Seed Funding Competition
In celebration of the Center for Engineering in Vision and Ophthalmology’s founding, seed funds are available for innovative collaborative research in Spring 2024. Applications will be accepted through May 30th, 2024, and can be submitted here:
The full call for proposals, submission instructions, and review information can be found here. Key aspects of the proposed funding mechanism are as follows:
Eligibility and Allowable Costs
Each faculty member may serve as lead PI for only one proposal, and all associated PIs must be Northwestern faculty members.
There must be two PIs, one from McCormick and one from Feinberg
Funding is available in any area of research related to vision and ophthalmology, but priority will be given to:
- Proposals that request support for postdoctoral fellows or graduate students;
- Projects that are too risky for federal funding;
- Projects that fit less comfortably into established funding mechanisms (and consequently are viewed skeptically by reviewers);
- Projects for which preliminary data is necessary before applying for federal funding;
- Projects for which innovative collaborations are necessary and thus are unlikely to be eligible for federal funding mechanisms;
- Projects that represent new collaborations between investigators;
- Funds will typically be used for graduate student or postdoc support, materials, supplies, user fees, lab services, and capital equipment;
- Funds must be completely expended within 18 months of funding notification; no-cost extensions will not be allowed;
- Award funds may not be used for faculty salary, travel (except for data collection or project implementation), conferences, entertainment of visitors, alcohol, teaching activities or outreach activities (symposia, academic visitors, etc.).
- Indirect costs are not applicable.
Direct questions regarding eligibility, research topics, or funding guidelines to Hao Zhang (hfzhang@northwestern.edu).