Investigators from UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Davis Health, UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz are invited to submit proposals for 2021 CITRIS Seed Funding Awards, worth up to $60,000 per project. Research should address at least one of four critical Grand Challenges in Information Technology:
- Climate Resilience
- Digital Health Innovation
- Next-Generation Health Policy
- Automation and the Workforce
To encourage UC-wide collaboration, each proposal must include at least two principal investigators with active or exceptional PI status, each from a different CITRIS campus. Postdoctoral researchers or graduate students may work with two or more designated PIs on a submission.
The CITRIS Seed Funding program is designed to support innovative, early-stage work that can attract larger-scale funding from diverse sources. Proposals are evaluated based on feasibility, potential for societal impact, potential for follow-on funding, alignment with the CITRIS mission, use of CITRIS resources and inclusion of pre-tenure faculty.
Since 2008, the program has supported more than 200 applied research projects led by over 400 UC innovators from all CITRIS campuses, resulting in extramural funding up to four times the initial investment within four years of completion. Recent recipients have built autonomous phenotyping platforms to improve biofuel crop productivity, designed and tested community policy interventions for disaster risk reduction, and explored the efficacy of mentoring programs for underrepresented minorities in STEM.
Submissions for this year’s round of funding are due by 5 p.m. PDT on Monday, Oct. 25.