Brain Center

The ultimate research grant: Boston Children’s and MIT

With collaboration in mind, Boston Children’s and MIT are forging closer links: the BCH & MIT grant. 

These are one-year grants to support research between the two institutions. Even the applications must be co-initiated and co-funded by two researchers, one with a primary faculty appointment at Children’s andone at MIT.

Ideally, these funds are to be used to hire a student or postdoc. There are no restrictions on nationality or other demographic characteristics. OSP review and approval is not needed prior to your application, but it will be needed prior to the award. Yet other institutional requirements (e.g., approval of the department head if necessary) must still be obtained.

Once selected, each grant is for$47,000 in direct costs, for one year, with no overhead.

You can find more information at childrenshospital.org/bch-mit

Inside our application process

If you have any questions before submitting or when you’re ready to submit, send your questions or application to BCHMITgrant@childrens.harvard.edu. Applications will be accepted until August 15, 2012, and selected by peer review. Funding decisions will be announced in early October, 2012.

All applications will be judged on:

1. Intellectual merit—on both innovation and impact.

2. Collaborative nature—our goal is to link the labs. So a BCH fellow may spend a year at MIT or vice versa.

3. Synergism—using resources from both campuses.

Our universal application format

To make this process universal, we ask that all information be filled on blank NIH continuation pages. Also, we ask that you use Arial 11 or comparable fonts and combine everything on a single .pdf document. Here’s what we need:

1. Coversheet (1 page).

• Title of proposal
• Name and contact information of both PIs.
  • Abstract (200 words) of proposed research and 3-5 key words (e.g. “chemical biology”)

• Statement that any proposed animal work is covered by approved protocol(s), and specification of whose lab(s) will be used.

• Brief description of a) the relationship between the PIs, b) the way in which the work enhances collaboration between the institutions.

2. Research proposal (1 page).

3. Budget.

4. NIH-style biosketches and support pages for PIs of both labs