Discovery Awards: Application Guidelines

The 2025 Discovery Awards applications are now closed. We anticipate that applications for the 2026 cycle will open in Fall 2025.

Eligibility: 

• Only one application per lead PI will be accepted. There is no limit to the number of proposals you can participate in as a co-PI. 

• If you were the lead PI of a funded 2023 Discovery Award or 2024 Discovery Award, you are not eligible to apply as the lead PI of a 2025 award. Principal Investigators may submit new proposals as PI after a two-cycle waiting period following a funded grant. 

Applications from all academic and professional disciplines at the university are welcome, and may cover fundamental, applied, or clinical research in any field, as well as the development of applied creative projects in the arts and humanities. 

Applications must include at least two faculty members and/or APL staff members representing at least two separate schools/divisions or affiliates of the university.  For example, Peabody and SOM co-PIs qualify as an eligible partnership, but two faculty members from different SOM departments would not qualify without a third co-PI from a different school or affiliate. 

Schools/divisions and affiliates are as follows: Applied Physics Laboratory (APL); Berman Institute of Bioethics (BI); Bloomberg School of Public Health (BSPH); Carey Business School (CBS); Center for Talented Youth (CTY); Human Language Technology Center of Excellence (HLTCOE); Jhpiego; Krieger School of Arts & Sciences (KSAS); Peabody Institute; School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS); School of Education (SOE); School of Government & Policy (SOGP); School of Medicine (SOM); School of Nursing (SON); Sheridan Libraries; and Whiting School of Engineering (WSE). 

This award is meant to spark collaboration between faculty/staff. Applications are open to tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure JHU faculty, including clinical, research, practice, and teaching faculty. Adjunct faculty, emeriti professors, and lecturers may apply as co-PIs. Visiting professors are ineligible. Students and postdoctoral fellows cannot serve as co-PI, however, they can be included in the budget. 

Funding: 

Teams may request up to $150,000, with an award term of one to two years, to explore a new area of collaborative work. These awards are not intended to supplement or support past or current collaborations. Support may be used for salary, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows or technicians, equipment, travel, and/or consumables. Include fringe on all salary funding requests. The aim of this program is to incite novel interactions within JHU; therefore, no more than 10% of the grant should be allocated as a subaward. We highly recommend that your departmental administrator review your budget for accuracy. Applicants must describe a credible plan that assures they will make substantial progress during their funding period. Awards will be announced in late spring and funding will begin on 7/1/2025. 

We are delighted to partner with the following institutes/initiatives to offer a joint Discovery Award of $175,000. If your research proposal aligns with the mission and objectives of any of these institutes/initiatives, you are eligible to apply for this enhanced funding:

• Data Science and AI Institute (DSAI)
• Hopkins Business of Health Initiative (HBHI)
• OneNeuro Initiative
• Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute (ROSEI)

These supplemental funds will be available on a limited basis, and proposals not chosen for the initiatives above will still qualify for a standard Discovery Award, provided they meet the scoring criteria. 

For any Discovery Award proposals that include APL: Please note that APL effort cannot exceed $50,000 of the budget. APL co-PIs must submit their completed proposal through APL’s Cooler Awards Management System by Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 11:59PM, for internal technical and financial review. Once approved by APL, no changes are allowed between APL Cooler approval and JHU InfoReady submission. APL-related questions can be directed to Jason Fayer at [email protected].

Guidelines: 

Applications will consist of four elements: 

1. A proposal, which should include five sections that succinctly describe the: (A) innovative hypothesis to be tested or goal to be achieved; (B) nature of the collaboration that enables the proposed work; (C) approach to be pursued during the year of funding; (D) expected impact of the proposed studies beyond the initial funded phase, including what future work would be enabled; and (E) potential source of funding to sustain the effort. Since the Discovery Awards are intended for new collaborative projects, no preliminary data are required. The proposal section can be no more than three pages, not including references. Please use 12-point font and margins no smaller than 1/2 inch. 
2. A budget breakdown that describes how the funding will be allocated to each investigator on the team, and how it will be apportioned for any personnel, supplies, equipment or other project expenses. Any budget amount up to the cap can be proposed. Faculty salary and equipment costs can be included. No indirect costs should be included in the budget.
3. A current CV or biosketch for all investigators. Please include all current and pending support from sponsored and non-sponsored sources.
4. Up to five keywords to aid in reviewer assignment. 

Letters of support will not be accepted to keep the review process fair and brief. 

Review Criteria: 

The review process will evaluate the innovativeness of the project, its potential long-term impact and the synergy expected to result from the proposed cross divisional collaboration. Collaborators who have worked and published together in the past are not excluded, but the project itself must be both highly innovative and as of yet unfunded. Applications will also be judged on the likelihood of success in attaining future funding. Proposals will be reviewed by a panel of distinguished faculty. 

Post–Award Requirements: 

We highly recommend working with JHU’s Research Development Team to leverage pilot data and explore funding opportunities for your collaborative research. 

Recipients must submit a final progress report at the conclusion of their award term. This report should include completed work, reports of invention, and any external funding applications/awards obtained through this funding. Recipients may also be asked to present their work at a Provost Research Symposium.