Accelerate
Being competitive for large-scale, center-size grants requires significant advanced planning, a well-defined and central research theme, strong preliminary data and a history of partnership among collaborating investigators that often span multiple schools, colleges and disciplines.
It also requires projects with strong potential to create substantial, large-scale quality of life improvements for our state, nation and world.
Accelerate is designed to support teams that are targeting a large-scale external funding opportunity within six months to two years and invests seed funding for activities to strengthen collaborative efforts toward a successful proposal submission.
Accelerate services include:
- Expert support in proposal development to meet team’s needs and funder requirements (e.g., scheduling/running team meetings, preparing proposal documents, planning events, coordinating with research administrators, connecting to other internal and external partners/services).
- Up to $125k in seed funding to strengthen collaborations, host events, cover release time or effort, pay external reviewers and other needs that will strengthen the competitiveness of the proposal/team. Disbursements of program funds depend on the team’s progression toward submitting a competitive proposal and will follow a milestone timeline agreed upon at the beginning of the program period. Teams may request:
- If the proposal submission deadline is more than 6 months away, teams may request up to $125,000.
- If the proposal submission deadline is less than 6 months away, teams may request up to $50,000.
Who should apply?
- Teams that include one lead PI and at least one co-PI from another school/college or unit (by primary appointment).
- Applications must target an upcoming large-scale funding opportunity at least six months from the date the Accelerate application is submitted. “Large-scale” will look different for different disciplines. As a general rule of thumb, large-scale proposals will request at least $1M per year from the funder.
- It is expected that research teams will propose projects tackling significant and complex research questions that would not be feasible to pursue through individual efforts
- Renewals of existing center grants, or equivalent, are not eligible.
Limited Submission Policy
Some external funding opportunities restrict the number of proposals that the University of Michigan can submit. When multiple U-M researchers want to pursue these limited submission opportunities, OVPR runs an internal competition to select institutional applicants. U-M researchers who apply to Accelerate and who are pursuing a limited submission opportunity will need to identify a secondary large-scale funding source to pursue if they are not selected during the internal competition for the limited submission.
Application Information
Applications for Accelerate are open and received on a rolling deadline. If you are submitting a large-scale proposal due in less than the six-month requirement for Accelerate and need immediate support, please email Kelsey Ebbs at klucinda@umich.edu.