This spring the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute (UT-ORII) ramped up funding opportunities for university faculty members engaging in UT-Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) collaborative research. The UT-ORII Seed program opened for the third time to provide support for multi-disciplinary teams engaging in innovative research and collaboration. The Science Alliance, a Tennessee Center for Excellence housed within UT-ORII, began accepting applications again for both the Support for Affiliated Research Teams Program (StART) and the Program for Advancing Collaborative Teams (PACT). Taken together, these three initiatives represent a significant investment in the research enterprise at the University of Tennessee and leverage the capabilities and collaborative ethos of early career and established faculty members.
The UT-ORII Seed Program launched in 2020 to support new and highly innovative multidisciplinary research projects designed by university and ORNL research teams. All UT faculty and ORNL staff members are eligible to apply. The application deadline is May 31, 2022 at 5pm.
The Science Alliance StART program launched in 2019 to generate new funding for UT-ORNL collaborative teams of scientists and engineers. StART is released as an annual call with two deadlines, the first of which is May 2, 2022 at 5pm, with funding anticipated to being on August 1, 2022.
The PACT program was launched by the Science Alliance in 2021 to provude support for collaborative research endeavors aimed at securing large extramural funding, such as NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) or NIH RM1 grants.
The Science Alliance is part of the UT-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute, a joint initiative between UT and ORNL focused on expanding collaborative research and development and preparing the next-generation of science, technology, engineering and mathematics talent. For more information about UT-ORII, visit the institute on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.