Overview: The New Resource Proposal (NRP) mechanism is open to faculty at WU. Proposals should enhance or enable Systems Neuroscience research at WU, broadly defined and should ideally include a new collaboration, new line of research or new resource that will benefit systems neuroscience at WU. These requests should include documentation of the potential impact on stakeholders in the neuroscience community and, ideally, shared financial or in kind support from departments, cores or other sources at WU. Review and funding is meant to be flexible, opportunistic and rapid. Applicants performing pilot neuroimaging studies are encouraged to obtain MIR and JIT funds to support some of the imaging facility costs of the project before submitting the NRP.

Eligibility: Applicants must be faculty at WU. If the applicant is an instructor or on a non-tenure track (clinical or research track), the request must include a letter of support from the applicant’s Department Head stating the department’s commitment to the applicant’s research career development at WU.

Budget: Requests can be of any size within the available resources of the Center, and are not bound by any fixed amount requirement. However, requests above $40,000 for a single year and/or for multiple years receive more scrutiny and face a higher threshold for funding. Funds may be used for relevant expenses of the project including salary support for personnel. Salary support for faculty is not typically allowed. Travel requests are not allowed, unless critical to the scientific goals of the project. Funds must be used within WU and cannot be sent to other institutions. Funds are expected to be used within the time frame stated in the award. No cost extension requests are considered on a case-by-case basis; no more than one extension will be granted per award.

Additional Review Criteria: NRPs are not designed to provide bridge funding for a lab or project. The review committee favors NRPs with evidence that resources will lead to new or expanded outside funding, projects that will benefit multiple WU investigators, and new collaborations. Priority is given to requests from junior faculty and faculty who have not been recently funded by either McDonnell Center.

Submission: There is no application form and no fixed deadlines. NRPs should be a single PDF sent to the Center Director, Tamara Hershey, PhD (Tammy@wustl.edu). The PDF should include a 1-2 page description of the proposed work that addresses the criteria described above, a brief budget and justification, NIH biosketch and Other Support for faculty, as well as any supporting letters and/or documentation. The Director will contact the applicant with any questions or initial feedback. If appropriate for an NRP, it will then be reviewed by the Operations Committee. Decisions typically are made quickly and will come from the Center Director or Administrators.

In order to apply for MIR-JIT funds, you must complete both the MIR and JIT applications. You apply for the MIR funds first on the MIR application website here (use your WUSTL key to log in). Once it is approved by the MIR Committee you will need to complete the JIT application. To do this please click here. Once it is approved by the JIT Committee they will send a confirmation note.