VCU Funding

Several grants and funds administered at The Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation (OVPRI) apply to VCUarts Qatar faculty. The Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation (OVPRI), together with the One VCU Research Strategic Priorities Plan Advisory Council, has designed opportunities to serve as a catalyst for reaching our goal of improving the human condition by leveraging VCU’s unique strengths, student talents, and community engagement.  

VCU Arts, Humanities and Social Science Fund

Purpose: Through a partnership between the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, the VCU Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Fund is designed to support, facilitate, and enhance the creation, production, and dissemination of arts, humanities, and social sciences research and creative activity at any stage of development, including initial or mid-stage project development, presentation, or performance, and final publication.

VCU Breakthroughs Fund

Purpose: VCU Breakthroughs Fund (Breakthroughs) supports transdisciplinary teams to design unique, creative, and innovative large-scale approaches to confront societal grand challenges in alignment with the One VCU Research Strategic Priorities Plan. Successful projects are designed to reach very specific outcomes or establish the capability to compete for external funding upon award completion.

VCU Momentum Fund

Purpose: The VCU Momentum Fund (Momentum) promotes impactful, interdisciplinary research by supporting multi-principal investigator research teams to prepare and submit competitive, external, multi-component large-scale proposals. Competitiveness for these large-scale 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 spans multiple schools/colleges and/or disciplines. Examples include, but are not limited to, large funding opportunities from federal agencies (e.g., National Institutes of Health P- or U-series mechanisms, National Science Foundation (NSF) Gen4 Engineering Research Centers, NSF Science and Technology Centers, and Department of Energy Frontier Research Centers) or foundations (e.g., Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation). Each Momentum Award will provide up to $200,000 for up to 24 months, as well as a tailored plan for OVPRI research development team support in collaboration with other units across campus.

It is expected that research teams will propose tackling significant and complex research questions that would not be feasible to pursue through individual efforts. Partnerships across schools/colleges are strongly encouraged but optional, and teams must submit a competitive external proposal by the end of the project period.

VCU Quest Fund

Purpose: The goal of the VCU Quest Fund (formerly the VCU Presidential Research Quest Fund) is to afford all faculty an internal funding opportunity to support new, emerging, or continuing research. Research proposals that advance any discipline and area of research focus are appropriate for consideration. Requests for grant support may be based on a broad array of needs, from restarting an inactive research program to pilot studies that would produce preliminary results on which external grant applications could be based. Proposed work that helps advance transdisciplinary research, multidisciplinary research, and cross-campus collaboration, as well as research that has the potential for translation to practice or market, is especially encouraged.

VCU VIP

Purpose: Through a partnership between the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, the VCU Transformative Learning Fund has been established to support the engagement of undergraduate students in faculty-led research, design, or entrepreneur projects focused on finding solutions to societal challenges. The inaugural competition commits $200,000 to support establishment of a university-level Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) initiative at VCU.