Faculty Research and Scholarship Support

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Ignite Research Fund

The purpose of this initiative is to seed new, high-impact, and collaborative scholarly projects that will create preliminary results or data to support proposals for external funding. Projects should currently not be funded but have the potential to be competitive for funding from federal sources, foundations, or philanthropy. In addition to receiving funds of up to $5,000 for piloting a project, the awarded teams will also be placed into USD’s Grant Development Program.

The application deadline is November 20, 2026. Applicants will be notified in mid-December.

The Ignite Research Fund seeks to:

  • Catalyze new interdisciplinary faculty collaborations
  • Enable faculty to produce proof-of-concept findings that will lead to competitive external funding applications
  • Connect faculty interested in interdisciplinary research to the Grant Development Program

Eligibility

  • This program is only open to teams of at least two USD faculty. The PI and co-PIs must be from different academic departments or units.
  • The PI and co-PIs must be tenure-line faculty.
  • Visiting scholars, research associates, and postdocs are not eligible to serve as the PI or a co-PI but can participate in a project.
  • External collaborators are allowed but seed funds cannot be used to directly support them.
  • The PI and co-PIs cannot have existing sources of funding to support their project. Internal start-up funding does not count in this regard.
  • While the project proposed must be new and unfunded, this does not have to be the team’s first collaboration.
  • A faculty member can be a PI or co-PI on only one Ignite application per cycle.
  • Projects must involve students in a meaningful way either during the one-year grant period or in anticipated future projects that this one will seed.
  • Priority will be given to:
    • faculty who have not had success in securing external research funding; and
    • pre-tenure faculty.

Application Components

  • CVs of the PI and all co-PIs
  • Project title and abstract
  • Project narrative (no more than 3 pages)
  • Budget and budget justification (use Excel template)
  • List of current and pending support for research projects

The call for proposals with more complete application details and guidelines can be found here.

Click Here to Apply

For questions about this program or the application process, contact Provost’s Faculty Fellow Dr. Ryan McGorty (rmcgorty@sandiego.edu).