The College of Medicine Office of Research’s Programmatic Accelerator (P Accelerator) Award is designed to cultivate bold collaboration across disciplines, departments, and the university. Strong collaborations strengthen our community’s resilience and build a foundation for larger and more complex projects. Through sponsored collaborative events and structured support, the P Accelerator program will bring together diverse faculty to create innovative problem-solving communities to meet complex biomedical and clinical challenges.
The P Accelerator Award will support established collaborative teams working to build ambitious, large-scale, multi-project proposals promising to accelerate biomedical discovery, clinical care, or UF’s research infrastructure. Projects must be at the P, U, or RM1 scale.
Eligibility
- Applications must include a team of at least three investigators working in a multiple PI format. Exceptions may be allowed; please consult with our office if the opportunity of interest requires a specific PI structure.
- The Contact PI for this application must be a faculty member with a primary academic appointment in the UF College of Medicine. Two co-investigators must be UF faculty but may be in other colleges. Preference will be given to teams with members in multiple COM departments, UF colleges, or UF Health sites (Jacksonville, Scripps, Lake Nona, Gainesville, etc.).
- Prior to application submission:
- Teams must be formed
- Teams must have a mature proposal
- A mechanism must be identified, and
- The PI must have talked with the relevant PO and received confirmation of eligibility
- Applicants may only serve as Contact PI for one application to this opportunity but may be listed as co-investigator on other applications.
- Only proposals budgeting at least $750,000 in annual direct costs will be considered.
- Applicants must commit to submitting a large-scale grant, such as a P, U, or RM1, to an appropriate extramural agency in that agency’s fall 2026 or winter 2027 cycle. Appropriate agencies include but are not limited to federal agencies, such as the NIH, NSF, or ARPA-H.* Such endeavors include but are not limited to complex inter-disciplinary proposals, such as clinical trials or research consortia; large, multi-project research programs sharing a common theme; and research and mentoring infrastructure grants focused on enhancing the research environment and supporting early-stage investigators. *Applicants considering a non-federal source should contact Office of Research to discuss eligibility.
- All principal investigators must submit Letters of Support from their chairs guaranteeing protected time to work on proposal development and submission. Chairs must collectively commit to to reimbursing the Office of Research ½ of the budget submitted with the team’s application if an appropriate grant is not submitted by that agency’s deadline roughly 6 months following allocation of funds. (E.g. if award funds are distributed in March, recipients must submit in the relevant agency’s Fall cycle.)
- Some large mechanisms have specific requirements that may not align with these requirements. Please reach out to discuss your situation if it may require an exception to one of these requirements.
Selection Process
This opportunity welcomes applications that will advance College and University priorities of increasing transdisciplinary relationships and large-scale proposals on projects promising to accelerate biomedical discovery, clinical care, or UF’s research infrastructure. Because the P Accelerator Award is designed to support established multi-disciplinary teams working towards multi-project, ambitious research endeavors, members of the College of Medicine’s Research Advisory Council will consider scientific merit, team functioning and expertise, and fundability when reviewing applications.
Full applications are due February 3, 2026 for the 2026 funding cycle.
Full details on the application process can be found at the InfoReady link below.
If you have any questions, please contact Katie Blackburn katherineblackbu@ufl.edu.