Sponsored Research Services RIT Researcher News

The Office of the Vice President for Research in collaboration with the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion are pleased to announce the RIT Post Doctoral Matching Fund for Inclusive Excellence.

Eligible Participants: All RIT Organizational Units

Executive Summary: We will provide matching funds to support the hiring of new post-doctoral associates. Proposals to obtain these matching funds can be made to the Office of the Vice President for Research and will be evaluated on the basis of the quality of the candidate, their proposed area of research, support from the host unit, and institutional research priorities. Preference in these awards will be given to AALANA candidates.

Award Amounts: A one-to-one match of up to $50K/position for a 12-month period. Continuation for a second year is possible, pending availability of funding and satisfactory performance.

Expiration Date: Sept. 1, 2013

Cost Matching: 1 to 1 cost match required.

Proposal Length: The proposals should be no more than 4 pages in length using 12 pt. Times New Roman.

Proposal Guidelines:

Executive Summary (1-page): This is a summary of anticipated plan of work for the candidate, written in plain business English and explaining how this particular position will fit into the larger research goals of the unit and the institution

Candidate CV (2-pages): Following NSF CV guidelines.

Budget (1-page): Should include a detailed breakdown (e.g., candidate salary, benefits, ITS, travel, etc.) for both the requested funds and cost match. Please include the source of the matching funding, including necessary approvals, for verification. Also include any other in-kind forms of support that will be offered to the candidate.

Proposal Submission: Send proposals with completed Proposal Routing Forms to Dan Goebert, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  Proposals will be evaluated on a rolling basis and notification of awards will be made within 1-month of receipt.

The chief goal of WIDER is to transform institutions of higher education into supportive environments for STEM faculty members to substantially increase their use of evidence-based teaching and learning practices. These practices should serve to increase persistence in STEM and contribute to the goal of producing 1 million additional STEM graduates. In particular, WIDER seeks this this transformation for high enrollment, lower division courses required for many STEM majors and taken by many other students to fulfill general education distribution requirements.

Broadly defined, effective STEM teaching and learning are not only instructional practices in traditional learning environments, but also modern laboratory methods and field research, proven distance education methods (or hybrid designs incorporating both face-to-face and distance methods), and improved approaches to motivating student interest in STEM. In all cases, the primary goal of wider is to increase substantially the scale of these improvements within and across the higher education sector in order to accomplish the following:

1. Improved student learning;
2. Increased numbers of students choosing STEM majors, particularly from demographic groups underrepresented in STEM;
3. Improved retention in the first two years of undergraduate study and to graduation of all STEM majors.

WIDER grants may be used to 1) begin institutional planning efforts; 2) support implementation efforts for evidence-based teaching and learning practices and; 3) for research on how to increase the importance placed on evidence-based practices in institutional strategic planning and faculty rewards.

An estimated 30-50 awards will be made for standard or continuing grants in 4 tracks:

1. Planning grants (up to 20 awards)
2. Institutional implementation grants (up to 12 awards)
3. Community implementation grants (up to 12 awards)
4. Research grants (up to 10 awards)

Limitations on Proposals per Organization: An organization may submit only one Planning or one Institutional Implementation proposal for a given deadline. There are no restrictions on the number of Community Implementation or Research proposals that an individual or organization may submit.

Faculty interested in submitting a Planning or Institutional Implementation proposal should submit a 1 page project summary, including the project’s intellectual merit and broader impacts, to David Bond at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by May 10, 2013.

Synopsis. The National Science Foundation (NSF) announces a third year of a program on collaborative research and education in the area of scalable nanomanufacturing, including the long-term societal implications of the large-scale implementation of nanomanufacturing innovations.

This program is in response to and is a component of the National Nanotechnology Initiative Signature Initiative: Sustainable Nanomanufacturing - Creating the Industries of the Future (http://www.nano.gov/node/611). Although many nanofabrication techniques have demonstrated the ability to fabricate small quantities of nanomaterials and devices for characterization and evaluation purposes, the emphasis of this program is on research to overcome the key impediments that prevent the low cost production of useful nanomaterials, devices and systems at industrially relevant scale.Therefore, competitive proposals will incorporate three elements in their research plans:

• A persuasive argument that the nanomaterials, devices or systems to be produced have or are likely to have sufficient demand to justify eventual scale-up;
• A clearly identified and arguably complete set of research issues that must be addressed to enable the low cost production of high quality products; and
• A compelling research plan with clear objectives to overcome the identified research issues that is supported by preliminary results relevant to scale-up.

