Completed

The CCR Grants have fostered promising breast cancer researchers who are in the early stages of their faculty careers by providing support for up to three years of “protected time” for research career development under the guidance of a Mentor Committee. The Foundation is especially interested in hypothesis-driven studies that target breast cancer, in the development of strategies for earlier diagnosis, reduce risk of breast cancer, or increase the effectiveness of current therapies to lead to longer and better-quality outcomes for patients.  They may be considered basic, translational, clinical and/or population science. 

Award: Up to $150,000 per year (combined direct and indirect costs) for up to three years ($450,000).

Eligibility:

• Must have a doctoral degree, such as M.D., Ph.D., Dr.P.H., D.O., or equivalent.
• Must currently hold a full-time faculty appointment or have a formal offer letter from the Institution that confirms position and start date by the Application due date (October 9, 2024).
• Must not have held any faculty appointment, including non-tenure and tenure track appointments combined, for more than a total of 6 years by the Application due date.
• Must not simultaneously hold any other Grant awarded by Susan G. Komen.
• Must not currently be or have been a Principal Investigator on an existing NIH R01 grant or their equivalent as of the date of Award Notification (on or around April 15, 2025).
• Must conduct the proposed research and training at the Lead Mentor’s U.S. based institution.
• Must have adequate space and facilities to conduct the proposed research and must be able to devote at least 75% of full-time effort to breast cancer research and activities.

*The University of Arizona Cancer Center (UACC) can nominate up to two applicants but only if at least one of the two nominees identifies as as someone from groups shown to be historically minoritized and marginalized in biomedical research from National Science Foundation data (details outlined in RFA).

For more information please contact UACC-preaward@arizona.edu

Apply to Internal Competition // Limit: 2 // Tickets Available: 2*

This grant mechanism aims to help outstanding senior postdoctoral fellows and clinical fellows, working under the guidance of a mentor, launch their competitive, independent breast cancer research careers. Career Transition Awards provide up to five years of funding in two phases: Phase 1 supports the final years of mentored, postdoctoral training; and Phase 2 supports the independent research of the early career, tenure-track investigators. 

Research projects must be hypothesis-driven, breast cancer-focused studies. They may be considered basic, translational, clinical and/or population science. 

Komen’s research priorities are conquering metastatic and aggressive breast cancers, advancing personalized breast cancer care throughout the continuum of care and eliminating breast cancer disparities and inequities. 

Eligibility:

• Individuals pursuing independent breast cancer research careers who are in the final years of mentored postdoctoral research training positions with no more than five years of total postdoctoral research experience at the time of Letter of Intent submission (August 7, 2024). For this application clinical fellows are considered eligible and equal to the postdoctoral rank.
• Must have a doctoral degree, including M.D., Ph.D., Dr.P.H., D.O., or equivalent.
• May not hold any appointment designated as faculty (e.g., assistant professor, clinical assistant professor, faculty-level instructor, or equivalent). Clinical fellows with the title instructor are allowed as long as they are no more than 5 years into their training similar to above bullet concerning postdoctoral training.
• Must be able to devote at least 75% of full-time effort to breast cancer research and activities, i.e., protected research time.
• Applicant/PI may not hold another career transition award, training award (K-type awards) or R-type award at time of notification of intent to fund (on or around April 15, 2025). If Applicant previously held an R-type award at any point, they are not eligible to apply for this award.
• Is not required to be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.

*The University of Arizona Cancer Center (UACC) can nominate up to two applicants but only if at least one of the two nominees identifies as as someone from groups shown to be historically minoritized and marginalized in biomedical research from National Science Foundation data (details outlined in RFA).

For more information please contact UACC-preaward@arizona.edu


Apply to Internal Competition // Limit: 2 // Tickets Available: 2*

Limit: 1 // K. Rhodes  (Immunology)

The funds are designed to provide to tenure track faculty members in their first to fourth year, at American Institutions, who hold M.D. and/or Ph.D. degrees, start-up support to move the project forward to the point where R01 or other independent funding can be obtained.  Applicants with current R01 funding should not apply.

Beginning in 2023, the grant provides $75,000 annually for a period of up to three years.  Grants are not renewable.  Institutions may submit one proposal per session.  Interested candidates should work through their sponsored projects office.

Proposals must contain an adequately detailed description of the project to be clearly understandable by the scientific members of the Trustees.  They need not be in the detail requested by the NIH for R01 grants and should not exceed five pages in length.  Additional material can be submitted, but the five-page application should contain the essential information.  References should also be included to support the proposal.  Note that the five page limit is only for the project description.  

A one-two page lay summary must be provided as part of the proposal. Applicants should bear in mind that our Board includes non-scientist members, making this summary of particular importance.  The summary should include the project’s title, and the investigator's contact information.

