Allen Distinguished Investigator Awards: Sponsor LOI Deadline
Date and Time
Allen Distinguished Investigator AwardsSponsor LOI Deadline: November 15, 2022 by noon Pacific Time (3PM ET)FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: March 23, 2023 (if invited to submit a full proposal)Sponsor Full Proposal Deadline: March 30, 2023 (if invited)Award Amount: $1,500,000 for three years. Overhead costs are not allowed. Please discuss with your grants administrator before beginning an application.
The Allen Distinguished Investigator program supports early-stage research with the potential to reinvent entire fields. The program seeks to have a lasting impact on the direction of research, aiming to serve as a catalyst upon which future research is founded. This program seeks to enable scientists to take risks with new ideas and approaches, and strongly believes in interdisciplinary approaches that allow scientists to look beyond their own disciplines, and to explore approaches with colleagues in other disciplines in order to bring new perspectives to challenging problems where traditional approaches within a discipline may be ‘stuck.’ The program is especially interested in approaches that are unlikely to receive funding from traditional government sources, including methodological and technological advances that are often necessary complements to scientific advance and often difficult to fund through traditional sources. This program encourages and supports researchers including novel methodological, theoretical, and technological elements in their proposals.
Up to six awards will be made for up to $9 million total funding to support research that propels the following fields forward:
- Extracellular Vesicles: The foundation seeks innovative LOIs that would elucidate fundamental biological properties of extracellular vesicles by focusing on comparative studies. Projects of interest may include comparisons of cargo delivery mechanisms across cells or systems, biological roles based on extracellular vesicle size, roles in different stages of development and aging, and/or roles in healthy and disease states. Top proposals might include software and tool building efforts, but would be primarily focused on elucidating biological mechanisms. Priority will be given to projects whose primary focus is not on the DNA or RNA cargo associated with extracellular vesicles.
- Sex Hormones: The foundation seeks creative LOIs exploring sex hormones and their cellular and molecular mechanisms of action. The life and biomedical sciences increasingly recognize the importance of considering biological sex due to its effect on research results and diagnosing and treating disease. However, knowledge of the basic mechanisms of this effect is often lacking. This program looks to support projects that will deepen our understanding of basic biology and could have downstream impacts for human and other animal health such as improved diagnostics and therapeutics. Preferred projects include approaches that consider biological sex as continuous and plastic; focus on new hormone discovery and/or less studied sex hormones; explore the role of sex hormones outside of reproduction and reproduction-related development; and bring together diverse teams (e.g., biologists, chemists, technologists, computer scientists, etc.). These awards would support both sex hormone research and the development of new technology necessary for sex hormone research and discovery. While not a requirement for projects, additional consideration will be given to projects that aim to uncover mechanisms or develop technologies that would be generalizable beyond a single species or class of species.