The mode of support is Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Teams (NIRT). Proposals submitted to this program must address at least one, and preferably more than one, of the following interconnected themes:

• Novel processes and techniques for continuous and scalable nanomanufacturing;
• Directed (e.g. physical/chemical/biological) self-assembly processes leading to heterogeneous nanostructures with the potential for high-rate production;
• Fundamental scientific research in well-defined areas that are compellingly justified as critical impediments to scale-up;
• Principles and design methods to produce machines and processes to manufacture nanoscale structures, devices and systems; and/or
• Societal, environmental and educational implications of the large-scale production and use of nanomaterials, devices and systems, including the life-cycle analysis of such nanomaterials, devices and systems.

The full announcement is available at NSF 13-545.

Limit. RIT is limited to one proposal as a lead organization in response to this program.

Application Instructions. Interested parties should submit a concept paper of no more than two pages to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it on or before April 5, 2013. The deadline for full proposals to NSF is June, 2013.

An information session on the National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education Research Traineeship Program, IGERT, is scheduled for Tuesday, March 5, from 2:30 - 3:30 pm in 78-2150. The session will provide an overview of the funding opportunity and details of RIT’s internal submission process.  

Current information about IGERT is available on the program home page. Please RSVP with Kelly Caton at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 5-7983.

INTENT TO SUBMIT INSTRUCTIONS

The Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program has been developed to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with interdisciplinary backgrounds, deep knowledge in chosen disciplines, and technical, professional, and personal skills. The program is intended to establish new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. It is also intended to facilitate diversity in student participation and preparation, and to contribute to a world-class, broadly inclusive, and globally engaged science and engineering workforce.

Office of the Vice President for Research
Call for Proposals

Eligible Participants:  All Faculty

Executive Summary: We are seeking proposals from faculty to revise and re-submit any proposal submitted within the last year that received positive reviews but was not funded.   We recognize that statistically the probability of funding increases dramatically with revision and resubmission for almost every sponsoring organization. We will provide resources for faculty to fully address the feedback from these unsuccessful proposals.  To be funded under this program, faculty must clearly summarize the reasons they believe they were not funded, what changes to the proposal are planned, what associated additional work may be required, and what program(s) they will be re-submitting to.  Additional consideration will be given to revisions that may result in multiple proposals to multiple funding opportunities.  Any sponsoring organizations are acceptable (i.e., federal or state agencies, foundations, corporations, etc.). 

Abstracts come in a variety of flavors.  Journal articles, book proposals, dissertations and other works generally require some form of abstract.  Research proposals may require two different types - a technical abstract for the sponsor, and a plain language abstract for public consumption.  RIT's Proposal Routing Form requires a brief, non-technical abstract, which serves a number of purposes, which are generally beneficial to the investigator or team.

If you are a researcher, the abstract on the Proposal Routing Form may be the last thing on your mind as you race toward the proposal deadline.  Let's pause and consider the merits of a good, plain language abstract on your PRF:

RIT is a member of the Universities Space Research Association, an independent, not-for-profit corporation with the mission of advancing space-related sciences.  USRA facilitates collaboration with universities and government agencies in space-related research and education.  USRA operates a Research Opportunities Program to connect with individuals at member institutions on research opportunities.  These include needs within the USRA, emerging collaborative opportunities, and notices for student employment opportunities.  

Interested individuals are encouraged to sign up for USRA Research Opportunity Notices at http://www.researchopps.usra.edu/.

Would you like support for your humanities research in summer 2014?  The National Endowment for the Humanities supports summer projects.  NEH Summer stipend recipients usually produce articles, monographs, books, digital materials, archaeological site reports, translations, editions, and other scholarly tools.  Projects may be at any stage of development. 

The program pays a total of $6,000 for two consecutive months of full-time research and writing on projects of value to scholars and general audiences in the humanities.  Colleges and universities may nominate two faculty members to compete for the award. 

If you are interested, then read on to see how to become one of RIT’s nominees. 

Eligible disciplines:  History; Philosophy; Languages (both modern and classical); Linguistics; Literature; Jurisprudence; Archaeology; comparative religion; Ethics; the history, theory and criticism of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study of application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.

Consult the program announcement for additional details on the program: http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/stipends.html

Nomination procedure:

Applicants must submit a project abstract for internal review by Friday, July 12, 2013.  If more than two abstracts are received, then a peer review committee will evaluate the proposals and submit recommendations to the Vice President for Research, who will select the nominees.  Results will be announced by Friday, August 16, 2013.  The abstract should contain the following information:

Cover Sheet

Name

Department

Rank

Highest Humanities Degree: [discipline, see list above]

Dates for proposed research

Narrative (one page max. in 11 point or higher font, one inch margins):

Objectives, methods, and significance of the project.

Bibliography (one page max. in 11 point or higher font)

Please email your abstracts by 5:00 pm on Friday, July 12, 2013 to Charlie Bush in Sponsored Research Services at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .   Contact Charlie if you have any questions (475-5542). 

Applications are due to NEH on September 26, 2013.