2008 EI Research Symposium and Seed Grant Competition
The CU-Boulder Energy Initiative, in partnership with regional federal
labs, hosted an Energy Research Symposium on Monday, November 17th at
the University Memorial Center on the CU-Boulder Campus.
Seed Grant Competition RFP
In order to encourage innovative, collaborative research on Renewable and Sustainable Energy (R&SE), the CU Energy Initiative through the financial support of its Leadership Council is sponsoring a Seed Grant Competition. Only Researchers who were (Co-) Authors on poster presentations at the Research Symposium on Nov. 17, 2008 may apply for seed grant funding through this competition.
Seed Grant Eligibility
All University of Colorado faculty members (including instructors and research faculty) who hold an appointment of half-time or more, and who are eligible to submit a grant as a principal investigator (PI) to the Office of Contracts and Grants, are eligible to participate. Please note that while interdisciplinary applications are encouraged, there can only be one responsible PI/Project Director for each application. Applicants may submit no more than one proposal as a PI.
Other federal labs - Scientists and staff from the federal labs (NREL, NOAA, NIST, NCAR) may be included on these Seed Grant Proposals as collaborators. Direct spending by the federal lab collaborators must be shown separately in the budget, with the idea that these portions of the budgets for successful proposals may be supported wholly or partially by the relevant agency. NREL management has identified a limited amount of internal funding for NREL researchers who are collaborators on Seed Grant Proposals that are selected for funding by the CU-Boulder Energy Initiative. Funding for NREL staff collaborations may be from programmatic funds or internal funds such as LDRD. Questions regarding this internal NREL funding should be directed to Dr. Ray Stults. Questions regarding internal NOAA funding should be directed to Melinda Marquis, Melinda.Marquis@noaa.gov. There is no financial obligation by CU to fund the federal lab portion of the project.
Submission Instructions
Proposals must be submitted electronically no later than midnight January 16, 2009. The proposal must be submitted via the online form available here. The application form may be previewed here, but this pdf should not be used to submit your proposal.
Note: The maximum total budget for research activities to be supported with funding from the University of Colorado may not exceed $50,000. Proposed budgets should reflect support of research activities (e.g. salaries, benefits, instruments, equipment, supplies, computational costs, etc.). Indirect costs will not be charged to seed grants and should not be included in the budget. High quality proposals with budgets less than $50,000 will have slightly enhanced possibilities for being supported. For projects that involve collaborative research with the federal labs, it is expected that UC faculty, students and postdocs may perform a portion of their proposed research at the lab facilities. Direct funding for federal lab personnel must be identified separately in proposed budgets and is not included within the $50,000 for CU activities.
Earliest start date for proposals: June 1, 2009.
Duration: Up to 2 years.
Review Criteria
1. Intellectual merit of the proposal (20 points) – including relevance to renewable and sustainable energy issues, creativity and innovation, significance of goals and results, soundness of research plan, likelihood of successful completion of project.
2. Potential for additional/continued activity beyond the seed grant phase (5 points) - plans for continued activity may include applications for external support from federal, state or local government agencies, foundations, private companies, etc., and plans for continued research activities involving in-kind support, teaching activities, on-going scholarly work, etc.
3. Potential for developing new and productive collaborations between PIs or for strengthening existing collaborations (5 points) - projects involving collaborations with NREL, NOAA, NIST and NCAR researchers are highly encouraged.
Recipients of 2006 seed grant awards can be found here.
For more information about the Research Symposium please contact Linda Pendergrass, lindap@cires.colorado.edu.
For more information about the Seed Grant Competition please contact Sarah Leshan, leshan@cires.colorado.edu
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