The Research Opportunity Seed Fund is an annual seed grant program that awards multidisciplinary, faculty-initiated research projects with strong potential for extramural support. Guided by the philosophy that diverse partnerships across the disciplines drive groundbreaking research and winning proposals, ROSF awards strive to spark research synergies that can launch exceptional long term research collaborations.
Responsive proposals will meet each of the five following criteria:
- New Collaborations: Proposals must involve faculty from at least two colleges. PI and Co-PIs will be from different departments or colleges and not worked together on a funded proposal previously.
- Novel Research: Proposals present new and fresh ideas—no supplements to PI or Co-PIs’ existing or on-going research.
- Meaningful Contributions: All investigators engage fully and substantially. Proposals must demonstrate involvement both in terms of proposed research as well as allocations for funding in the budget.
- Funding Potential: Proposals show a feasible and realistic plan for PIs and Co-PIs to continue collaborating to pursue funded research after the conclusion of the ROSF award. Teams and ideas are not “once and done” collaborations.
- High Impact: Proposals address significant hypotheses, problems, or research questions that cover multiple areas of expertise and can be understood by non-technical readers.
Eligibility
Proposals may be submitted by any UF faculty member (PI) eligible to submit a proposal to an external funding agency (see Policy on Eligibility to Submit a Proposal for External Funding: https://research.ufl.edu/dsp/proposals/eligibility-to-submit-a-proposal-for-external-funding.html ).
PIs cannot be:
- Courtesy, Adjunct, Visiting, or OPS faculty
- Assistant In, Associate In, Senior Associate In, Research Associates or Postdoctoral associates
- Deans at any level
Excluding Deans, Co-PIs can be any of the above, as well as staff and curators. Cross-department collaborations are welcome.
Similar to NIH and other large funding agencies, applicants resubmitting to the ROSF must provide previous ROSF reviews and a short description of how their resubmission addresses reviewer feedback. These statements will not be provided to reviewers.
Awarded faculty (either as a PI or as Co-PI) are not allowed to participate in another Research Opportunity Seed Fund proposal in any role for one year after completion of the first award. For example, awardees in 2025 may not submit another proposal until the 2029 call (announced in 2028) – one year after the conclusion of their project in 2027.
Faculty can only submit through one college. PIs may not switch projects or colleges to maximize their changes of being selected to submit to the ROSF.
College of Medicine internal selection process
Each year, the College of Medicine will announce an opportunity for faculty interested in applying to the Research Opportunity Seed Fund. Through an internal selection process, the college will select its best proposals and those will be submitted to UF Research and will undergo a uniform and centrally coordinated scientific review by ad-hoc faculty panels for final funding decisions.
As of fall 2025, we no longer require a letter of intent. Full proposals are due October 3, 2025 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.