In addition to the institution providing recognition of an internal selection process resulting in no more than one candidate, (this requires just a sentence that may be included in the letters), the proposal must be accompanied by letters of approval by the Dean of the medical school and/or another senior faculty member or members who can represent the support of the institution and who are acquainted with the qualifications of the applicant and the potential impact of his/her work.

Limit: 1 // K. Rhodes  (Immunology)

The funds are designed to provide to tenure track faculty members in their first to fourth year, at American Institutions, who hold M.D. and/or Ph.D. degrees, start-up support to move the project forward to the point where R01 or other independent funding can be obtained.  Applicants with current R01 funding should not apply.

Beginning in 2023, the grant provides $75,000 annually for a period of up to three years.  Grants are not renewable.  Institutions may submit one proposal per session.  Interested candidates should work through their sponsored projects office.

Proposals must contain an adequately detailed description of the project to be clearly understandable by the scientific members of the Trustees.  They need not be in the detail requested by the NIH for R01 grants and should not exceed five pages in length.  Additional material can be submitted, but the five-page application should contain the essential information.  References should also be included to support the proposal.  Note that the five page limit is only for the project description.  

A one-two page lay summary must be provided as part of the proposal. Applicants should bear in mind that our Board includes non-scientist members, making this summary of particular importance.  The summary should include the project’s title, and the investigator's contact information.

In addition to the institution providing recognition of an internal selection process resulting in no more than one candidate, (this requires just a sentence that may be included in the letters), the proposal must be accompanied by letters of approval by the Dean of the medical school and/or another senior faculty member or members who can represent the support of the institution and who are acquainted with the qualifications of the applicant and the potential impact of his/her work.

// Limit: 1 //  A. Favela (School of Plant Sciences)

Patagonia accepts one proposal per group in a given fiscal year (May 1–April 30), with deadlines varying from program to program. Patagonia's typical grant size also varies from program to program but generally ranges between $5,000 and $20,000.

Patagonia funds only environmental work. We are most interested in making grants to organizations that identify and work on the root causes of problems and that approach issues with a commitment to long-term change. Because we believe that the most direct path to real change is through building grassroots momentum, our funding focuses on organizations that create a strong base of citizen support.

We support small, grassroots, activist organizations with provocative direct-action agendas, working on multi-pronged campaigns to preserve and protect our environment. We help local groups working to protect local habitat, and think the individual battles to protect a specific stand of forest, stretch of river or indigenous wild species are the most effective in raising more complicated issues—particularly those of biodiversity and ecosystem protection—in the public mind. We look for innovative groups that produce measurable results, and we like to support efforts that force the government to abide by its own—our own—laws. Your efforts should be quantifiable, with specific goals, objectives and action plans, and should include measures for evaluating success.

Because we're a privately held company, we have the freedom to fund groups off the beaten track, and that's where we believe our small grants are most effective. We support the use of creative methods to engage communities to take action, including film, photography and books. However, media projects will only be successful in our proposal process if they are tightly linked to a direct-action campaign on the issue, with specific goals that go beyond education and awareness.

Institutionally Coordinated// Limit: 1 

The National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition is proud to announce its 2024-2025 campaign to recognize Outstanding First-Year Student Advocates. The annual award campaign, inaugurated over thirty years ago, recognizes individuals on college and university campuses who serve as outstanding advocates for undergraduate first-year students. To date, we have recognized over 320 award recipients. We are able to undertake the campaign again this year with the generous continuing support of Penguin Random House.

We invite you, or someone you appoint, to nominate one person from your institution as an Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate. We encourage you to identify an individual on your campus who serves as an activist, intercessor, and/or supporter for first-year students – someone who is passionate about new students' success. Nominees may be faculty members, administrators, professional staff, or students. Please refer to the link below to submit an online nomination. The deadline for submission of nominations is June 28, 2024.  

Members and past members of our national advisory board, past award recipients, and other leaders in higher education will select ten nominees as award recipients. Two award recipients will be chosen from each of five categories based on institution type and size. The ten recipients will be honored at the 44th Annual Conference on The First-Year Experience, February 16-19, 2025, in New Orleans, Louisiana. We will waive all conference registration fees for award recipients.

Institutionally Coordinated // Please contact the Office of HSI Initiatives for more information.

 HSI Initiatives would coordinate the submission for the Institutional Transformation Track (ITT) and HSI Program Resource Hubs (Hubs).
UArizona does not have any active Institutional Transformation Track (ITT), so there should not be any limit on the Departmental/Division Transformation Track (DDTT) track proposals.
UArizona is not eligible for the Emerging Faculty Research Track (EFRT).

Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) are an important component of the nation’s higher education ecosystem and play a critical role in realizing the National Science Board Vision Report for a more diverse and capable science and engineering workforce. Aligned with this vision and the NSF Strategic Plan 2022 -2026 the goals of the NSF HSI Program are to:

1. Enhance the quality of undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education at HSIs.

2. Increase the recruitment, retention, and graduation rates of students pursuing associate’s or baccalaureate degrees in STEM at HSIs.

