Cancer Center at Illinois Seed Grant Program 2025

Start Date1/15/2025 Deadline Date3/12/2025

DATES AND DEADLINES

  • Proposal Due Date: March 12, 2025 at 11:59 PM
  • Award Notification: May 14, 2025
  • Earliest Start Date: July 1, 2025

PROGRAM GOALS

The Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) Seed Grants are used to initiate new collaborations and enhance existing collaborations. Recipients will each receive up to $200,000 to support interdisciplinary team research that have promise to earn future external and federal funding. The aims of this seed grant program are to enable faculty teams to:

  1. Develop novel cancer-focused research ideas that require the involvement of multiple cancer investigators from different disciplines.
  2. Formulate either a hypothesis-driven or technology-focused research project that relates to one or ideally both of the CCIL research programs and their accompanying themes. (See descriptions of CCIL Programs).
  3. Collect preliminary data or other relevant information to support a feasible approach for grant proposals to an NCI recognized funding agency.
  4. Garner external funding for multi-investigator, program project level research projects using CCIL support as a catalyst.
  5. Mentor the next generation of cancer researchers by providing students with hands-on opportunities to engage in research, foster their professional development, and prepare them for impactful careers in oncology and related fields.

For more information, please view the Full 2025 Cancer Center at Illinois Seed Grant RFP.

Eligibility

RESEARCH TEAM ELIGIBILITY

Proposals must reflect substantive involvement of multiple investigators from different scientific disciplines and/or academic departments.

At least two of the team members must be current CCIL members. Applicants are strongly encouraged to include faculty at the Assistant Professor rank on their teams.

Research teams must host a student from one of the CCIL educational and training programs. Please note that funding from the CCIL Seed Grant does NOT need allocated towards supporting these training program students. Please see the Mentorship Survey for more information on these training programs.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR ELIGIBILITY

Each project will identify a lead principal investigator (PI) who assumes organizational leadership for the project. A faculty member may only be PI on one submitted project. However, there is no limit to being a co-investigator on other projects. Priority will be given to projects for which PIs are existing CCIL members. Preference will be given to investigators who have not previously received substantial CCIL research support funding.

PIs must fill out the Cancer Research Training and Education Coordination (CRTEC) Mentorship Survey to be eligible to receive funding.

Principal Investigator Requirements

GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

  • The PI must be a Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor or Specialized Faculty
  • The PI and his/her unit are fully responsible for any overages if the funding request is calculated incorrectly
  • The PI is responsible for consulting with the relevant offices and meeting all requirements