CSUBIOTECH Seed Grant Programs

Details: For full details, including eligibility and application links, visit the CSUBIOTECH grant programs page.

Deadline for all Seed Grants: Monday, February 3, 2025 by 5pm

The CSU’s Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology (CSUBIOTECH) is a network of faculty, deans, and presidents, whose work champions biotechnology innovation. The CSU BIOTECH team administers grant and award programs that are open to CSU faculty and students. Faculty and students in all disciplines related to biotechnology— including, but not limited to, life sciences, physical sciences, math, agricultural science, engineering and/or business—are encouraged to apply.

NOTE: All applications will need to be routed through Sponsored Programs Foundation before they can be submitted.

About: CSUBIOTECH is pleased to release a series of Academic Year 2024-2025 Seed Grant Requests-for-Proposals (RFPs).

Curriculum Development Grants: Supports the development of innovative general education courses, laboratories, and first-year experiences, as well as revisions to lower-level or introductory biotechnology-related courses. The program is open to tenured/tenure-track (T/TT) CSU faculty. Other CSU staff or instructors may be listed as co-Principal Investigators or key collaborators. CSUBIOTECH will consider only one proposal per PI or co-PI at a time to the Curriculum Development grant program. Investigators applying to this grant program are also welcome to apply to other CSUBIOTECH grant and award programs.

New Investigator Grants: Provides CSU faculty with the resources required not only to successfully compete for externally funded grants but also to involve CSU students in their scholarship and research programs.
Eligibility: Open to tenured/tenure-track CSU faculty members who have not yet received external support for their CSU research projects that exceeds a sum total of more than $15,000 by the application date. Faculty members who received postdoctoral fellowships, student training grants, or major instrumentation grants that did not include funding that can be applied to their CSU research program, are eligible for the New Investigator program. However, faculty members are ineligible if they were a Principal Investigator (PI) on federal research grants, including grants issued by foreign central governmental agencies, prior to their CSU faculty appointment. The restriction on prior federal grant funding includes NIH K-99-type awards. Additionally, PIs are ineligible for the New Investigator program if they have received two previous CSUBIOTECH research seed grants.

Research Development Grants: Provides CSU faculty with continuing resources to fill gaps in external funding for ongoing research projects or to pilot new, but as-yet unfunded, research directions for established investigators.
Eligibility: This program is open to tenured/tenure-track (T/TT) CSU faculty who have received external support for their CSU-based research projects exceeding a sum total of more than $15,000 while they were tenured/tenure-track at a CSU academic institution. Faculty who have received less than a combined total of $15,000 in external-to-the-CSU support, and/or support that consists only of campus equipment or campus education grants are not eligible and should apply instead to the New Investigator grant program. Applicants are eligible for this program only after they have been unsuccessful winning external grant support for the project. Research Development Grants should provide PIs the additional time and support needed to strengthen a competitive renewal or resubmission. As a result, applicants must describe or provide evidence of unsuccessful attempt(s) to obtain external-to-the-CSU funding for the research project described in the CSUBIOTECH Research Grant proposal.

CONTACT: Please direct questions to James Schmitt at jcschmitt@sdsu.edu or CSUBIOTECH at csubiotech@sdsu.edu.

APPLY: If you are interested in applying or have any questions, please contact our Pre-Award Specialists Pia Gabriel at pg12@humboldt.edu, Kaz Wegmuller at kaz.wegmuller@humboldt.edu,  or Jocelyne Takatsuno at jt366@humboldt.edu by January 3, 2025.