Dean’s Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship

The Dean’s Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship provides funding up to $125,000 for bold, imaginative work in every discipline in the following categories:

1. Seed funding, to encourage faculty to launch exciting new scholarship or research directions that might not yet be ready to compete in traditional funding programs or to pivot to new sources of funding (e.g., private foundations, corporate partnerships). Faculty impacted by changes to federal funding are encouraged to apply for seed funding to support a new or different direction for their research.
2. Bridge funding, to allow faculty to continue work on previously funded research, scholarship, or creative activity that does not currently have external funding. Faculty who apply in this category should demonstrate that efforts have been made or will be made to obtain new external funding.
3. Enabling infrastructure, to provide small funds which allow for the purchase (or upgrade) of critical equipment, or to support needs such as the production of databases, organization of museum exhibits, or procurement of resources for community benefit. Ideally, requests in this category will be made to top off funding available from other sources.

Please apply only if your funding needs fit into one of these categories. For all categories, applicants should clearly explain in non-specialist language the critical need, make a compelling case for large marginal gain, and justify the need for support from this fund rather than traditional sources.

In May 2025, Dean Hoekstra announced a doubling of the Fund's annual budget to $8 million; a recent story highlights some of the research this program has supported since the decision to augment the Fund. 

Eligibility:

• This program is open to FAS and SEAS assistant, associate, and tenured faculty; Professors in Residence and Professors of the Practice are also eligible.
• Postdoctoral fellows and graduate students cannot serve as co-PIs but may be included as personnel on a project. An eligible faculty member must serve in the role of PI, lead the project, and oversee all personnel.
• Faculty may only submit one application as the lead PI per cycle, but may be listed on additional applications in other roles.
• Previous recipients may apply, though the committee is unlikely to provide continued funding for a project that has already received funding through this source and applicants who have received prior awards may be assigned a lower priority. The Dean’s Competitive Fund is not intended to continuously support a scholar from year to year.
• Current research balances for any applicant are considered and may influence the likelihood of funding.

Application:

A committee made up of faculty from the three FAS divisions and SEAS will review the applications, so please ensure that proposals can be understood across disciplines. Applicants are asked to provide the following:

1. Contact information
2. Information on any other sources of funding the applicant has applied for or intends to apply for to support the proposed project.
3. If the applicant has received funding from this program in the past, they will be asked to describe how they used the funds.
4. 1-3 sentence synopsis of the project (for public dissemination if awarded)
5. One paragraph explaining why this funding source is essential to the launch or success of the proposed project. This importance of funding paragraph should highlight why other funding sources are unavailable or insufficient to support this project.
6. Project description that is accessible to non-specialists (limit one page, PDF; an additional page may be included for figures and/or references). Proposals will be evaluated by reviewers from all three FAS divisions and SEAS, so it is critical that proposals be accessible across fields. The project description should include:
   1. The question or problem, and why it is important
   2. The approach to be taken
   3. The potential impact of the proposed work.
7. Abridged CV (limit two pages, no specific template required, PDF)
8. List of all current and pending internal and external sources of funding in direct support of the applicant's research and scholarship (PDF, include $ amounts). Applicants do not need to include startup or unrestricted funds.
9. Budget and budget justification (applicants are strongly encouraged to use the Dean’s Competitive Fund budget template, available for download below; PDF). Budgets may request up to $125,000 and should provide enough information to convey the alignment of costs with the proposed work.
   1. Budget justifications should convey how the budgeted items are aligned with the project goals. Proposals with insufficient budget justifications may see their budgets reduced.
   2. Proposals typically request support for one year; however, the funded period may extend beyond a year if the project requires additional time. The project start date will coincide with the date of award notification—anticipated to be December 15 for fall applications and May 15 for spring applications. Although awarded funds do not have a firm end date, the FAS expects they will be used as quickly as is feasible to advance the proposed work. Applicants are not required to specify exact project dates, but may do so in the budget request if they wish.
   3. Faculty are strongly encouraged to work with their grant administrators, particularly when including personnel and fringe.
   4. Examples of eligible expenses include but are not limited to:
      1. Personnel such as postdocs, graduate students, undergraduate students, consultants, translators. For any Harvard personnel who are not trainees, or any personnel external to Harvard, the budget justification should explain why the personnel were selected and their abridged, two-page CV(s) should be included in the supplementary documents.
      2. Fringe benefits
      3. Computer software that directly supports the proposed research
      4. Domestic and international travel
      5. Equipment user fees
      6. Archive fees
      7. Copyright acquisition
      8. Data acquisition costs, including human subject payments
      9. Training to acquire a new skill or area of expertise that will enable the proposed project
   5. The following expenses are NOT eligible for funding:
      1. Overhead
      2. Faculty salary
      3. Tuition
      4. Educational/course use
      5. Publication costs
      6. Operational costs not attributed to a specific project
      7. Conferences, seminars, workshops, and events unless directly related to strengthening a project so that it can compete for external funding

10. Optional Supplementary Documentation: Applicants may upload the following supplementary documents:

    1. A previously submitted external proposal that was declined for funding, along with any reviews received (up to ten pages), if they believe it will provide insight into their project or demonstrate why it is difficult to fund through traditional sources.
    2. Two-page CV(s) for additional personnel.

    Please do not upload proposals and/or review documents longer than ten pages, or additional types of documents, such as letters of support, books, references or figures (these may be included as an additional page in the project description), or notices of award. Please note that proposals to the Dean’s Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship will be reviewed by non-specialists. There is no guarantee these supplementary documents will be read. Supplementary documents are not a replacement for the required documents. Applicants must still provide the required materials listed above, including a one-page narrative that responds to the questions asked.

For AY 2026-27, the FAS Dean has appointed a committee of twelve senior faculty members to meet once per semester to review submitted applications and make awards. The current committee membership is as follows:

• Vinothan Manoharan (Committee Chair), Wagner Family Professor of Chemical Engineering and Professor of Physics
• Rebecca Diamond, Martin Feldstein Professor of Economics
• Cynthia Dwork, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science
• Sean Eddy, Ellmore C. Patterson Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology
• Roger Fu, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences
• Peter Girguis, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
• Tamar Herzog, Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs
• Kosuke Imai, Professor of Government and of Statistics
• Melanie Matchett Wood, William Casper Graustein Professor of Mathematics 
• Brendan Meade, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences 
• Gordon Teskey, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature
• Justin Weir, Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Professor of Comparative Literature

Reporting:

Award recipients may be requested to provide occasional updates on their funded activities, however a formal progress report is not required at this time.