The Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC) is pleased to announce the RFA for the 2022 John S. Dunn Foundation Collaborative Research Award Program. Launched in 2009 with generous support from the John S. Dunn Foundation, this seed grant program continues to build the collaborative environment of the Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC) and fund projects with high potential for impacting human health.

The purpose of this program is to foster new, exemplary inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional engagement in the quantitative biomedical sciences by providing research seed grants of up to $100,000 total to support research/preliminary work for 2 years.

The goal of this program is to fund exploratory projects with high potential for future competitive research funding within 2.5 years of project start and a “best case scenario” plan for transitioning to clinical studies within 5 years. 

Funds will be awarded to new collaborative teams in which the PI and co-PI are from different GCC member institutions: Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, University of Houston, UT Health Science Center at Houston, UT Medical Branch at Galveston, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, and The Institute of Biosciences and Technology of Texas A&M. Scientific disciplines covered by submissions to this program range across a spectrum within the quantitative biomedical sciences.

Team Eligibility Requirements include:

Eligible teams must satisfy all the following criteria:

1. Faculty:
   • The PI and Co-PI must be PhD(tenured or tenure-track), MD, or MD/PhD.
   • Co-I: a third team member is optional and must be PhD(tenured or tenure-track),MD, or MD/PhD.
2. Institutional Affiliation:
   • PI and co-PI must be faculty at different GCC member institutions.
   • Co-I may be from any GCC member institution or from a GCC affiliate institution (Houston Methodist Research Institute, Texas Southern University) 
3. New Collaborations:
   • None of the investigators on the proposing team, including co-PIs and   Co- Is, should have worked together previously, since the goal of this program is to initiate new research collaborations. An exception is if the Co-I is providing services from a core facility.
   • Previous collaborative activity is defined as collaborations that have resulted in measurable outcomes, including but not limited to abstracts, publications, grants, patents, etc.
4. One-proposal Limit:
   • Faculty can be PI or a member of the collaborative team on only one pre-proposal.
   • The pre-proposal may be submitted only once, to the PI institution.
5. Previous Recipients:
   • There is a 3-year moratorium for all previous award recipients. Members of any research team that received an award between 2019-2021are ineligible for the 2022 research grant program.
   • A listing of past recipients can be found here.
     
     

UTMB will select three teams from pre-proposals to move to the final proposal stage. The GCC staff will then manage the full proposal process with the expectation of 21 full proposals to be reviewed and three teams will be selected for final award of funding.

Each team of faculty wishing to compete for a Dunn Collaborative Research Award must first submit a pre-proposal (as a single PDF) to Melodi Moore mdmoore@utmb.edu by April 1, 2022.  All complete pre-proposals will be reviewed by the UTMB Research Grants Review & Oversight Committee.  Teams will be notified around April 28 of the selection or not of their proposals.