Funding Opportunities

• The McCabe Fund Award Program: The McCabe awards support junior faculty who initiate innovative biomedical and surgical research projects. Eligible faculty are those who have received either limited or no external research funding while in their first three years on faculty at the PSOM or the School of Veterinary Medicine at Penn.
• Office of the Vice Provost for Research
  • Grant: Accelerating from Lab to Market: Accelerating from Lab to Market pre-seed grants can be awarded to Penn faculty for promising inventions disclosed to Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) and to Penn faculty with existing Penn spinout companies based on Penn-owned intellectual property. Please note that awards will be given to the Penn faculty member to be spent on research in Penn facilities.
  • Grant: Discovering the Future: Discovering the Future grants can be awarded to Penn faculty working on blue sky, high risk/high reward research.
  • Grant: University Research Foundation (URF): The University Research Foundation (URF) is an internal funding program offering Research Grant and Conference Support Grant opportunities. For all funding mechanisms, faculty members are invited to submit their research applications to one of four disciplinary areas: Biomedical Sciences, Humanities, Natural Sciences and Engineering, and Social Science and Management.
  • Limited Applications: For certain funding opportunities investigators will find that the University as a whole can only a finite number of applications. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research (OVPR) coordinates the selection process for grant competitions in instances where a limited number of applications are accepted.
• PSOM Bridge Funding Guidelines & Checklist: The PSOM Bridge Funding program will provide up to 12 months of gap funding for extramurally-funded research projects to enable the continuation of a base level of lab activity and avoid loss of key personnel, resources, or momentum, such that a currently funded project may progress to funding renewal.
• Penn Provost’s Office
  • Center for Undergraduate Research & Fellowships Funding options are often specific to particular kinds of research, fields of study, grad year, etc. In addition, most (but not all) CURF funding is reserved for research conducted under the mentorship of a Penn faculty member.
  • Dual Career: Provides University funding when a standing faculty member is accompanied by a working spouse/partner, including a same-sex domestic partner, seeking employment at Penn.
  • Excellence Through Diversity Fund: This fund may support: Implementation of Schools’ strategic plans to diversify faculty and student populations; Research on equity, inclusion and diversity in higher education; Projects that foster and support diversity on campus; Faculty work on projects aimed at advancing the ideals of the Penn Compact as they relate to increased access for students and faculty.
  • Faculty Opportunity Fund: Enhances the academic strength and diversity of Penn faculty - reserved for candidates who, in the dean’s opinion, will make extraordinary scholarly contributions.
  • Global Engagement Fund: Seeds creative, cross-disciplinary projects to further Penn’s global initiatives - strives to offer maximum flexibility to support faculty initiatives that enhance Penn’s global engagement.
  • Impact Seminar Grant: Provides awards for large-scale, cross-School, cross-disciplinary events over one or two days and open to the entire University community. 
  • Predoctoral Fellowships: These awards are designed to provide mentorship and access to Penn’s resources for doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences, enrolled in graduate or professional programs at universities other than Penn, as they complete their dissertations.
  • Postdoctoral Fellowships: The Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowships and CHOP’s Postdoctoral Fellowships are competitive programs intended to increase the diversity of the academic research community at the University of Pennsylvania and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).
  • Provost's Interdisciplinary Arts Fund: Supports art and culture initiatives at Penn that directly engage students and bring together multiple groups across campus, especially collaborations between art & culture organizations and academic departments or centers.
  • University Research Foundation: The University Research Foundation (URF) is an internal funding program offering the following grant opportunities: Research Grants, Conference Support, and Research Opportunity Development Grants (Planning and Phase 2).

Many of PSOM’s centers and institutes sponsor pilot and seed grant programs. These programs may vary from year to year; applicants are encouraged to reach out directly to the centers listed below for more information.

• Cardiovascular Institute (CVI)

• Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE)

  • Roybal Pilot Program: CHIBE invites proposals from affiliated faculty for pilot projects that translate ideas from behavioral economics into practice in ‘real world’ settings, specifically testing interventions that reach middle-aged and elderly Americans at high risk for premature morbidity and mortality.

