Foundation Sponsored Limited Submission Opportunities

The University of Utah Foundation Relations team manages several limited submission opportunities sponsored by various foundations each year. Foundations Limited Submissions are reviewed by a Foundations LSO Committee that selects applications most likely to:

Perpetuate success for the University;
Assist the selected faculty member in advancing their research; and
Meet the goals and expectations of the sponsor

The CFR team conducts three cycles of Foundation LSO review each academic year: Fall, Winter, and Spring. All Foundation-sponsored LSOs that are currently managed by the UofU CFR Office are listed HERE, with links to learn more about each program. The InfoReady internal competition links for each program are published as they are created. Interested faculty members must apply to the internal competition and be selected by the LSO Committee for each program.

Internal competitions for all Fall 2024 Foundations LSOs are active and shared below! Please contact Gwen Allouch if you have questions about applying for an opportunity listed.

The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program was established in 2015 to provide philanthropic support to extraordinary scholars and writers for high-caliber research in the humanities and social sciences. Fellowships of $200,000 are awarded annually to exceptional scholars, authors, journalists, and public intellectuals. The program asks scholars to help Americans understand how and why our society has become so polarized and what we can do to strengthen the forces of cohesion in our society. Political polarization is characterized by threats to free speech, the decline of civil discourse, disagreement over basic facts, and a lack of mutual understanding and collaboration.

The criteria prioritize the originality and promise of the research, its potential impact on the field, record of scholarship, and the scholar’s plans for communicating the findings to a broad audience. The funding is for a period of one or two years with the anticipated result of a book or major study. Regardless of title, a junior scholar is defined as someone who received their PhD within the last 10 years (2013–2024, for the 2025 fellowship program). The UofU may nominate one Junior Scholar faculty and one Senior Scholar faculty.

To be eligible, nominees must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States who have been nominated by the head of an institution designated by Carnegie Corporation of New York. Candidates must have a Ph.D., hold a terminal degree, or be a high-level professional working outside of academia. Individuals may not apply for the Fellows Program via self-nomination.

This Award will support individual postdoctoral scientists of exceptional creativity in the field of neurosciences.

These transitional awards are to enable a postdoctoral researcher to advance to become a full-time faculty member at the Assistant Professor level or higher and to promote the development of a laboratory program that will lead to independent funding. The scholar will be awarded $200,000 annually for two years to cover salary, lab costs, and related expenses. Scholars will be chosen on the basis of the success in their prior post-doctoral work and other research as well as in the importance and creativity of their proposed future research.

To be eligible, the applicant must have an MD, PhD, or both. Must hold a post-doctoral research position at a United States medical school, research institute, or academic institution. Must have a minimum of 3 years and no more than 6 years of a post-doctoral fellowship by July 1, 2025. Research must be focused in the field of Neuroscience.

The candidate must be nominated by the dean of the medical school or equivalent institutional senior leader.

The Moore Foundation aims to support inventions at an early stage that could lead to proof-of-concept of an invention or advance an existing prototype that tackles an important problem. They seek innovations that promise to make a long-lasting and meaningful impact by addressing underlying problems in their field, but a clear path toward commercialization is not a requirement. The scope of this call is intentionally wide: proposed projects do not need to fall within Moore's current funding priorities but should be broadly within the program areas of foundation interest (science, environmental conservation, and patient care). For patient care, inventions should resonate with the foundation's focus on improving the experience and outcomes of patients with solutions that improve clinical diagnosis.

Candidates must be faculty, research scientists, postdocs or other full-time staff who can receive funding through their institutions. Candidates must be no more than 10 years past receiving the terminal advanced degree in their field (M.S., Ph.D. or M.D.).**Please note that if awarded, this program requires an annual $50,000 institutional contribution ($150,000 total). This can be “in kind” as released time or access to special facilities for which there is normally a charge.

The objective of the BRF Seed Grant Program is to support new and innovative projects in neuroscience, especially those of junior faculty, who are working in new research directions. BRF Seed Grant awards are not intended to supplement existing grants.

To be eligible, PI must be a full-time Assistant or Associate Professor at an invited US academic institution, working in the area of studies of brain function. This includes molecular and clinical neuroscience as well as studies of neural, sensory, motor, cognitive, behavioral and emotional functioning in health and disease. The grant proposal must detail a new research project that is not funded by other sources. This grant is not to be used as bridge funding.

The Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists recognize the country’s most promising faculty-rank researchers in Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Chemistry. One Blavatnik Laureate in each disciplinary category will receive $250,000 in unrestricted funds.

To be eligible, the nominee must have been born in or after 1983. Hold a doctorate degree (PhD, DPhil, MD, DDS, DVM, etc.). Currently hold a faculty position at the U of U.

Currently conduct research as a principal investigator in one of the disciplinary categories in Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering, or Chemistry. The Blavatnik Awards strongly encourages the nomination of women and other underrepresented groups in science and engineering. Previously nominated individuals who were not selected as Laureates in past Awards cycles may be nominated again.