Opportunity

The Offices of the Provost and of the Dean for Research are pleased to announce this year's call for the Transformative Equipment Initiative. The opportunity is intended to support the purchase of equipment by departments, units, or individual faculty. The New Equipment program supports the expansion of Princeton’s inventory of transformative equipment, in response to new research opportunities and new technologies. The Replacement Equipment program supports the replacement of transformative equipment by departments or units that manage shared facilities.

Brief descriptions of previously funded projects are below.

Eligibility

New Equipment: Department Chairs, Tenured and Tenure-Track Professors, Center and Shared Facilities Directors in Divisions III and IV: Applications must be submitted by the chair of the department or director of the center/institute managing the facility, or by the individual faculty member who will be the primary user of the instrument.

Replacement Equipment: Department Chairs, Center and Shared Facilities Directors in Divisions III and IV: Applications must be submitted by the chair of the department or director of the center/institute managing the shared facility.

Award

The cost of the equipment must be above $500,000. A contribution from the department/center is expected and will be negotiated individually if the application is funded.

Application

Applications are to be submitted online using the InfoReady Review platform. Click the Apply button at the top right of this page to apply. You can save a draft of your proposal and share it with others prior to submission. Applicants are strongly encouraged to use this template to compose a narrative of up to three pages. In addition to the proposal narrative document, applicants must provide the following materials:

• A budget that includes acquisition and installation costs and maintenance fees.
• Personnel costs (salary and benefits) are not allowable.
• A vendor quote for the requested equipment.
• A list of other external funding (declined, pending, or awarded) for this equipment.
• A one- to three-page biographical sketch for the principal investigator(s) and the primary faculty users.

When developing these materials, applicants are strongly encouraged to work with their grants manager, who will ensure that a prospective budget, other supporting materials, and biographical sketch will have all of the information needed for reviewers to evaluate the submission package.

Proposals will be evaluated on:

• Scientific impact
• Equipment capability and need compared to the availability of similar equipment on campus or in the region
• User community
• Plan for managing instrument availability and user training
• Plan for operations and maintenance
• The percent and total amount of cost-sharing from individual users, departments, and schools.

The application must identify the proposed space to house the equipment. If the space is not currently managed by the applicant (or applicant’s department) or it requires renovation, the plan must be approved by the Vice Provost for Space Programming and Planning.

The availability of other internal and external resources to support the equipment purchase will be taken into consideration.

Due Date

Online application submission is due by May 15, 2024.

Any questions may be brought to the attention of Karla Ewalt, Senior Associate Dean for Research, at [email protected].