Research Continuity Update for Chairs - November 5, 2021

Dear Chairs and Directors, 

 

As always, you are welcome and encouraged to share these updates and reminders with faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students who may find the information and links helpful. We have no new policies or procedures related to research during the pandemic at this time. This note contains updates on a new research development to help with some proposals; sponsored research funding opportunities; a new VPDoR seed grant program (this round for Research on Racial Equity and Justice (RREJ), welcoming all disciplines to apply); and a strategic platforms (shared facilities) initiative, welcoming your input.

 

Research Development Office

The Stanford Research Development Office (RDO) is a new unit under VPDoR, created to strengthen collaborative research and scholarly activities. RDO helps to set researchers up for funding success by supporting team, concept, and proposal development. Its goal is to enhance the competitiveness of a proposal, while reducing the burden on PIs.

 

Support includes advising on sponsor interests, participating in grant-writing and editing, providing feedback on the proposal from a grant-making perspective, and assisting with project management of the proposal development. The office supports researchers across all disciplines, with an emphasis on complex or strategic proposals. RDO will review each request for support and tailor its contribution to optimize the value they can bring. To find out more, visit researchdevelopment.stanford.edu.

 

Sponsored Research Funding Opportunities

Below are a few timely and prominent sponsored research funding opportunities to spotlight this month. A longer, curated list is available here.
 

  • Science and Technology Centers: Integrative Partnerships (STC; NSF 22-521) Supports exceptionally innovative, complex research and education projects that require large-scale, long-term awards. STCs focus on creating new scientific paradigms, establishing entirely new scientific disciplines, and developing transformative technologies that have the potential for broad scientific or societal impact. Award size $30,000,000. Limited Submission: internal proposal due 11/29/21, details here. Watch info by RDO here.

 

  •  NEH Collaborative Research Supports groups of two or more scholars seeking to increase humanistic knowledge through convenings, research, manuscript preparation for collaborative publications, and the creation of scholarly digital projects. Awards up to $250,000. Due to NEH 12/01/21.

 

VPDoR Research Seed Grant Program 

This year, we will launch a series of research seed grants. The program provides awards of $10k-$50k each to help Stanford researchers position themselves well for larger, extramural funding opportunities, for example by supporting the formation of research teams, establishing feasibility, and pursuing new areas of research and development. The topic area of this first round of the program is Research on Racial Equity and Justice (RREJ), and we welcome applications from all disciplines. For more information and to apply, visit RREJ on Stanford Seed Funding. 

 

Strategic Platforms initiative

The Strategic Platforms initiative, established under the university’s Long-Range Vision, aims to expand and enhance shared resources and facilities, including equipment that can be shared among diverse groups, expertise to support new research directions, and funding for faculty creating new platforms. The goal is to make resources more accessible to more researchers, enable fluid interdisciplinary research teams, and support the acceleration of both fundamental and translational research.

 

This fall, VPDoR is undertaking a project with University IT and the shared facility community to develop a strategy for near- and long-term investments in data hardware, data operations, and instrument facilities, with the goal of democratizing access to resources for Stanford researchers. The strategy will be designed around four guiding principles: capability, capacity, accessibility, and navigability. 
 

  • Capability: Our shared research platforms must have a sophisticated array of instrumentation and data resources in place, to enable us to both push the boundaries of human knowledge and recruit and retain the best talent.

 

  • Capacity: A founding premise of shared research platforms is to reduce inequities and barriers to access. Within reasonable bounds, shared research platforms should be accessible to all researchers on campus whose scholarship would benefit from them.

 

  • Accessibility: Accessibility depends on the capacity of shared research platforms to match reasonable demands -- oversubscription and long queues could make these resources inaccessible in practical terms. Accessibility also depends on affordability, ensuring that these platforms can benefit researchers at every stage of their careers across many different disciplines. 

 

  • Navigability: Researchers need smooth paths to locate, navigate, and utilize available resources. Such paths depend on effective user support. 

 

We aim to bring a comprehensive proposal to the Provost’s Budget Group for consideration in the Winter Quarter. In the meantime, if you have concrete suggestions to improve Stanford’s shared research platforms, please email us.

 

Stay safe and be well, 

Kam, Tim, Serena 

Kam Moler, Vice Provost and Dean of Research; Marvin Chodorow Professor and Professor of Applied Physics and of Physics

Tim Stearns, Senior Associate Vice Provost of Research; Frank Lee and Carol Hall Professor and Professor of Genetics

Serena Rao, Senior Associate Dean for Finance and Administration, Vice Provost and Dean of Research