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Fall 2025
Welcome to RDInsights, a quarterly newsletter from the USF Research Development Institute (RDI). This newsletter will be one channel through which the RDI communicates updates from the Institute, funding opportunities, and other resources to enhance research success.
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WELCOME BACK MESSAGE:
Dr. Sylvia Thomas
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As we begin a new academic year, I’m excited to welcome you back to a season of bold discovery. This Fall edition of RDinsights will connect you with strategies, resources, and opportunities that empower researchers to thrive and be an anchor for research planning and success throughout the year.
This year begins with energy and purpose. I’m honored to serve on the APLU Council on Research Leadership and AAU Senior Research Office Steering Committee, where I’ve joined a cohort of my fellow Vice Presidents and Chancellors of Research in shaping how universities navigate the evolving federal research landscape. These discussions are vital as collaboration fuels breakthroughs across disciplines and sectors.
Here at USF, our faculty continue to excel. In 2023, you submitted 1,737 proposals—and in 2025, that number climbed to 1,850. Your tenacity and vision led to a record-breaking $738 million in research funding in 2024, a milestone that reflects not just bold inquiry and research excellence, but the power of ideas that matter. We also celebrate eleven USF faculty named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science—a testament to the caliber of scholarship that defines our university.
Beyond our campus, research is delivering for the state of Florida. USF is proud to collaborate across all 12 state universities, advancing knowledge, workforce development, and economic growth. Together, we are building a future where research translates into real-world solutions.
As we look ahead, the RDinsights newsletter will continue to spotlight the research insights, resources, and opportunities that make USF a powerhouse of innovation. Thank you for your dedication and belief in what research can achieve.
Let’s make this year unforgettable.
Dr. Sylvia Wilson Thomas
Vice President for Research & Innovation
President & CEO of the USF Research Foundation, Inc.
Professor, University of South Florida
Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)
Fellow, National Academy of Inventors (NAI)
Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine (ASEMFL)
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Pan American Academy of Engineering (PAE-API)
Sr. Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
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UPDATES FROM THE
RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE (RDI)
| | NEW SERIES: Partnering with Industry for Impact | | |
As demand for market-ready solutions and top-tier talent rises, universities are forging deeper industry partnerships—bridging the gap between research and real-world impact. These collaborations are reshaping the research landscape, fueling innovation, and opening new funding opportunities.
USF Faculty Forward: Partnering with Industry for Impact—the theme of the new Interdisciplinary Innovators Exchange series at USF—spotlights the power of collaboration between academia and industry to drive meaningful change. Launching September 30, this monthly webinar series equips faculty with practical strategies for engaging with industry, building lasting partnerships, and communicating research value effectively.
Fall Schedule
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Innovation in Action: Faculty Stories of Industry Engagement
September 30th, 2025, 12:00 – 1:00 PM EST
Real impact starts with real stories. This kickoff session highlights faculty across disciplines who have successfully partnered with industry to drive research, innovation, and student opportunity. REGISTER
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Partnering Essentials: How to Engage with Industry to Drive Research Impact
October 21st, 2025, 12:00 – 1:00 PM EST
This session will unpack what motivates companies to collaborate with universities and both the why and how faculty can build meaningful, mutually beneficial partnerships with industry. REGISTER
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I-Corps in an Hour: Product-Market Fit for Researchers
November 18th, 2025, 12:00 – 1:00 PM EST
This session introduces faculty to NSF I-Corps principles, using a simple framework for customer discovery that strengthens grant proposals, informs technology development, and increases partnership potential. REGISTER
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Innovation Roadmap: Navigating USF’s Industry Engagement Resources
December 2nd, 2025, 12:00 – 1:00 PM EST
This session maps out the USF innovation support network—from research development to commercialization and startup support to partnership facilitation—showing how find the right offices at the right time. REGISTER
| | REGISTER NOW! The full schedule, related resources, and information on our monthly office hour (third Thursday of the month) can be found online. | | |
Applications Open: USF's Internal Awards!
The USF Research Council is officially accepting applications for the 2025–2026 Internal Awards cycle. These competitive grants are designed to empower faculty across disciplines by supporting innovative research, scholarship, and creative endeavors that elevate USF’s academic excellence. Whether you're launching a new project, planning a major conference, or enhancing collaborative research infrastructure—there's an opportunity waiting for you.
Explore the full list of grants and deadlines below or on the Internal Awards page.
Want to take a deeper dive and learn more about USF's Internal Awards? The USF Research Development Institute will be hosting an Internal Awards Launch Workshop on October 3rd, 2025 from 10:00-11:00 am online.
