Office of the Vice President for Research

Program Description

The Research Instrumentation Fund (RIF) provides support to faculty and core facilities’ necessary research instrumentation purchases and upgrades/replacements. Research instrumentation purchased with RIF funds is meant to be shared as broadly as possible and must be used to facilitate externally funded research and scholarship. RIF only awards research instrumentation requests that fall into one of the categories below:

• Requests for new research instrumentation that will be leveraged to pursue external funding within one year of equipment installation.
• Requests for new research instrumentation that will increase competitiveness of an external funding proposal that was recently denied funding due to lack of specific research instrumentation or data produced by that instrumentation. Application must include specific details on how equipment will increase competitiveness. For example, this is best demonstrated through external reviewer feedback or other direct commentary from the funder.
• Requests for upgrading or replacing existing, on-campus research instrumentation that poses a safety/security risk to the UofU community.
• Requests for upgrading or replacing existing, on-campus research instrumentation that is outdated, non-functional.

Funding decisions are based on merit of the proposal, demonstrated need, impact of the equipment on the U of U research community, likelihood that equipment purchase will be leveraged to secure extramural funding, and availability of funds.

FY26 Deadline: 11:59pm (MST) on Thursday, January 8th, 2026.

Apply here via InfoReady