational research. Each proposal will receive a maximum of $75K.
Projects must propose a fresh perspective on existing research questions or address new questions. Projects or ideas that have the potential to significantly transform our understanding of key concepts in social sciences, humanities, science, or engineering disciplines, or to establish new paradigms or fields within these areas, will be considered.
Eligibility:
Full-time faculty members at Rice are eligible to apply. Proposals may be submitted by two or more faculty from at least two distinct schools. Under rare circumstances a compelling rare transformational idea may be considered.
Review process:
The review of proposals will be carried out by the committee set up by the Executive Vice President of Research.
Selection criteria:
Proposals will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
- Quality, significance and potential impact of the project and synergy of the diverse disciplines that will be brought together
- Likelihood that the project will result in a successful proposal for federal funding
- The proposal should include clear statements as to why this project is appropriate for this funding, including why it does not fit into existing centers or institutes.
- Project description should be brief and not more than 3-4 pages
How to apply:
Proposals must be submitted using this webform by January 15, 2025 at 11:59pm.
Proposals must include the following in a single PDF document:
- A Scope of Work, Project Description and Impact Statement
- A single-page budget indicating how the requested funds will be expended
- A curriculum vitae for each applicant of no more than three pages per CV.