Request for Proposals
Purpose
Duke’s Office of Research and Innovation (OR&I) is pleased to support Duke Science and Technology (DST) by awarding seed grants to faculty members at Duke. The DST SPARK Seed Grants are directed towards enhancing the creativity and novel research and scholarship of Duke’s faculty to help them pursue new directions and ideas. This year, the SPARK call is particularly focused on helping faculty adjust to evolving changes in the funding landscape.
Eligibility
Duke University full-time Tenured or Tenure Track Assistant, Associate, or Full Professors. This includes faculty within the School of Medicine, and/or other centers or units who do not have tenure-track positions, but have at least 75% effort committed to research.
**Faculty with primary appointments at Duke-NUS and Duke-Kunshan are not eligible.
Funds
Applicants may request up to $150,000 with the expectation that the funds will be spent by the “Funds to be Expended by Date.” Budgets are not required to request the full award amount and should be scaled to fit expected costs for the proposed project.
Allowable Costs
Funds may be used for salary/stipend and fringe of personnel (including PI, students, post-docs, project managers, technicians, participant compensation, etc.), tuition remission, equipment, travel, and/or consumables. Funding of collaborators outside of Duke will not be allowed.
**This is an internal award and does not require overhead or F&A. Applicable to School of Medicine (SOM) faculty only: SOM does not assess G&A on DST expenditures.
Application Requirements
Proposals should be written with the expectation that they will be reviewed by Duke faculty members, but not necessarily faculty within the applicant’s narrow area of expertise. The scientific content should be written with a minimal use of jargon, domain-specific acronyms, and etc., so as to be accessible by reviewers with broad science and technology backgrounds.
Applications must include the following components:
Applicant Information
- Title of project
- Name of PI
- Appointment information (current department, school, faculty title)
- Date and title of first Duke faculty appointment
- Five (5) keywords (will be used to identify proper reviewers).
Project Description
Up to two (2) pages that include the following:
- impact Statement, including an explanation as to why a shift in the faculty member’s research is desired at this moment in time;
- why this project would be difficult to fund from other sources; and
- a plan to make substantial progress toward their aims within the one-year term.
Paper size should be 8 ½" x 11", at least one-half inch margins (1/2") – top, bottom, left, and right for all pages. The font size should be at least 11 pt. The fonts generally recommend are: Arial, Georgia, Helvetica, or Palatino Linotype
CV/ Biosketch
A short CV/ Biosketch of up to five (5) pages – should clearly include the date of the first tenure track faculty appointment as well as all current sources of research/scholarship support.
Budget & Budget Justification
A one-page document that includes both the budget and budget justification.
Review Criteria
Applications will be reviewed by an internal committee. Members of the internal committee will not necessarily be from the applicant’s area of expertise and the proposal should be written for a general scientific audience.
The applications will be judged on:
- Whether the proposal represents a new direction or new project for the faculty member with the potential to impact their career trajectory
- Creativity of the proposal.
- Potential impact of the proposal on the faculty member’s discipline.
Reporting Requirements
At the end of the one-year award period, recipients will be required to submit an End of Year report which should include: project status, what has been accomplished, problems encountered, any changes made to project objectives, project expenditures. Additional, annual queries to award recipient will be made to ascertain whether any external funding, papers, books, etc. have derived from this award.
A No Cost Extension (NCE) can be requested. NCEs are granted at the discretion of the Duke Office for Research & Innovation. NCE requests should be accompanied by a status report detailing: project status, what has been accomplished, problems encountered, any changes made to project objectives, and an outline of how funds will be spent during the NCE period.
Timeline
| Date | |
|---|---|
RFP Released | April 30, 2025 |
| RFP Submission Deadline | June 10, 2025 |
| Anticipated Grant Notification | November 1, 2025 |
| Funds Made Available | By November 30, 2025 |
| Funds to be Expended By | December 31, 2026 |
Applicant Instructions
- To apply visit http://bit.ly/myresearchproposal, click on “Create New User” (or log in if you already have an account). Proposals must be submitted under the Principal Investigator’s name.
- A step-by-step user’s guide for applying via the MyResearchProposal software is available here.
- Access Code for the award is: ‘SPARK’
- For any questions concerning MyResearchProposal passwords or system issues, please contact Ms. Anita Grissom: myresearchproposal@duke.edu or 919-668-4774.
- For all other questions, please contact vpri@duke.edu.
FAQs
Assistant professors in clinical sciences departments who have 75 percent of their effort committed to research are eligible to apply.
No, parental leave would not count against you.
If you can demonstrate that the proposal would benefit from the specific expertise of another Duke faculty member, their willingness to serve as a co-PI/co-I may be indicated by a letter of support. However, the proposal should demonstrate creative and novel research and scholarship that enables the Principal Investigator to pursue new directions and ideas within their research.
Although this program does not have a faculty effort requirement, applicants should follow their school's guidance around minimum effort on sponsored projects and satisfy a standard of reasonability for their Other Support documentation.
The two-page proposal maximum does not include references. The budget, CV, and two-page proposal must be formatted as noted in the RFP. You may include videos and hyperlinks in the proposal.
This is an internal award and will not require an SPS record to support the submission.
No, indirects/overhad/ (G&A) should not be included in the total budget. The budget should include all direct costs necessary for the completing the aims of proposal.
Yes, tuition remission is an allowable expense in the budget.
Proposals should be written with the expectation that they will be reviewed by Duke faculty members, but not necessarily faculty within the applicant’s narrow area of expertise. The scientific content should be written with a minimal use of jargon, domain-specific acronyms, and etc., so as to be accessible by reviewers with broad science and technology backgrounds.
MyResearchProposal is a web-based tool used for streamlining the management of competitive grant application processes, nominations, and other data collection mechanisms used by CTSI, the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, and other institutes and departments across Duke.