Discovery Awards: Application Guidelines

The 2024 Discovery Award submission deadline has passed. Decisions will be announced in late May 2024.

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, you are not eligible to apply as the lead PI of a 2024 award. You will be eligible again in 2025.

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.

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 Medicine (SOM); School of Nursing (SON); Sheridan Libraries; and Whiting School of Engineering (WSE).

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.

This award is meant to spark collaboration between faculty. For this reason, students and postdoctoral fellows cannot serve as co-PI, however, they can be included in the budget.

Funding:

Teams may request up to $100,000, with an award term of one to two years, to explore a new area of collaborative work. 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 reviews 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 7/1/2024.

We are delighted to partner with the following institutes/initiatives to connect faculty who share common research interests and aims:

• Proposals aligned with the Hopkins Business of Health Initiative (HBHI) may request up to $100,000 .
• Proposals aligned with Johns Hopkins Data Science and AI Institute may request up to up to $150,000.
• Proposals aligned with the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy (IAA) may request up to $150,000.
• Proposals aligned with the One Neuro Initiative may request up to $150,000.
• Proposals aligned with the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute (ROSEI) may request up to $125,000.
  • Note that proposals not chosen for the initiatives above could still qualify for a standard Discovery Award, provided they meet the scoring criteria.

For any Discovery Award proposals that include APL, ensure that the APL co-PI(s) submit their proposal through APL’s Cooler Awards Management System by Friday, February 2, 2024 at 11:59PM for internal technical and financial review. 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 key words to aid in reviewer assignment.

Please note: 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 crossdivisional 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:

Recipients will submit a final progress report, including any completed work, reports of invention, and any external funding applications/awards enabled by this funding. Recipients may also be asked to present their work at a Provost Research Symposium.