The deadline for proposals is October 18, 2021.
The Creativity Hubs funding competition has begun! A request for proposals for participation in the fourth round of Creativity Hubs funding is now available on our website, and deadline for proposals is October 18, 2021..
Creativity Hubs is a strategic initiative from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR) in support of the University’s research priorities and strategic plan. Creativity Hubs brings together investigators across diverse disciplines to establish networks for convergent research. Projects supported by the program are expected to innovate, bring together exciting new ideas, and lead to sustainable, large-scale extramural funding or commercial opportunities. The OVCR supports and facilitates the hub model to grow and nurture comprehensive research activity at Carolina.
The OVCR has identified strategic research priorities reflecting UNC’s strengths where convergence in social sciences, humanistic scholarship, foundational research, health science, and the natural sciences will accelerate new discoveries and solutions to emerging challenges. Those areas include the Brain; Cancer; Data Science; Environment; Infectious Disease; Opportunity, Well-being, and Culture; and new for this year, Precision Health and Society.
While interested teams are encouraged to design projects touching on one or more of these foci, projects proposing revolutionary ideas through convergent research in any discipline are welcome. In their submissions, proposers should articulate the problem or challenge, how the proposed research will provide solutions to the challenge, how the diverse expertise of the team forms a greater whole that promote new ways of thinking, and how the proposed research program would make the team highly competitive in pursuing future extramural funding or commercialization opportunities.
To date, the Creativity Hubs competitions have funded seven exciting projects tackling obesity, antiviral therapeutics that prevent pandemics, coastal and community resilience, treatments of genetic diseases, and more. Some of these projects will be highlighted during this year’s University Research Week, November 8-12.
How does the Creativity Hub Competition work?
- Stage 1: The first stage of the competition is designed to identify finalists with promising ideas to be developed into full proposals. Pre-proposals are due on October 18, 2021 at 5:00 PM.
- Stage 2: At least two finalists will be awarded up to $500,000 to execute their proposal over the next two years. Invited full applications are due April 1, 2022, for projects to begin July 1, 2022.
For more information, please visit: www.research.unc.edu/creativity-hubs
For questions, please reach out to creativityhubs@unc.edu