COVID-19 Funding Opportunities

The Office of the Vice Provost for Research (VPR) has compiled a list of funding opportunities specific to COVID-19. This list will be updated as new opportunities arise.

Searle Scholars Program

Internal Deadline: 7/20/21

The Searle Scholars Program supports the independent research of 15 outstanding early-career scientists each year who have recently been appointed as assistant professors on a tenure-track appointment. The program is primarily interested in the potential of applicants to make innovative and high-impact contributions to research over an extended period of time. Applicants are expected to be pursuing independent research careers in biochemistry, cell biology, genetics, immunology, neuroscience, pharmacology, and related areas in chemistry, medicine, and the biological sciences. The Searle Scholars Program does not ordinarily support purely clinical research but has supported research programs that include both clinical and basic components.

Eligibility & Requirements:

• Applicants should have begun their appointment as an independent investigator at the assistant professor level on or after July 1, 2020. The appointment must be their first tenure-track position (or its nearest equivalent) at an invited institution.
  
• Applicants who were nominated for awards in the previous competition year but were not awarded may still meet the eligibility criteria for the current competition.
  

Internal Nomination Process:

Interested applicants should complete their application at the following link: https://jhu.infoready4.com/#competitionDetail/1845598

Requirements are listed below.

1. Brief proposal, including the following sections:

• Career goals: Provide a brief summary of your general career objectives over the next five years (character limit with spaces = 1,000).
  
• Research program: Provide an overview of the specific areas of research you would like to perform in your laboratory in the next few years. Explain why this work is particularly novel and important (character limit with spaces = 2,500).
  
• Research project: Describe, in greater detail, a part of the research that you noted in Research Program above (character limit with spaces = 5,000).
  

2. Investigator CV, including current external research support and publications.

3. List of proposed reference letter writers (see opportunity for specific guidance).

Questions? Comments? Email the Office of Foundation Relations at FoundationRelations@jhu.edu.

Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) Challenge

No application deadline

The Michael J. Fox Foundation is sponsoring a $2 million prize to the first team to develop a viable selective alpha-synuclein PET tracer and agree to make that tracer available broadly.

The ability to image alpha-synuclein deposition in the brain would be a game-changing achievement for the Parkinson's disease (PD) field. The accumulation of aggregated alpha-synuclein is a pathological hallmark of PD and a priority target for drug development given its hypothesized contribution to neurodegeneration. In vivo imaging of alpha-synuclein pathology could be useful as a biomarker of the presence of disease and disease progression and as a pharmacodynamic tool for drug development. With this prize, the Foundation seeks to attract research teams and accelerate momentum to speed the development of such a tracer.

Contestants: Anyone is eligible for the prize who agrees to all contest rules. Contestants may be MJFF funded or not and can be from either academia or industry.

Contest rules:

1. Contestants must apply for the prize with pre-clinical and clinical data supporting the broad use of their alpha-synuclein radiotracer. Judges may ask for additional data, including but not limited to raw imaging data.
   
2. NOTE: All contestants must agree to make the winning radiotracer available for use by The Michael J. Fox Foundation and MJFF awardees through a nonexclusive license or other MJFF-approved mechanism.
   

Criteria for winning: The winning contestant must demonstrate that the radiotracer binds with relatively high selectivity to alpha-synuclein according to pre-specified criteria and must demonstrate proof-of-concept in human subjects, including people with Parkinson's disease and/or another synucleinopathy. See below for more details on submission requirements.

Timeline: There is no deadline for submissions. The $2 million award will be issued to the first contestant who submits compelling evidence of a viable selective tracer and agrees to its widespread use. If no award is given by mid-2018, The Michael J. Fox Foundation will evaluate the state of the field and utility of such a prize.

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