Join us and bring any questions you have!
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Policy Pulse: Key Resources on Higher Ed & Research Policy
In this rapidly changing environment, it’s critical to keep informed about federal activity that impacts higher education and research. Below, we provide links to several resources to keep on top of the latest developments.
Tracking Trump’s Higher Ed Agenda – The Chronicle of Higher Education
This site tracks executive orders, statements, and agency actions that affect higher education, plus focus areas on research and policy.
FYI: Science Policy News – The American Institute of Physics
FYI reports on science policy developments in Washington D.C. Their policy tracking tools offer extensive information on science agency budgets, science leaders across the federal government, and the most important science bills in Congress.
Association of American Universities
As an AAU member, USF faculty and staff can review news on AAU actions related to recent executive orders and similar activities that impact research.
Grant Witness
Grant Witness is a project to track the termination of grants from scientific research agencies. They currently are tracking terminations of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
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Think, Grow, & Thrive Together. The Future of Food Think Tank comes to USF-St. Petersburg campus on Nov 14th. Help reimagine Tampa Bay’s food future—from soil to society.
Registration Open Now!
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LIMITED SUBMISSION OPPORTUNITIES
(Apply through InfoReady)
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NSF 25-544: Integrated Data Systems & Services (IDSS)
The IDSS program supports national-scale performant operational systems and services that broadly facilitate open, data-intensive and artificial intelligence-driven science and engineering research, innovation, and education. IDSS projects should be aimed to broadly impact the science and engineering research and education community in a transdisciplinary and demonstrably multi-disciplinary way, enabling researchers and educators from diverse domains and disciplines to utilize research data, integrate data, and connect data sources with other scientific resources such as computing resources, facilities, instrumentation and repositories.
Internal Deadline: October 3, 2025; Agency Deadline: December 4, 2025
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This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) encourages Collaborative Program Grant applications from institutions/organizations that propose projects addressing complex and challenging biomedical problems within the mission of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). NIGMS supports basic research that increases our understanding of biological processes and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Multidisciplinary research teams must have a highly integrated approach for each of their project goals. The Collaborative Program Grant is designed to support research in which funding a team of interdependent investigators to achieve a unified scientific goal offers significant advantages over supporting individual research project grants.
Internal Deadline: October 30, 2025; Agency Deadline: May 28, 2026
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The Foundation aims to support organizations and programs for which a relatively small amount of funding might make a large difference. The Foundation will consider requests to support museums, cultural and performing arts programs; schools and hospitals; educational, skills-training and other programs for youth, seniors, and persons with disabilities; environmental and wildlife protection activities; and other community-based organizations and programs. Awards typically range from $1,000 to $20,000.
Internal Deadline: October 13, 2025; Agency Deadline: November 10, 2025
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Research grants are for specific research projects which are hypothesis driven and may be either laboratory, clinical, or epidemiological in nature. Grant will be $100,000/year for two years.
Internal Deadline: October 30, 2025; Agency Deadline: February 27, 2026
| | EXTERNAL FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES | | |
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP): NSF GRFP was established to recruit and support individuals who demonstrate the potential to make significant contributions in STEM, including STEM education. NSF encourages applications from the full spectrum of talent that the U.S. has to offer. Full solicitation will be released soon. Deadline: October 27, 2025
NIH Advancing Research on the Application of Digital Health Technology to the Management of Type 2 Diabetes (R01- Clinical Trail Required): The increasing availability of FDA-cleared digital health technology (DHT) for type 2 diabetes (T2D) management holds great promise for addressing current barriers to care. Award size variable. Deadline: November 7, 2025
NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience: Coordination Center for Interoception Research (BPCCIR) (U24, Clinical Trial Not Allowed): The purpose of this NOFO is to establish the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research Coordination Center for Interoception Research (BPCCIR). Interoception, for the purpose of this NOFO, encompasses the processes by which an organism or a person senses, interprets, integrates, and regulates signals that represent the internal states. Award Size: $700,000/year for up to 5 years. Deadline: November 10, 2025
Amazon Web Services Education Equity Initiative: The initiative aims to empower organizations to create digital learning solutions for underserved learners globally. Amazon is committing up to $100 million in AWS credits and technical expertise to support socially-minded organizations develop innovative digital learning solutions that utilize cloud and AI technologies. Deadline: December 31, 2025
NEH Scholarly Editions and Translations: The Scholarly Editions and Translations program provides grants to organizations to support collaborative teams who are editing, annotating, and translating foundational humanities texts that are vital to generating new scholarship but are inaccessible or only available in inadequate editions or translations. Works from any humanities field may be the subject of an edition.
