Deadline: 31-Aug-23
Applications are now open for the Burroughs Wellcome Fund’s Climate and Health Interdisciplinary Award (CHI) to support collaborative exploratory work that opens new ground for comprehensively assessing or mitigating the impacts of climate change on human health.
This program will support both individual scientists and multi-investigator teams. Early career faculty and postdoctoral fellows nearing their transition to independence are especially encouraged to apply, whether individually or within teams.
The goal is to prime new discoveries in areas that are difficult to reach through discipline-specific, silo-driven approaches. Through this program, they will provide flexible funding for conceiving and piloting work that will grow into productive and informative collaborations among researchers approaching connected questions from fields that usually do not interact.
Terms of Grant / Use of Funds
- Awards will be for a total of $375,000 to be distributed over 3 years. Three rounds of grants are planned. Approximately three awards will be made in each round.
- The Burroughs Wellcome Fund does not provide institutional overhead and indirect costs may not be charged against this award. Administrative support for teams’ work and benefits for salaries paid by the award are allowable as direct costs. This award can be used to buy out investigators’ and collaborators’ time as well as for traditional project-related costs.
- BWF makes awards to public or private non-profit organizations in the United States and Canada, including degree-granting academic institutions, research institutes, teaching hospitals, scientific societies, and other non-profits on behalf of the principal investigator. The payee institution is responsible for disbursing funds and for maintaining adequate supporting records and receipts of expenditures. Payee institutions may budget to support collaboration with researchers in LMICs.
- The support allocated for research is under the control of the principal investigator and may be used flexibly for items such as equipment, consumable supplies, meetings of the collaborative team, publication costs and travel to scientific meetings. Awards may have up to three coPIs, but the award will be paid to a single institutional unit. Postdoctoral fellows may serve as co-PIs. Prior approval by BWF is required when, within an award year, purchases of equipment exceed $20,000 or travel costs exceed $8,000.
- During the award period, unused research funds may be carried over to the succeeding year. The principal investigator may receive a no-cost extension; requests explaining why an extension is needed must be submitted in writing at least two months prior to the end of the award. At the termination of the grant period, grant balances of $500 or less may be retained by the institution.
- For grant recipients in the U.S., the administrative fee is intended to cover the cost of medical insurance and other benefits, such as retirement. For grant recipients in Canada, the administrative fee is to be used as a contribution to the employer’s benefit plan.
- Award recipients may not hold concurrent BWF awards.
Eligibility Criteria
- Examples of projects might include but are not limited to the following:
- The role of climate change in exacerbating vector borne-, and non-communicable diseases (NCDs)
- Using “big data” to predictively model aspects of health impacted by climate change
- Engineering or architectural approaches to alleviating climate related health risks
- Developing new research tools at the interface of health and climate-informed disciplines
- Proposals must be submitted by a single US or Canadian institution, which will serve as the sole payee.
- Proposed teams may include researchers from beyond the US and Canada, including those from Low- and Middle-income countries (LMICs).
- BWF values diversity, equity, and inclusion both in researchers and in the places research is conducted. They encourage proposals from minority serving institutions and from small, medium, or large organizations in rural, urban, or other settings.
- Award recipients will be expected to participate in BWF network development activities and interdisciplinary research career development activities associated with this award.
For more information, visit Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
