Center for the Environment Sustainable Communities Seed Grant Program

Center for the Environment Sustainable Communities Seed Grant Program

Thanks to the generous support of the Colleges of Liberal Arts, Agriculture, Engineering, and Health and Human Sciences, and in order to stimulate new collaborative research consistent with the goals of the Building Sustainable Communities cluster hire, the Center for the Environment plans to distribute one or more seed grants of between $5,000 and $20,000 each (up to a total of $50,000) for pilot research projects consistent with the major themes of the sustainable communities initiative.  The purpose of these grants is to help stimulate new research collaborations on interdisciplinary environmental challenges emphasizing one or more of the three main themes of the center’s building sustainable communities initiative:        

1. Institutions and decision-making
2. Critical infrastructure systems
3. Resilient (engineered and ecological) systems

Proposals should be no more than four pages (not including references) and must include a COEUS budget, a short budget justification, the proposed project start date, and a 2-page NSF-style CV for all PI’s. Proposals must also indicate a specific external grant opportunity for a larger-scale proposal based on the seed grant results, and a commitment to submit a proposal to that funder within one year of the seed grant’s completion. Eligible projects must be interdisciplinary and include faculty from more than one department. A subcommittee of the C4E executive committee will review and rank proposals, with additional outside faculty reviewers as appropriate. Final funding recommendations will be made by the same C4E subcommittee and approved by the C4E director. Funds will not be released until appropriate compliance approvals such as IRB have been received (if applicable).

Review criteria:

• Proposed research’s relevance to an environmental challenge consistent with 2014 C4E Strategic Vision at http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/environment/about/vision.php
• Proposals research’s focus on one or more of the three main themes of the sustainable communities initiative.
• Interdisciplinary strength of faculty team.
• Scientific merit and feasibility of research design.
• Potential to generate successful larger proposal for external research funds.
• Engagement with new faculty hired under the sustainable communities program.

For more information on the three cluster themes and new faculty hired under the cluster, see the Building Sustainable Communities web page at http://www.purdue.edu/sustainablecommunities.

Applications due electronically as .pdf file to Rose Filley (rfilley@purdue.edu) on November 24, 2014 by 5:00 pm. Applicants should not submit through their Sponsored Program Services (SPS) Pre-Award team.

Awards will be announced by December 15, 2014 with funds available starting January 1, 2015.  All funds should be expended and work completed by December 31, 2015. Awardees will be required to submit a brief final report no later than 3 months after the end of the award, including a summary of project results and any publications or presentations, and an update on application for external funding. Reports should be emailed as a .pdf file to Rose Filley at rfilley@purdue.edu.