Funding for Excellence

Funding for Excellence Program - Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences now open through Thursday 21 March 2024 at 5:00 pm.

Intramural Funding Announcement

The Office of Research & Economic Development at UMKC is pleased to accept applications for the 2023-2024 Funding For Excellence intramural funding program in the fields of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. The deadline for submission is Thursday, March 21th at 5 p.m. CST.

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FFE is an institutionally-funded grants program to support the highest level of research, scholarship, and creative endeavors by UMKC faculty. For 2023-2024, there will be two distinct FFE programs: Pool 1- Health Sciences, STEM, and Education, and Pool 2 - Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. This announcement pertains solely to Pool 2.

The four goals of the FFE program are to provide funding which:

  • Allows preliminary data collection to support significant, new future sponsored research submissions
  • Encourages collaborative research between schools, divisions, departments, or disciplines
  • Enhances the research, scholarly, and creative reputation of UMKC
  • Support highly innovative, high-risk/high-reward projects

The program provides three funding Tier options to support research and creative activity. The total number of awards will depend upon the availability of funds. Awards will be made on a competitive basis, following review and recommendation by the UMKC Research Advisory Council (RAC).

APPLICATION TIERS

Tier 1 – up to $15,000 (approx. 3-4 awards)

Tier 1 proposals are solicited for interdisciplinary multiple PI research proposals, which must include a minimum of two contributing investigators representing independent UMKC schools, divisions, departments, or disciplines. Co-investigators external to UMKC are permitted provided FFE funds are used only to support UMKC faculty, students, etc. In exceptional cases, single PI proposals will be considered. These proposals are intended to support preliminary data collection for major future submissions to NSF, NEH, NEA, and other external funding sources. The budget per Tier 1 proposal is up to $15,000.

Tier 2 – up to $10,000 (approx. 4-5 awards)

Tier 2 proposals are solicited for single or multiple PI research proposals. This Tier is intended to support data collection and preliminary research generation for future sponsored project submissions. For these proposals, multi-investigator, cross-unit applications are encouraged but not required. Co-investigators external to UMKC are permitted provided FFE funds are used only to support UMKC faculty, students, etc. The budget per Tier 2 proposal is up to $10,000.

Tier 3 – up to $7,500 (approx. 5-7 awards)

Tier 3 proposals are solicited for research, creative, and scholarly work with the potential to bring reputation and publicity to UMKC but may not require additional funding or sponsored research. Costs may incorporate data collection; travel to research, exhibition, performance, and production sites; exhibition, performance, and production costs; publication subventions; and other research and creative activities. The budget per Tier 3 proposal is up to $7,500. 

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

Tenured, tenure-track, ranked, and non-tenure track faculty at the rank of Assistant Professor or higher holding at least a 0.75 FTE appointment are eligible to serve as Investigators if their appointment allows it. A PI may resubmit a previously unfunded proposal from a prior FFE cycle but must include an explanation of how the proposal has been revised and how the reviewers’ comments have been addressed. Past recipients  of FFE awards are ineligible to apply for this round if they received their FFE award for either 2021-2022 or 2022-2023 (i.e. in the last two years). Recipients prior to 2021 may apply provided a final report and summary of submitted external research proposals has been received by the Office of Research Services as outlined in the “FFE Production and Reporting Requirements” section at the end of this document.

Award Recipients

Pool 1 - Health Sciences, STEM, and Education

Award Recipients

The Office of Research & Economic Development at UMKC is pleased to announce the 2023-2024 Funding For Excellence intramural funding program awardees in the fields of Health Sciences, STEM, and Education (HS+STEM+Ed).

Application Tiers

Tier 1 – up to $30,000 (approx. 4-5 awards)

Tier 1 proposals aim for interdisciplinary research involving at least two UMKC units. External collaborators are allowed if their contribution is supported in-kind. These proposals gather preliminary data for future major submissions to external funders. The individuals and/or proposal teams who are receiving funding are as follows:

  • Mei Fu, Tianhang Zheng, Bowen Liu, Timothy Pluard - MM-TOFL: Developing Multi-Modal Intelligent Systems for Precision Delivery of Exercise-Based Interventions for Lymphatic Pain and Lymphedema
  • ZhiQiang Chen, Yifei Liu, Holly Hagle, Mei-Ling Shyu - Augmented Reality Enabled Risk Communication and Resilience Assessment for Community-based Substance Overdose Mitigation
  • Bi-Botti Youan and Majid Bani Yaghoub - Engineering and Mathematical Modeling of Novel Dual NET-MDM2 Targeting Nanomedicine for Neuroblastoma Therapy
  • Maria Spletter - Application of Nanopore long-read sequencing to identify isoform-specific Bruno1 functions in muscle development
  • Chi Lee - AI and 3D Printing: A New Era for Stent Design in Elderly Cardiac Patients

Tier 2 – up to $10,000 (approx. 5-8 awards)

Tier 2 proposals aim to support data collection and preliminary research for future sponsored project submissions. The individuals and/or proposal teams who are receiving funding are as follows:

  • Timothy Cox - Modifying risk of facial birth defects with maternal dietary vitamin A: Quantification of retinoids using mass spectrometry.
  • Kaylan Durbhakula - Optimization of A Low-Cost High Signal-to-Noise Ratio Modular Beamforming System using Recurrent Neural Networks for Drone Applications
  • Amy Christiansen - Constraining Tropospheric Ozone Formation Regimes in Kansas City using High Resolution Observations from the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) Satellite
  • Megan Hart - A Changing Landscape: The expansion of Peruvian agriculture on ancient terraces under climatic stressors
  • Roy Sayan - Dielectric Tissue Characterization and Development of the Novel Capsule Microwave Tomography Technology for Detecting Pathologic Cancerous Tissues using Microwave Imaging