MBB Research Awards - Funds for Interfaculty Collaboration
The Mind/Brain/Behavior Interfaculty Initiative (MBB) has funds available to support novel, interdisciplinary, Harvard faculty led research projects relevant to its mission.
The primary mandate is that research focus on one or more of the multitude of questions concerning how the brain functions to sculpt human nature, including approaches from ethics, economics, neurobiology, and psychology. Examples might include: biomedical concerns linking mind to culture, economic experiments targeting the dynamics and universality of cooperation, neurobiological analyses of the relationship between brain plasticity and environmental structure, and psychological studies of mental development in normal and abnormal populations. Proposals that bring together two or more disciplinary perspectives or transcend disciplinary boundaries and that are not yet ready for traditional sources of support will be favored. Such collaborative projects will typically involve faculty members from different departments but can also involve faculty within the same department working at different levels of analysis. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the work, we are particularly keen to see proposals that would normally fall between the cracks of traditional disciplinary boundaries at the federal agencies such as NSF and NIH. It is hoped that the seed funds can facilitate the acquisition of data or otherwise serve as the basis for larger grant submissions to these agencies or others.
MBB plans to make two awards of up to $25,000 each to support one year of research. Award funds might be spent on equipment, supplies, or for hiring staff or student assistants that might increase productivity or facilitate inter-faculty collaboration but cannot include salary support for the Principal Investigator(s). Due to the limited nature of the funding for these awards, no single faculty member may receive an award more than once in a five year period.
- Award recipients will be expected to:
- make a "brown bag" presentation at MBB during the award year;
- participate in other MBB activities, e.g., faculty receptions, schmoozers, etc.;
- submit a final report to MBB, including financial summary, at the end of the award period;
- submit copies of any papers or publications that emerge from the research, and, preferably, acknowledge their MBB award in such papers and publications.
The application form is due January 31, 2008.
For an example of a funded award, please click here.