ORAU Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement

 Below is a summary assembled by the Research & Innovation Office (RIO). Please see the full solicitation for complete information about the funding opportunity.

***Match Requirement*** The applicant’s institution is required to match the award with at least an additional $5,000. The match cannot be used for overhead or indirect costs.

Program Summary

These competitive research awards provide seed money for junior faculty members that often result in additional funding from other sources. Awards can be used to support faculty summer salary, grad student salary, travel, equipment, or other assistance relevant to the faculty member’s research (not overhead or indirect costs). Applicants are encouraged to develop research collaborations with government, private-sector, and other academic researchers. Such alliances enrich and extend not only the reach of your efforts, but the nation’s research enterprise, overall.

Deadlines

CU Internal Deadline: 11:59pm MST November 27, 2023

Sponsor Application Deadline: January 8, 2024

Internal Application Requirements (all in PDF format)

  • Research Proposal (2 pages + 1 optional page of references relating to the proposal): Please address the following: research goals, objectives, and relevant background; expected outcomes and relevance; research design and methodology; competence of applicant to perform the proposed research; available research facilities and resources; budget justification. Applicants must include the source of cost-share/matching funds in with the budget justification and received verbal commitments of matching support.
  • PI Curriculum Vitae

To access the online application, visit: https://cuboulderovcr.secure-platform.com/a/solicitations/6918/home

Eligibility

Full-time assistant professors at ORAU member institutions within two years of their tenure track appointment at the time of application. Research projects must fall within one of these disciplines (note the two new disciplines in italics):

  • Engineering and Applied Science
  • Life Sciences
  • Mathematics/Computer Sciences
  • Physical Sciences
  • Policy, Management, or Education
  • Augmented Reality in the Workplace
  • Supply Chain Innovation

The AREA:  Augmented Reality in the Workplace. The AREA seeks to promote research that brings greater attention to the use of AR in enterprise environments and supports aspiring future leaders in the field of enterprise AR. One (1) award will be made in this research area.  The following represents preferred research focus areas:

  • Design, development, and use of displays for AR experience delivery
  • Development of business and technical standards to address interoperability between AR components or to accelerate AR integration with IT systems
  • Design, development, and/or evaluation of methods to ensure privacy, security and safety of AR systems and their users
  • Integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with AR solutions to enhance workplace productivity and safety
  • Assessment/comparison of AR-assisted procedures to those enterprise operations without AR in order to understand drivers and barriers to adoption in a particular industry

GDIT:  Supply Chain Innovation.  GDIT is interested in promoting multi-disciplinary research that focuses on developing innovative supply chain solutions. One (1) award will be made in this research area.  The following examples are representative of preferred research topics:

  • How can emerging technology innovations in areas like artificial intelligence, robotics, and IoT be used to create supply chain improvements? 
  • From a policy perspective, how do you address the ethics implications of sharing data across an integrated supply chain system?
  • Examining the impact of medical supply chain improvements on health and health care disparities. 
  • How can Big Data be used to increase supply chain efficiencies and effectiveness?

Limited Submission Guidelines

Only two nominations are allowed per institution.

Award Information

Award Amount: $5,000

Match Requirement: $5,000

Award Duration: 1 year (June 1 to May 31)

Review Criteria

Reviews will be conducted by scholars with expertise in the discipline of the application. Each application will receive three independent reviews. Reviewers evaluate the proposals using the following criteria:

  • Scientific/technical merit
  • Proposed method/approach
  • Applicant's research performance competence/adequacy of facilities/resources to conduct the proposed research
  • Likelihood research will lead to fundable research and/or publishable work
  • Overall quality of application