Funding/Grants
Each year in April, the UOPA has an internal grant opportunity to apply for a professional development grant or a grant to promote DEI.
These grants offset costs for conference attendance, visiting a collaborator, organizing an outreach event, or any other type of opportunity that is ordinarily difficult to fund. Check out a few of our awardees from the 2023 cycle:
Tayler Hebner held a half-day Introduction to Polymer Science workshop that was attended by 30 graduate students and postdocs from the Knight Campus labs and used funds from the UOPA grant to purchase reference materials and polymer science resources used in the workshop.
Abby Cullen used her UOPA Professional Development Grant to visit Oregon Health and Science University for extended stays and network with mentors who became K99 mentor team members, collect extra data for UO projects, and learn new protocols from collaborators. She is pictured with Tom Barbara and Martin Pike, with whom she collected cerebral perfusion data. Abby says “Being allowed extra time at OHSU for this project has made a significant impact on my ability to collaborate and has significantly increased my network. The project that I am working on is investigating potential interactions between large artery stiffness and Alzheimer’s disease on cerebral perfusion and cognitive function.”
In addition to our UOPA-specific opportunities, we aim to support postdocs in applying for other internal UO grants, and external fellowships and grants!
Check out the slides and notes from our meeting with Vidusha Devasthali from Research Development Services. Vidusha also shared with us a couple of helpful links to payline resources here and here.
The University of Oregon has great resources for funding. In addition to attending panels and workshops offered by the UOPA, check out the following websites:
Research Development Services offers many resources for funding, including:
Newsletter with funding opportunities (very thorough!)
Internal Funding Opportunities
Grant writing resources
Some grants require PI status. Talk to your department administrators about how to do this.
Your adviser and lab/office mates will likely have a list of fellowships and grants that past members have been successful in getting funded. The list of grants listed below are some that members of the UOPA have been successful in getting.
American Cancer Society
American Society for Microbiology has many postdoctoral fellowships
American Heart Association
Ford Foundation
National Academies
NIH (a popular postdoc NIH grant is the Ruth Kirschstein grant, also known as the NRSA)
Lists of grants:
Some institutions and groups have created lists of grant and fellowship opportunities for postdocs. This is one of the most comprehensive lists we of potential funding opportunities that we have found, though it is currently focused on postdocs in biology. The organizations below have also created useful lists of funding opportunities. No list is comprehensive, so make sure to do your own searches on the internet and through your professional network!
UC Berkley
UCLA
Harvard
Georgia Tech
IBP
Policy Fellowships
A number of opportunities exist for careers in science policy within government, NGOs, and non-profits. One of the most popular policy fellowships is through AAAS. The Genetics Society of America also has an extensive Policy Fellowship Database.
Writing/reviewing tips:
RePORT : “Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT) provides access to reports, data, and analysis of NIH research activities…” To view abstracts, Public Health Relevance Statements, budgets and other details of funded NIH grants, select the Institute or center and year you are interested in. You can also look up data based on specific PIs, organization names, or project numbers.
Explicit advice on writing grants for the NIH.
Post-submission:
Now that you’ve submitted that grant, are you wondering if you made the cut? This website offers updated paylines for NIH.