A Quick Start Guide to Setting Up Internal Funding Grant Programs

Today’s universities are not only places to teach and learn; they often serve as hubs of basic and applied research and even as hubs of technology development and commercialization. To help faculty secure research funding for these activities, many universities establish and run internal funding programs, usually referred to as seed funding programs, intramural grants programs, resource allocation programs or institutional investments. Research administrators at the central or unit level are often asked to design and run these programs, in addition to their main responsibilities related to extramural research funding, and without the necessary tools and training needed to successfully fulfil the new responsibilities. This lack of resources, which in a concise and easy to follow format provide sufficient guidance to university research administrators on the core processes and considerations for setting up internal grants programs, can be addressed by the creation of a quick start guide. The objective of this capstone project is to help fill the identified resource gap by developing such a guide. To do so, the author of the capstone project answers questions about the major types of existing internal funding programs and the type of activities they support; the main phases of an internal funding program cycle and the steps necessary to complete each of these phases; and major considerations before establishing a new program or opening a new cycle of an existing internal funding program. The answers are summarized and organized in A Quick Start Guide to Setting up Internal Funding Grant Programs. The Guide serves to support an efficient, effective and consistent process for establishing and running multiple cycles of a college or university internal funding program

Tunable Semiconducting Polymer Nanoparticles with INDT-Based Conjugated Polymers for Photoacoustic Molecular Imaging.

Photoacoustic imaging combines both excellent spatial resolution with high contrast and specificity, without the need for patients to be exposed to ionizing radiation. This makes it ideal for the study of physiological changes occurring during tumorigenesis and cardiovascular disease. In order to fully exploit the potential of this technique, new exogenous contrast agents with strong absorbance in the near-infrared range, good stability and biocompatibility, are required. In this paper, we report the formulation and characterization of a novel series of endogenous contrast agents for photoacoustic imaging in vivo. These contrast agents are based on a recently reported series of indigoid π-conjugated organic semiconductors, coformulated with 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine, to give semiconducting polymer nanoparticles of about 150 nm diameter. These nanoparticles exhibited excellent absorption in the near-infrared region, with good photoacoustic signal generation efficiencies, high photostability, and extinction coefficients of up to three times higher than those previously reported. The absorption maximum is conveniently located in the spectral region of low absorption of chromophores within human tissue. Using the most promising semiconducting polymer nanoparticle, we have demonstrated wavelength-dependent differential contrast between vasculature and the nanoparticles, which can be used to unambiguously discriminate the presence of the contrast agent in vivo