Bridge Funding to Support Researchers to Maintain Activity Between Grant Funding

Bridge Funding to Support Researchers to Maintain Activity Between Extramural Grant Funding

To enable investigators with current external funding and to continue their research while new external funding applications are under review.

Up to 50K direct costs (maximum) per investigator for a 1-year period.
Further support can come from additional sources (faculty discretionary money, department or center support, research institute support).
Priority will be given to:
- Requests where funds are needed to maintain critical specimens, samples, or technical or other research staff, or other at-risk resources due to loss of funding.
- Requests where there is a time-sensitive nature of data collection (e.g., animals at a precise age or environmental conditions changing).
- Requests from faculty without access to resources from research institutes and centers (however, faculty who do have access to resources from other sources may still apply and efforts to bring resources from these sources to the table to partially close the gap will be a favorable factor in those cases).

Current research funding must be from an external source (not a subcontract) and have expired within the past 6 months.
An application for external funding to continue/extend the work must be already been submitted or must be submitted within three months of the application for bridge funds
The project start date for the submitted application must be within 12months of the submission of the application for bridge funds.
A college bridge funding application must not have been provided within the past five years.
*NOTE: These eligibility requirements may be modified during the 2025-26 and 2026-27 fiscal years; please contact the Associate Dean for Research with details of your situation during this time.

Applications should be submitted to the Associate Dean for Research, and include:
- A narrative describing the past and pending awards that indicates why sustained activity during the bridge period is critical to the long-term success of the project as well as describing any other funding sources (departmental/investigator discretionary) being drawn upon to support project-related activity in the bridge period (2 page maximum)
- A detailed budget and justification:
  - Justification must make clear how all activities/items for which support is requested are absolutely necessary to sustain the project
  - Enumeration of other resources contributing to partially address the gap (faculty discretionary funds/department/school/institute/center).
Letter(s) of support from department head/school director/institute director/center director.