Phase 2 Proposal

Submitted by: Nadia Diamond-Smith, Jackie Torres, Patience Afulani

 Many faculty in our department, especially junior faculty, have differing streams of research but overlapping interests or complimentary skill sets and areas of expertise and would like to start working on projects together. However, setting time aside to write a new proposal or do a preliminary analysis on a topic not directly stemming from a current project can be impossible, since we are all funded on specific other grants. Supporting new proposals or projects that bring together faculty who have not previously received funding to work together will not only expand the innovation and breadth of topics that our department is contributing to scientifically and known for, but it will help bring in more funding, which has long lasting impacts on the careers of faculty, staff and students in the department, the latter of which would be involved in the resulting projects in various roles. These types of collaborations will also build community among members of the department, helping to ensure that the department can retain its faculty, especially junior faculty laying the foundation of a career in the department.

 We propose a fund that groups of faculty (at least 2) who have not previously been funded to work together can apply to. Groups can include non-faculty members, such as post-docs, students, and research assistants at various levels, however, some of the funds must be used to cover faculty time (in other words, trainees cannot do all the work). Funds will be prioritized for groups that have at least 1 junior faculty member (assistant level) participant. Funds will also be prioritized for proposals that involve members from other departments in order to create more collaboration between UCSF departments. Funds can be used to support a small portion of faculty salary for a limited time to write grant proposals for funding research projects they are interested in pursuing together. The funds can also be used for such groups to do a secondary data analysis project together that is envisioned to directly lay the foundation for a grant proposal (and ideally publications as well).

Proposals to the fund would be short (1-2 pages) and describe the research idea that the faculty would like to write a grant/do the analysis for, the innovation of the partnership, and why the request salary time and amount are necessary. This would include how their funds would be distributed and among whom. For grants, the funding mechanism to be pursued should be stated clearly, as well as a timeline towards reaching that goal. For data analysis projects, the longer-term vision (eventual funding or publication) and target funding source or journal should be stated, as well as timeline. Proposals would also discuss why this groups cannot do this without the support of this extra salary coverage and how this will expand their current work, build collaborations, and develop new areas of focus for the department as a whole.  

 Total budget requested: $100,000

 Structure: Groups can apply for support of up to $20,000 (total) to support their time/effort to write proposals/do analysis together. We anticipate that this will fund at least 5 groups (or more if some groups request smaller amounts). Groups can be of any size and money/time can be allocated in the way that the group see fit, and within any time frame the group sees fit. For example, the funds could be spread evenly (or not) among at least 2, but up to a larger group, of members, and it could be used within 1 month or spread over the course of a few months.

 We envision that there could be 2 funding cycles. Cycle dates are proposed to align roughly with NIH cycles (although not all proposals need to be grant proposals), so funding would be available about 4 months before the next submission cycle. Proposals will be reviewed by a committee of department members and 2-3 groups will be selected at each cycle. Midway through the process, the selection committee will review the success of the proposal submissions. Success would be measured by 1) submission of grants, 2) time to grant submission, 3) completion and dissemination of any secondary analyses that served as preliminary data for grant proposals. This will help us quantify the amount of new interactions that the funded faculty members had that they would not have had otherwise AND/OR any interactions beyond the DEB that were generated from the funds.  If modifications to the process are needed, it will be adjusted before Round 2.

 Milestones:

 Round 1: Call for proposals (August 15), proposals submissions (Sept 15), selections announced (Oct 1)

 Review Round 1: March 2020: review progress of Round 1 grants

 Round 2: Call for proposals (April 15), proposals submissions (May 15), selections announced (June 1)