New at RCSA
Cottrell College Science Awards Supports Multi-Investigator Research Teams
Tucson, AZ - February 2, 2009 - Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), America's first foundation dedicated solely to science, today announced a new initiative aimed at encouraging collaboration among researchers from different areas of scientific study. The initiative is a new component of the foundation's existing Cottrell College Science Awards program and will fund multi-investigator research projects.
The Cottrell College Science Awards have historically supported significant research that contributes to the advancement of science and to the professional and scholarly development of individual faculty members and their students. Until last year the awards, aimed at the nation's primarily undergraduate institutions, were given only to faculty in departments of physics, chemistry and astronomy. That restriction has now been extended to include any scientists doing research that overlaps the physical sciences, regardless of departmental affiliation. Last year, the awards provided more than $2.3 million in grants to support 60 scientific researchers at institutions across the United States.
The new component of the awards program will support multi-investigator teams composed of two or three faculty members from different academic specialties, as well as their students. An eligible team consists of at least two, and no more than three, faculty from at least two distinct science departments, all from within the same institution. One of the team members must be from a department of chemistry, physics or astronomy.
The multi-investigator component will offer a basic award of $75,000 for a two-investigator team and $100,000 for a three-investigator team over two years, with a single, one-year, no-cost extension available on request. It is expected that five to seven multi-investigator teams would be funded this year out of a total allocation of $3 million for the Cottrell College Science Awards.
An institutional match of $25,000 is required on all multi-investigator applications. Allowed budget categories include faculty summer stipends, student summer stipends, equipment, supplies and funds for travel needed to conduct the research.
"The initiative will be run as a pilot project for the first three years to determine its potential to facilitate cooperation across disciplinary boundaries," said RCSA Vice President Jack Pladziewicz. "It is designed to fund research projects that could not be effectively attacked by an individual researcher, or a group of researchers within the same scientific discipline, and to reflect the fact that scientists are facing increasingly complicated problems at the cutting-edges of the physical sciences, mathematics, materials science and biology."
A full list of requirements for applicants is available on this website.
Despite the current economic downturn which has caused many, small, private foundations to reduce spending and cut programs, RCSA President James M. Gentile recently announced that RCSA would be "stepping to the plate," and spending into the recession in support of science.
"It is our contention that situations such as the current economy provide the ultimate raison d'etre for philanthropy," Gentile said. "Philanthropy is about rising to the occasion. Therefore, RCSA will be making cuts in our administrative budget and looking for ways to accomplish administrative functions more economically, but we will not be cutting programs."