Office of the Vice President for Research

Dear Colleagues,   The Office of the Vice President for Research is seeking interdisciplinary and transformative project concepts for the W. M. Keck Foundation.   Keck supports projects in (1) medical research and (2) science and engineering that:

• Focus on important and emerging areas of basic research;
• Have the potential to develop breakthrough technologies, instrumentation or methodologies;
• Are innovative, distinctive and interdisciplinary;
• Demonstrate a high level of risk due to unconventional approaches, or by challenging the prevailing paradigm;
• Have the potential for transformative impact, such as the founding of a new field of research, the enabling of observations not previously possible, or the altered perception of a previously intractable problem;
• Do not focus on clinical, translational, or applied research;
• Fall outside the mission of public funding agencies; and
• Demonstrate that private philanthropy generally, and the W. M. Keck Foundation in particular, is essential to the project’s success.

  Funding requests are traditionally $1M in direct costs over three years, however the foundation has recently permitted budgets to exceed that amount (we recommend a cap of ~$1.3M over three years).   Please submit your idea via InfoReady by Friday, June 27, 2025.  

Please reach out to lynn.wong@hsc.utah.edu with any questions or to discuss applicability of an idea.