CPHM Funding Vehicles

Large Grant Catalyst (LGC)

Interdisciplinary Grant Proposal Incubator (IGPI)

Large-scale research efforts that bring together investigators across disciplines can have a transformative impact on scientific research, innovation and economic development.

The Center for Personalized Health Monitoring is offering planning grants to incubate the development of such large interdisciplinary grants. Our goal is to enable more researchers to “make the leap” towards submitting larger proposals that facilitate more collaborative endeavors between CPHM faculty as well as the broader IALS community and campus.

What do we mean by large interdisciplinary grants? A range of grant sizes are of interest to us ranging from center-scale grants to medium-to-large scale efforts in areas of strategic importance to CPHM. As examples, in the last couple of years, the campus has submitted several “center-scale” grants that are led by or include CPHM faculty including an NIH P30 (Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratories for Aging Research), NIH U54 (Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) program), and NSF Center proposals (National Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, and Engineering Research Center). In addition, large interdisciplinary grants have been submitted and funded by programs such as the NSF Convergence Accelerator, and medium-scale ones by the NSF Smart and Connected Health program.

Below are a few of open RFAs for large grants that are of interest to CPHM. While the list is not exhaustive, it can provide a glimpse at the types of grants that are of interest to this program. You are welcome to target other similarly-sized grant efforts.

• Screening for Conditions by Electronic Nose Technology (SCENT) (U01)
• Smart and Connected Health
• Cyber-Physical Systems Frontier Program

How will CPHM help with planning for a large grant submission? Our goal is to help with large grant submissions including mentoring, and feedback on your proposals and through planning grants that will be available to support specific and targeted funding opportunities that are uniquely suited to our research strengths and infrastructure.

Planning grants can be up to $40K each. These funds are to develop proposals primarily for grants that are $1.5 million or more in total funding with preference for larger efforts and those that bridge traditionally separate disciplines and include PIs across departments and colleges.

What should I include in a planning grant proposal? Specific funding opportunities must be targeted in the proposal with a clear target deadline, and the proposals need to make the case that UMass already has the requisite research strength and infrastructure in the proposed area.

How does the selection process work?

Number of slots and budgetary considerations. Planning grants will typically be funded for one year with a budget of up to $40K. If needs are different to this in time or total $s requested this needs to be discussed prior to submission. CPHM will be able to support a limited number of proposals/year.   

Review Committee. The reviews will be conducted by the CPHM Leadership. Affiliated CPHM faculty may also be asked to provide feedback on proposals in their areas of expertise if additional input is needed. 

Selection Criteria. Review criteria include: Relevance to CPHM, Strengths of the investigators, Novelty and Scientific merit, Technical feasibility, Interdisciplinary and importantly, Fit to target funding opportunity.

Selection Procedures. Applications for planning grants will follow a two-step procedure. Applicants will initially submit a short Letter Of Intent (LOI) describing the plan. Proposals will be reviewed and PIs who have submitted highly rated LOIs will be invited for a presentation and Q&A. Final selections will be made thereafter. 

Timeline. Submissions are due twice a year, once in Spring and once in Fall. The Spring deadline for this year is April 30, and the Fall deadline is Oct 30. Applicants will be notified about funding decisions in late Spring/late Fall.

What happens once a proposal is selected? We will help mentor awardees towards submitting their grant by providing feedback and guidance about their team, proposal structure and writing, and other aspects that can improve chances of funding.  Towards this goal, we expect that PIs plan to work on the proposal well in advance of the deadline to provide sufficient time to iterate with CPHM mentors.