Seed Grants

NEW DEADLINE SEPT 15, 2024

The UCLA-CDU Dana Center for Neuroscience and Society invites applications for seed grants in line with its mission to develop a method of community-partnered neuroscience. This seed grant program is made possible through The Dana Foundation, DGSOM, the UCLA College, Charles R. Drew School of Medicine, and the office of the Vice Chancellor for Research at UCLA.

The Center will support up to 4 seed-grant projects, for one or two years, with a targeted annual budget limited to approximately $50,000. The purpose of these awards is to develop new research projects at the intersection of neuroscience and society, with a special emphasis on projects willing to explore the relationship between community knowledge and participation and neuroscience knowledge. We encourage not only at primary research proposals, but also education proposals, community advocacy proposals, science communication proposals, and humanities proposals. Our 2024 Seed Grant Program opens August 2024.

Priority will be given to research proposals addressing questions of interest identified by the Human Centered Design retreats held at the center over the past year.  Proposals addressing other important neuroscientific and societal issues will also be considered. While proposals do not need to already have established community participation, all projects must express a willingness to embrace community involvement in some way.

Human Centered Design

We use a process of Human Centered Design to identify, contextualize, and prioritize the knowledge and interests of people experiencing the conditions neuroscience can impact. It is a process that asks first, what the most important issues, lived experiences, and existing efforts of community members are, and second, how neuroscience can be in service to those realities. It asks groups of people to sit together and collaborate on activities including rapid brainstorming and identification of issues, iterative ranking and voting, root cause analyses and presentations, and neuroscience research question design.

Over the past year, the Center hosted 3 Human Centered Design sprints, with over 100 participants from UCLA, CDU, and South LA community organizations. Neuroscientists, social science and humanities scholars, medical, nursing, and post-bac students, community organizers, residents, and leaders in education and local policy collaborated to iteratively develop important areas of opportunity for neuroscience impact and social benefit.

This year, we are prioritizing activities which focus on the following themes emerging from our design sprints:

• The impacts of the social and built environments on the brain
• Understanding intergenerational trauma
• The relationship between sound (music, noise, etc.) and the brain

You can read the full results of our Human Centered Design retreats below:

Seed Grant Application Facts in Brief

Key Dates for Dana Center 2024 Seed Grants:

• RFA Posted: August 1, 2024
• RFA Portal open: August 6, 2024
• Deadline for submission: September 15, 2024
• Award Notification: September 30, 2024

Eligibility:

• Funds are available to UCLA and CDU faculty from any discipline working at the intersection of neuroscience and society.
• Funds are also available to community partners that work with UCLA and/or CDU faculty, or whose work supports the Center’s mission.
• Funds are not intended to supplement ongoing supported research, unless the project considerably expands the scope and/or reach of the ongoing activity to align with the Center.
• An eligible individual may only submit one proposal on which they are PI.
• Individuals who identify with a group historically underrepresented in neuroscience and medicine are strongly encouraged to apply.
• Proposals which include intentional efforts to partner with community organizations, or demonstrate a need and willingness to do so, are particularly encouraged.
• Projects do not need to have already established community partnerships in order to be eligible but must be explicitly open to doing so.

Application in brief:

Applications should include the following items assembled into a single PDF document no longer than 5 pages:

A maximum 3-page document containing: 

• Project title
• Names and titles of the Lead PI and any Co-PIs and Co-Is
• A paragraph (~ 1/3 of a page) summary of the project in lay language
• Concise description of the project’s specific aims, significance, innovation, methods, milestones, timeline, deliverables, plans for dissemination and pursuit of outside funding

Maximum 2-page document containing: 

• The total budget requested
• Budget justification
• References

Important Notes

• Proposals must be received no later than midnight PST on the deadline date. Early submission is encouraged.
• Proposals must be submitted via the submission portal here.
• For more information contact, Sabrina Amani, Dana Center Administrative Director samani@mednet.ucla.edu