Meeting these goals requires institutions to understand and embrace their students’ strengths, challenges, identities and lived experiences. This can happen in many ways and across many areas of an institution. As such, the IUSE: HSI program provides multiple opportunities to support an institution’s goal to become more student centered, including the Equitable Transformation in STEM Education (ETSE) competition. This competition includes the following tracks:

• Departmental/Division Transformation Track (DDTT) - New

• Institutional Transformation Track (ITT)

• Emerging Faculty Research Track (EFRT) - New

• HSI Program Resource Hubs (Hubs)

This solicitation will also accept conference proposals and planning proposals, as defined by the PAPPG.

The ETSE competition focuses on (1) institutional transformation projects that support HSIs in their effort to achieve equity in STEM education, and (2) the infrastructure—the HSI-Net network of resource hubs—which supports the overall program goals.

Institutions are encouraged to consider how their HSI designation, and their organizational mission align to better support STEM success of all students. The ETSE competition welcomes proposals that look to implement and evaluate promising practices and/or conduct research related to broadening participation or improving recruitment, retention, graduation, and other successful outcomes in STEM undergraduate education.

The ETSE solicitation supports projects designed to catalyze change and help HSIs meet students where they are, accounting for their assets and the challenges they may face. Identities and experiences are not determined solely by membership in a single monolithic population of students (e.g., Hispanic, first-generation, commuter, etc.). Consequently, institutions are expected to use institutional data to identify equity gaps, identify areas of need, and unpack the factors that shape students’ individual identities and shared experiences. The perspectives gained from this data should be central to the design of the proposed project.

Please see below for specific information about each track. While proposals are focused on mechanisms for transforming undergraduate STEM education, projects should also consider student voices and include mechanisms to aggregate and analyze existing student feedback and collect quantitative and qualitative student data throughout the life of the proposed project.

Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization:

DDTT proposals: Eligible institutions with an active Track 3: Institutional Transformation project (ITP) award from NSF 22-611, NSF 22-545, or NSF 20-599 or an active ITT award from this solicitation must describe how the proposed DDTT project is compatible with the efforts being undertaken by the active award.

ITT proposals: Eligible institutions may submit one proposal and may not have an active Track 3 Institutional Transformation Project (ITP) award from, NSF 22-611, NSF 22-545, or NSF 20-599. Institutions with an active DDTT award from this solicitation must describe how the proposed ITT project is compatible with the departmental/divisional transformation effort being undertaken by the active award.

EFRT and Hub proposals: No Restrictions

Limit: 1// I. Reyes ( Collge of Education -  Borderlands Education Center (BEC))

Planning Grant (these require approval from the NSF Program Officer): J. Watkins (Math)

In response to the CHIPS Act of 2022 (Pub.L. 117-167), NSF is establishing the National STEM Teacher Corps Pilot Program. The purpose of this program is to elevate the profession of STEM teaching by establishing a National STEM Teacher Corps Pilot Program to recognize outstanding STEM teachers in our Nation’s classrooms, reward them for their accomplishments, elevate their public profile, and create rewarding career paths to which all STEM teachers can aspire, both to prepare future STEM researchers and to create a scientifically literate public.

With this solicitation, NSF is inviting proposals to establish an initial set of Regional Alliances responsible for (a) recruiting eligible applicants to become members of the National STEM Teacher Corps (see definitions in section II.A.); (b) screening, interviewing, and selecting members; and (c) supporting other activities detailed in the Program Description and the law (136 STAT. 1515).

Each Alliance will be awarded as a cooperative agreement that represents the breadth of activities important to National STEM Teacher Corps Pilot Program and serves to elevate the public profile of STEM teachers within the region. Collectively these Alliances are expected to have a national impact. 

The National STEM Teacher Corps also welcomes planning proposals submitted at any time during the year. See Section II.E for additional information about the preparation and submission of planning proposals.

Limit: 2 // Tickets Available: 0

E. Mcleod (Wyant College of Optical Sciences)

J. Thangavelautham (Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering)

There will be two webinars to learn more about the Schmidt Science Polymaths selection process, on Wednesday, June 26, 2024 (11:00 a.m. CT) and Thursday, August 1, 2024 (10:00 a.m. CT). Register here.

The Schmidt Science Polymath Program seeks to empower intensely creative, early-to-mid-career researchers to take adventurous leaps into new research domains, experiment with new methodologies and ideas, and inspire impactful scientific breakthroughs. Achieving tenure, or equivalent status, should be a moment when professors feel a new sense of freedom that allows them to innovate and attempt new research paths. Unfortunately, this time is often coupled with a lack of resources and a pressure to continue producing results within their established research portfolio.

