Funding Opportunities

Internal Research Opportunities

The college offers several opportunities for faculty and staff to participate in research. Each department has experienced mentors willing to work with new faculty and students. The Office of Research offers seed grant funding for preliminary studies, which could lead to sponsored funding. Researchers also have an opportunity to meet on a quarterly basis with the associate dean for research to discuss relevant issues.

UFCD Faculty Seed Grant

The purpose of UFCD Seed Grant Program is to provide short-term support, collect sufficient preliminary data in order to submit a competitive application to NIH, including K, R, P, U or other types of awards, and/or to other organizations that utilize rigorous peer review as part of their award process. The goal of the grant program is to enhance extramurally-funded interdisciplinary research conducted in the college. Research projects may be hypothesis-driven or alternatively may entail a proof of concept. In both cases, it is anticipated that preliminary data derived from a seed grant award significantly strengthens a future application for extramural funding.

Post-Doc Seed Grant: Transition to Scientific Independence Award (TSIA)

The primary objective of UFCD Transition to Scientific Independence Award (TSIA) is to support independent research projects spearheaded by post-doctoral associates and fellows, leading to preliminary data enhancing the likelihood of the individual to secure K or R awards from NIH, or similar awards from other agencies/foundations. The TSIA may not be used to supplement currently funded research projects of the applicant’s mentor(s). Thus, whereas techniques, patient populations, and other aspects of the TSIA may coincide or overlap with those of the mentor’s research program, the hypothesis to be tested and aim(s) of the TSIA project must be unique.

Student Seed Grant

The primary objective of the Seed Grant Program for UFCD students is to promote independent student research, by providing short-term support for research projects. The application process is intended to help foster students to develop and clearly delineate the reasoning and approaches of a project, while sustaining the advisement of their mentor(s).

Bridge Funding

The College of Dentistry supports a Bridge Funding Program providing research funds for UFCD investigators whose federal peer-reviewed competitive renewal research applications were not funded, although they received either excellent priority scores or very positive comments from reviewers in the Summary Statement. The revised and resubmitted proposals must be predicted to have a high probability of funding after appropriate revision and resubmission.

Annual UF Research Opportunity Seed fund

The Research Opportunity Seed Fund targets multidisciplinary, faculty-initiated research projects with potential for extramural support.  The program focuses on new projects and new collaborative partnerships. Projects must be innovative, have strong potential for garnering future funding from external sources, or have outstanding commercial potential. Research Opportunity Seed Fund awards are not intended to support on-going projects. They support new projects (not a supplement to current research) and new collaborative partnerships. The proposal must emphasize novel research. To be competitive, proposals must be multi-/inter-disciplinary and involve faculty from at least two colleges