(updated 03.02.10)
CBC Catalyst Award
Request for Applications
The Chicago Biomedical Consortium’s Catalyst Award program offers funding of up to $200,000 for one- or two-year collaborative research
projects. Catalyst Awards aim to support creative new inter-institutional collaborations in basic biomedical research. Projects should
focus on systems biology and address an important biological/biomedical question. Although not limited to the areas of Imaging,
Proteomics, and Informatics, these are topics of interest to the CBC. Catalysts are not intended to support incremental progress --
the proposed research should be innovative and risky. Preliminary data is not required. Collaborations involving senior and junior
faculty members are given special consideration.
To qualify as a substantial collaborative effort, research teams must be composed of Principal Investigators from at least two of
the CBC Institutions (Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago).
Catalyst funding may be used to generate data for a variety of funding sources, including NIH R-level grants. Catalyst proposals
should include a plan for obtaining future support.
Catalyst applications are reviewed for creativity and scientific merit by the CBC Scientific Review Board, which is composed of three senior scientists from each of the CBC institutions.
Key Dates for 2010:
- March 12, 2010 - Proposal Submission Deadline, Spring Round.
- May 18, 2010 - Expected Decision, Spring Round.
- September 3, 2010 - Proposal Submission Deadline, Fall Round.
- November 4, 2010 - Expected Decision, Fall Round.
Eligibility:
- Research Applicants must be tenured or tenure-track faculty with research programs at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and/or University of Illinois at Chicago who will jointly engage in collaborative research.
- Research proposals must have Co-Principal Investigators from at least two of the CBC universities.
- Proposal should show both innovation and scientific merit.
- Research teams should demonstrate a new collaboration or a significantly new direction in an existing collaboration.
- Research teams should not already be funded for similar research activities.
- There may be multiple applications from each institution, although Principal Investigators are discouraged from applying for more than one Catalyst Award.
- There is no expectation that Catalyst Awards will be distributed evenly among the CBC institutions.
Available Funding:
- Up to $1,200,000 to be allocated in calendar 2010.
- Grants can range up to $200,000 for use over 1-2 years (note that the three CBC institutions have waived all indirect costs).
- Catalyst Awards are one-time awards with no expectation of continuation or renewal by the CBC. No-cost Extensions are not allowed.
Application Process:
- Page 1: Title Page (PDF file should be named with this title)
- Title of the proposal (no more than 60 characters)
- Name, title, institution, and contact information including email address of each of the PIs
- Pages 2-4: 3-Page Proposal Statement
- Description of proposed research
- Nature of Inter-institutional collaboration
- Criteria for measuring success of the proposed project
- Long-term funding plan for continuation beyond Catalyst funding
- Page 5: One-paragraph lay-language summary of project
- Pages 6 and beyond: 2-page budget from each of the participating
institutions. By special arrangement with the Research Administration Offices at the CBC universities, it is not necessary to obtain institutional endorsement of proposals before they are submitted via the CBC website. However, the CBC may share proposals with Research Administrators during the review process, and the CBC will require institutional endorsements before any final funding decisions are made. The proposed research activities and budget requests must thus be within institutional guidelines in order for a proposal to be successful. (Note: PIs may claim up to 2% effort/salary relief.) All expenses from a single institution should be put on the appropriate
form from the links below (printed and scanned pdf of the budget form is also acceptable):
- Up-to-date 4-page NIH Biosketch for each PI, including current and pending funding
- If there is real or the appearance of funding overlap with this Catalyst application, please append a clarifying statement (see last page description below). The CBC is flexible and can work with PIs subsequently to resolve overlap with successful pending funding from other agencies to maintain the Catalyst Award's full value.
- If a research project requires special expertise that is not substantially and readily apparent in the PIs’ biosketches (e.g. genomics, proteomics, informatics, imaging, high throughput analysis, chemical libraries), a letter confirming and describing consultation with a core director or colleague recognized in that field is recommended. Please note that the CBC is not allowed to fund researchers from non-CBC institutions, but will accept their letters. CBC funds can be used to pay for services provided by core facilities at non-CBC institutions.
- Last page: Cited scientific references and clarification of budgetary overlap.
- All pages and documents listed above should be assembled into a single pdf document in the order listed above and the file named with the title of the project.
If you have questions, please contact:
Katie Stallcup, CBC executive Director
k-stallcup at northwestern dot edu
Or Contact the CBC Scientific Director on your campus:
| UC: | Jonathan Silverstein | jcs at uchicago dot edu |
| NU: | Richard Morimoto | r-morimoto at northwestern dot edu |
| UIC: | Brenda Russell | russell at uic dot edu |