FYI Research:
URC seed grants pay off with large returns

When you're thinking big, it pays to start small. Just ask Ruth Petersen -- she turned a little less than $4,000 into almost $1.3 million.

Petersen, research assistant professor at the Cecil Sheps Center for Health Services Research, applied for a grant from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to study women's reproductive health. In response, CDC asked for some preliminary data, which Petersen didn't have. So she used a $3,900 seed grant from Carolina's University Research Council to conduct a pilot study, which gave her the data she needed to win the CDC grant. "Without any other sources of funds for this preliminary testing, we would not have been in the position of quickly re-submitting this grant to CDC," Petersen says. Petersen's CDC grant totaled $1,295,500 -- a 332-to-one return on the University's investment.

Temitope Keku, research assistant professor of medicine, studies colorectal cancer. She used preliminary data she gathered with a $3,900 University Research Council grant to win $40,000 from the Cancer Research Foundation of America and more than $650,000 from the National Institutes of Health. "The URC grant helped advance my career," Keku says.

The University Research Council (URC) is one of several Carolina programs that specialize in giving seed grants -- small awards that help researchers gather data, publish their work, travel to research-related sites, buy equipment, or pay for smaller-scale projects. Like Petersen and Keku, faculty often use seed grants as stepping stones to larger grants from outside the University.

"Seed funding is like priming a pump," says Robert Lowman, associate vice chancellor for research. "We have to invest a little of our own money up front to convince external sponsors to give us more money down the road."

Preliminary research and scholarly work act as proof of concept to external funding agencies, says Lowman. Those initial efforts by the researcher increase the credibility and reduce the risk of the project. "A small grant through the University Research Council enables a faculty member to conduct just enough work to reduce the ambiguity of a project and whet the appetite of the sponsor for what is to come," Lowman says. "It's a way of saying to the sponsor, `this is going to work.'"

Carolina's available pool of seed grant funds is significantly less than those of our peer institutions, Lowman says. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a total pool of just under $4 million, or $1,566 per eligible faculty member. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has just over $3 million, or $1,455 per eligible faculty member. Carolina has $420,000 -- that's $175 per eligible faculty member. Lowman says that part of the University's Carolina First campaign will seek to raise additional funding for seeding research.

Seed grants don't just fund scientific breakthroughs. Julius Nyang'oro, professor and chair of African and Afro-American studies, used $2,500 in seed grant money to publish, in Africa, a collection of articles on African democracy. "Africans hadn't been able to read these articles that were discussing important issues facing their own countries," Nyang'oro says. Michael McFee, associate professor of English, used Carolina seed grants to help produce a book of contemporary short stories by North Carolina authors. And Joy Kasson, professor of American Studies, turned a $1,400 Carolina seed grant into a year-long fellowship at the National Humanities Center and a book on Buffalo Bill. "A small amount of money in an early stage of a project makes all the difference in the world," Kasson says.

Provided by Research and Graduate Studies.
Editor: Neil Caudle. Writer: Jason Smith.
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