  • Quartet Pilot Program: Pilot funds are targeted to support small-scale, innovative or exploratory projects with a duration of one year. Funded projects must have the potential to generate academic publications and priority will be given to projects with potential to develop small-scale or preliminary research findings that would lead to applications for extramural funding, especially to the National Institutes of Health.

• Center for Molecular Studies in Digestive and Liver Diseases: The purpose of the Center is to unite investigators with interests in digestive and liver physiology and disease and to stimulate others in the biomedical community to enter this area of research. One of the most important aspects of this effort is the funding of Pilot/Feasibility Projects. The Pilot/Feasibility Project should be related to the focus of the Center, which encompasses molecular studies on the biology or disease of the alimentary tract, pancreas, and liver. 

• Epigenetics Pilot Grants

  • At-Large Pilot Project Grant: To conduct Epigenetics-related research projects. A broad spectrum of proposal topics will be considered. Including those that involve fundamental studies in Epigenetics as well as more applied or disease-oriented studies that utilize Epigenetics as a central component of the research.

  • Chemical/Genetic Screening Epigenetics Institute Pilot Project Grant: The specific scientific focus of this pilot grant application is non-restrictive, but applications must utilize the services of the HTSC. Applications with a focus to utilize the cores’ ability to screen either a) FDA approved drugs and known bioactives library or b) siRNA libraries of Gene Ontology (GO) categories or user defined gene sets to identify/validate candidate gene targets are encouraged.

• Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics (ITMAT): The Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics (ITMAT) maintains current grant funding opportunities on their own website, including a dedicated Pilot Grant Application System.

• The Penn Center for AIDS Research (Penn CFAR)

  • CFAR Development Pilot Awards: The Penn CFAR Developmental Core Pilot Award Program is designed to assist faculty member applicants (Assistant Professor and above) and junior non-faculty applicants (Instructor and/or Research Associate) to launch or further develop a successful independently funded HIV/AIDS-related project. In addition to funding, this support is provided through mentoring (or collaborative partnerships for more seasoned investigators). All funded pilot award recipients are assigned CFAR program mentors for the duration of the project, but mentoring is available regardless of whether or not an application is funded.

  • CFAR Microgrants: The Penn CFAR Microgrant awards are available for junior faculty CFAR investigators (Instructor and Assistant Professor or equivalent) to obtain targeted data needed for resubmission of a scored grant, or other critical needs that will result in a stronger HIV research grant or related goals.

• Penn Center for Musculoskeletal Disorders (PCMD)

  • Non-PCMD Core Usage Support: This new program will provide funds to utilize other Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) cores (shown on the left on www.med.upenn.edu/cores) to help advance your musculoskeletal research.

  • Pilot and Feasibility Grant Programs: Categories of applicants include: 1) Established investigators with a proposal to test the feasibility of a new or innovative idea in musculoskeletal tissue injury and repair representing a clear and distinct departure from their ongoing research, 2) Established investigators with no previous work in musculoskeletal tissue injury and repair interested in testing the applicability of their expertise on a problem in this area, and 3) New investigators without significant extramural grant support as a Principal Investigator to develop a new project.

CHOP Funding & Awards: If you are affiliated or hold an appointment with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, you may be eligible for support by one of CHOP’s T32 Training Grants.

• Foundation Center: Foundation Center includes a searchable database of federal, foundation and corporate philanthropic opportunities. Log in with your PennKey through this link. Click “connect to resource” next to the word “Online”, or click “Foundation Directory Online” under the Location tab to access.
• Sponsored Programs Information Network (SPIN): The SPIN (Sponsored Programs Information Network) database provides info from private and government sources. Access SPIN by logging into PennERA and selecting “Find Funding” on the top left or by clicking the link above and loggin in with you PennKey ID. Additional instructions can be found here: https://research.upenn.edu/funding/spin/

The Office of the Vice Provost for Research manages a number of internal funding opportunities on behalf of the University as well as access to external funding opportunities. https://research.upenn.edu/funding/

Funding Alert Services:

• NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: A weekly email with the official NIH publication for grant policies, guidelines and funding opportunities.
• National Science Foundation (NSF) Update: A weekly or daily email alert service with programmatic subscription options that include new research opportunities, upcoming deadlines, and other useful information.
• SMARTS: An email alert system that allows investigators to receive e-mail notifications about funding opportunities matching their specific requirements.