Deadline: December 3, 2025
| | FEATURED INSIGHTS & RESOURCES | |
FEATURED RDinsight
Interested in what the current research priorities and interests of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are?
Check out NIH Highlighted Topics!
NIH Highlighted Topics is a new centralized digital resource that consolidates information about research areas of current interest. The tool will list topics that represent selected research priority areas within one or more institutes or centers. Faculty can apply through parent topics, or reach out to the appropriate scientific contacts to discuss how your research idea may align with the topics.
Ready to spark your next big idea?
Whether you're refining a proposal or exploring new directions, NIH Highlighted Topics offers a clear, streamlined path to connect your research with NIH’s strategic vision.
Dive in and discover where your science can make the greatest impact.
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FUNDING FRIDAY WORKSHOPS ONLINE
Each summer, the USF Sarasota Manatee Office of Research hosts its highly anticipated Summer Grant Writing Workshop Series—and this year marked our second-largest cohort with 577 registrants from 55 distinct institutions.
Now is your opportunity to access this year's Funding Friday recordings for free, featuring insights from top grant professionals and federal program officers.
Keep an eye out for next year’s series—it’s an opportunity you won’t want to miss.
| | PRIVATE FOUNDATION FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES | | |
Burroughs Wellcome Fund - Climate Change & Human Health Seed Grants: BWF Climate Change & Human Health Seed Grants aim to stimulate the growth of new connections between thinkers working in largely disconnected fields who might together change the course of climate change’s impact on human health. BWF is mainly, but not exclusively, interested in activities that build connections between basic/early biomedical scientific approaches and ecological, environmental, geological, geographic, and planetary-scale thinking, as well as with population-focused fields, including epidemiology and public health, demography, economics, and urban planning. Deadline: October 23, 2025
Simons Foundation’s Mathematics & Physical Sciences Program: The aim of the program is to stimulate progress on fundamental scientific questions of major importance in mathematics, theoretical physics, and theoretical computer science. A Simons Collaboration in MPS should address a mathematical or theoretical topic of fundamental scientific importance, where a significant, new development creates a novel area for exploration or provides a new direction for progress in an established field.
LOI Deadline: October 29, 2025; Full Proposal Deadline: February 25, 2026
BrightFocus Foundation - National Glaucoma Research Grants: Supports researchers pursuing pioneering research leading to greater understanding, prevention, and treatment of glaucoma. Aimed at researchers who have already generated some amount of preliminary data, but are often required to demonstrate additional, significant progress before they can apply to governmental or industrial funding agencies. Deadline: October 30, 2025
| | UPCOMING EVENTS & OPPRTUNITIES | | |
NIH Repays Your Student Loans: An in-depth overview of the NIH's Loan Repayment Programs, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025, at 3:00 PM EDT - Join Online
Matthew Lockhart (Director, Division of Loan Repayment, NIH) will describe the NIH Loan Repayment Programs (LRPs), a set of programs established by Congress designed to recruit and retain highly qualified health professionals into biomedical or biobehavioral research centers. Extramural Loan Repayment Program (LRP) awardees can receive up to $100,000 in qualified educational debt repayment with a two-year award. Applications accepted through November 20, 2025
VIRTUAL OFFICE HOUR - NSF Test Bed: Toward a Network of Programmable Cloud Laboratories (NSF PCL Test Bed), Thursday, Oct. 16, at noon-2 p.m. EDT
In this interactive webinar series, hosted by NSF program directors, participants will engage in an open discussion about the NSF PCL Test Bed program. This session includes a moderated Q&A to address your questions, followed by speed networking session designed to foster collaboration and explore teaming opportunities with fellow participants.
Rethinking Researcher Assessment and Incentives at U.S. Academic Institutions: A Workshop, October 28-29, 2025 - Register Now
The workshop will explore new approaches to expand the criteria by which researchers are assessed at U.S. academic institutions beyond traditional outputs--such as grants, publications, and citation counts--and will explore effective strategies for implementing potential changes at scale through in-depth discussions on:
- Engaging the Community in Research and Addressing Local, Societal, and Regulatory Needs
- Conducting Research-Centered Mentorship for Early Career Researchers
- Fostering Team Science and Interdisciplinary Collaborations
- Contributing to Open Access Publishing and Data Sharing
- Enhancing Research Transparency and Strengthening Research Integrity
- Facilitating Technology and Knowledge Transfer
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