Fields With Limited External Funding
The Fields With Limited External Funding category provides support for faculty members in fields where there is little external funding available. It is expected that possibilities of external funding will be pursued in these fields also, with the advice of department chairs and heads, college research development officers, and the University's Office of Sponsored Projects Administration. These efforts should be documented in the proposal.
This category does not include fields where there is significant external funding available, albeit this funding may be difficult to obtain because of the level of competition. This category would be inappropriate for a multidisciplinary project where any of the disciplines involved had the opportunity for significant external funding.
New Assistant Professors
The New Assistant Professors category provides funding for new members of the faculty who need assistance in establishing research, scholarly, or artistic programs. This category is restricted to assistant professors* in the first four years of their appointment at the University. Junior faculty holding an appointment for longer than four years may be considered if they present convincing, well-justified reasons for consideration beyond their first four years.
This category is given the highest priority, but should not be considered a substitute for departmental and college funding owed to such new faculty. It is expected that only one award in the New Assistant Professors category would be awarded per faculty member unless there is an exceptional need. New assistant professors are strongly encouraged to obtain feedback from a senior colleague before submitting a proposal to the Grant-in-Aid program.
*Senior faculty are not eligible to apply under this category.
New Research Direction
The New Research Direction category provides support for faculty members moving into significantly different areas of research or scholarship. This could also include new multidisciplinary directions.
Proposals in this category must include a cover letter with specific language explaining how this project is indeed a new direction and is not an extension of current research. This category does not provide support for faculty applying new techniques to ongoing research, but rather to those faculty proposing a very different set of research questions that will likely lead to new sources of external funding. See additional information on cover letters in the Application Instructions.
Opioid-related Research: Special Category for the Fall GIA Competition
In response to public concern over the opioid abuse epidemic, OVPR will award up to 10 grants, with a limit of $10,000 each, to support research related to opioids, alternative pain management and treatments, substance use disorder, addiction pathways in the body, overdose reduction, and community-based addiction prevention strategies, etc.
Shared Equipment
The Shared Equipment category provides support or partial support for major capital equipment that is not currently available, that will be shared by several faculty members, and that will increase the likelihood of external funding. Note that proposals funded in this category must include 30–50 percent cost sharing and must include a quote for the specific instrument.
See Shared Equipment Instructions.
Special Requests for Established Investigators’ Pilot Projects
Note: This category is only being offered on a temporary experimental basis and is given the lowest priority.
The Special Requests for Established Investigators’ Pilot Projects category provides funding for established investigators (associate professor and professor) to obtain pilot data for projects involving a new research team, a new research direction or a unique extension of existing work and that has promise to lead to substantial future external funding.
A new research team would include faculty members who have not worked together before. Although there might be some history of collaboration between individual faculty members in the new research group, the group itself should not have worked together for more than approximately one year.
A new research direction would involve a set of research questions not previously addressed by the investigators. See additional information on cover letters in the Application Instructions.