SMHS Faculty Funding Opportunities

The School of Medicine & Health Sciences offers the below awards for faculty members.

Meritorious Award Program

In order to support the research of the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) faculty members, the Dean’s Office in conjunction with Research Affairs is offering the Meritorious Award Program. These funds will provide financial support for investigators to enable the generation of new data, to increase submissions and resubmissions of NIH grants, and ultimately to increase the number of NIH-funded grants in the UND SMHS.

To be eligible, a full-time member of the UND SMHS Faculty must have submitted their grant to NIH within the last year and that grant must have received a meritorious score. For the purpose of this grant competition, meritorious grants are defined as having a percentile ranking at or below the 30percentile for NIH R01/R21/R03/R34/R35 grants or a priority score of 40 or better, if a percentile ranking is not provided by the NIH. Awardees must agree to submit and/or resubmit their grant applications through the UND SMHS. If the grant is not resubmitted, it will affect the eligibility of the faculty member to receive future SMHS grants.

Meritorious Awards will be given as funding is available.

Eligibility

All full-time faculty members conducting basic, translational, and/or clinical research at the UND SMHS.
Eligible grant programs include R01, R21, R03, R34, and R35.
Must have received a grant score within the last year for a grant submitted through the UND SMHS.
A UND SMHS faculty member can only receive one UND SMHS Dean’s Meritorious NIH Grant Award per fiscal year and only one award can be made for a given grant. Duplicate funding is not allowed.
Successful recipients of these funds who then receive an NIH grant for the same or similar project(s) must budget an appropriate effort on the grant.

Funding

A meritorious NIH R01/R34/R35 grant submitted by a UND SMHS faculty member as the PI is eligible to receive $50,000 in direct costs for the project. Meritorious NIH R01/R34/R35 grants submitted by a UND SMHS faculty member as an MPI is eligible to receive $25,000 as long as their budget portion of the R01 grant is > a total direct cost of $300,000 and the PI is not also requesting the award.
Meritorious NIH R21 grants submitted by a UND SMHS faculty member as a PI is eligible to receive $20,000 in direct costs for the project.
Meritorious NIH R03 grants submitted by a UND SMHS faculty member as a PI is eligible to receive $5,000 in direct costs for the project.
NIH rules and financial policies will apply to allowable expenditures.
No salary support for the PI is provided, but salary support for technical staff and trainees is allowed.
Major pieces of equipment costing more than $5,000 will not be allowed.
At the end of the one-year funding period, the PI must submit a comprehensive report detailing how the funding was used, what progress was made, when the grant was resubmitted, and how aggressively the PI sought additional funding based on the work performed.
Applicant recognizes that the School may announce the title and awardee for any Meritorious NIH Grant Award.

Application information

The earliest anticipated start date will be one month after the program is initiated. Only one submission per PI is allowed in a fiscal year. Applications must include the following:

A cover letter that includes the project title, grant type, scores, investigator(s) name and affiliations.
A copy of the specific aims page (for information purposes only).
A copy of the NIH summary statement for the grant.
Application materials must be assembled and submitted as a single PDF file.

Applications can be sent to Nikki Voigt in the Office of the Associate Dean of Research at nicole.voigt@UND.edu.