The Schmidt Science Polymath program (“the program”) recognizes extraordinary researchers with remarkable track records, promising futures, and a desire to expand their research portfolios by exploring a substantive disciplinary or methodological shift soon after achieving tenure. The program will offer long-term research support to professors who have recently achieved tenure or an equivalent status (within the past three calendar years) with remarkable track records and highly promising futures. Each professor will be awarded $500,000 per year, paid through their institution, for up to five years to help support a research group through talent, such as three to four students or postdocs, and resources. These grants are intended to make possible the exploration of new ideas across disciplines, using emerging technologies to test risky theories that may not otherwise receive funding or support. They are not intended to relieve the researcher of pursuing other grants to continue their mainstream work, nor to be large enough to fully support a modern lab.

Schmidt Sciences will review all nominations and send eligible and promising nominees an invitation and instructions on how to apply. We especially encourage nominee submissions from geographies outside of the US and/or who belong to demographic groups that are currently underrepresented in scientific research. Please note that not all nominees will be invited to apply. We encourage you to nominate only the strongest candidates who demonstrate the selection criteria outlined in this guide. The review is highly selective; fewer than 10% of applicants are selected to receive the award each year. Nominations are typically collected from June to mid-August, applications are due in October, and decisions are shared in April.

Tenure or Equivalent Status

We recognize that tenure is not a global status, and that even among institutions that award tenure there is variation in title and experience. We are looking for candidates who have recently reached a level of security, seniority, and permanence in their positions who should have significant academic freedom. The three-year window is intended to reflect a period of a candidate's career, not their position in many universities, so eligible candidates should have received tenure or a permanent faculty position for the first time at any institution within the past three years. At many American research universities, eligible candidates are Associate Professors, though depending on the institution, eligible candidates may range from Senior Lecturers to Professors.

Candidate Criteria

In order to be eligible for nomination to the Schmidt Science Polymaths application process, candidates must meet the following qualifications: ● Have achieved tenure or an equivalent status within the past three calendar years (January 1, 2021 or later), ● Have a remarkable record of accomplishment in mathematics, computer science, natural sciences, and/or engineering, ● Have a demonstrated history of pursuing and publishing results in more than one field, ● Have a desire and plan to expand their research portfolios by exploring a substantive disciplinary or methodological shift, but have not yet launched such shifts, ● Demonstrate a need for additional funding to enable new experiments, explorations, or shifts in research directions

Selection Criteria

We are looking for the brightest minds in mathematics, computer science, natural sciences, and/or engineering who have gained recognition for significant progress on multiple research problems while also showing a capacity for generating a continuing flow of innovative new ideas and approaches in a variety of areas. They will have demonstrated their high variance thinking through successful research in areas widely divergent from their main field of expertise. Schmidt Science Polymaths are expected to be intensely creative science leaders who demonstrate an immense capacity for innovative new thinking or shifts in research directions that can lead to impactful breakthroughs given flexible resources. Applications will be judged based on: ● The breadth and depth of the candidates' work ● The quality, impact, and innovation displayed in the candidates work ● The candidates’ track-record of high variance thinking and approaches, as well as their capacity for creative new research or shifts in research directions given flexible resources ● The candidate’s proposed research directions and projects as outlined in their application, including likelihood of success and significant impact, and expectation that the candidate’s research directions will change over time

Limit: 1 // Next funding cycle August 1st, 2025*

Due to an update in the guidelines, the foundation will not accept proposals during 2024. If still eligible, the PI selected for 2024 will be submitted during 2025.

PI Selected: K. Rhodes  (Immunology)

The funds are designed to provide to tenure track faculty members in their first to fourth year, at American Institutions, who hold M.D. and/or Ph.D. degrees, start-up support to move the project forward to the point where R01 or other independent funding can be obtained.  Applicants with current R01 funding should not apply.

Beginning in 2023, the grant provides $75,000 annually for a period of up to three years.  Grants are not renewable.  Institutions may submit one proposal per session.  Interested candidates should work through their sponsored projects office.

Proposals must contain an adequately detailed description of the project to be clearly understandable by the scientific members of the Trustees.  They need not be in the detail requested by the NIH for R01 grants and should not exceed five pages in length.  Additional material can be submitted, but the five-page application should contain the essential information.  References should also be included to support the proposal.  Note that the five page limit is only for the project description.  

A one-two page lay summary must be provided as part of the proposal. Applicants should bear in mind that our Board includes non-scientist members, making this summary of particular importance.  The summary should include the project’s title, and the investigator's contact information.

In addition to the institution providing recognition of an internal selection process resulting in no more than one candidate, (this requires just a sentence that may be included in the letters), the proposal must be accompanied by letters of approval by the Dean of the medical school and/or another senior faculty member or members who can represent the support of the institution and who are acquainted with the qualifications of the applicant and the potential impact of his/her work.