July 18, 2018
Funding Connection

  • The Sony Corporation Research Award Program provides funding for cutting-edge academic research and helps build a collaborative relationship between faculty and Sony researchers. 
  • The Spencer Foundation Small Research Grants program supports education research projects. Topics typically span a range of disciplines including education, psychology, sociology, economics, history, and anthropology. 
  • Read more of this week's featured opportunities
Events and announcements


  • The Biosecurity Research Institute will host Research Fellows Lectures on September 6 and September 27 from 3:30-4:30 p.m. in Pat Roberts Hall. View the BRI events calendar for details about the speakers.

  • National Postdoc Appreciation Week is September 17-21. More information is coming soon about K-State events to celebrate our postdocs!

  • The BioNexus KC (formerly KCALSI) OneHealth Research Symposium, “One Health Applications of CRISPR/cas9,” is August 19-20 at the Kansas City Convention Center. Find more information and register

  • An NIH Regional Seminar will be offered October 17-19 in San Francisco. These seminars are for those who are relatively new to the NIH grants process and who would like to learn more about applying, managing an award, finding resources, and more. This is the final seminar of 2018; register soon, as space is limited. Find more information and register.
NEH Summer Stipends
The National Endowment for the Humanities offers Summer Stipends to provide two consecutive months of support for individuals pursuing advanced research that is of value to humanities scholars, general audiences, or both. Eligible projects usually result in articles, monographs, books, digital materials and publications, archaeological site reports, translations, or editions. Projects must incorporate analysis and not result solely in the collection of data.

Institutions are allowed to forward two proposals for summer 2019. Please note the following.
  • Internal notification: If you are interested in applying to this program, you must notify the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs via email to orsplimitedsubs@ksu.edu by 5:00 p.m. August 1.


  • Final proposal: Selected K-State nominees must submit final proposals to NEH September 26.


Questions? Contact the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at 632-6195.
Post-Award procedures change
Please note a revision to the Policy and Procedures Manual that applies to all funding processed by PreAward Services and administered by Sponsored Programs Accounting (with the exception of “Externally Funded General Support”).

  • A line-item project budget and accompanying justification/narrative is required prior to account setup. Standard budget templates provided by PreAward Services may be used to meet this requirement. Find the templates.

  • Industry-funded projects: This policy does not negate the business strategy of presenting fully burdened line-item budgets or “bottom-line costing” to industry sponsors for consideration. In those cases, the itemized line-item budget developed internally pursuant would be marked “For Internal Use Only.” 

  • PreAward Services has developed a fully-burdened budget template that is useful for developing fully-burdened budgets as part of industry-sponsored proposal packages.

  • This change takes effect immediately.

Detailed budgets and accompanying narratives for both cost-reimbursement and fixed amount agreements ensure that all potential costs necessary to complete the performance of the project were considered, that all such costs are reasonable and proper, and that the principal investigator, department, college, and university are not subject to undue financial risk related to the project.

Questions? Contact Roger McBride in Sponsored Programs Accounting at 532-1848 or Anita Fahrny in PreAward Services at 532-3225.
Agency news and trending topics
Researchers have embraced CRISPR gene-editing as a method for altering genomes, but some are cautioning that unwanted DNA changes may slip by undetected.

Virus-like particles (VLPs) are protein-based structures that mimic viruses and bind to antibodies. Because VLPs are not infectious, they show considerable promise as vaccine platforms for many viral diseases, including influenza. Realizing that fine details about influenza VLPs were scant, a team of researchers who specialize in visualizing molecular structures developed a 3D model based on the 1918 H1 pandemic influenza virus. They say their research, which appears online in Scientific Reports, could benefit VLP vaccine projects, targeting a range of viruses from HIV to Ebola and SARS coronavirus.

Could the tick that just bit you carry a pathogen that causes Lyme disease or another ailment? If you're worried, you could ship the offending bug to a  private testing service  to find out. But between August 2016 and January 2017, you could have gotten a free analysis by sending it to  Nathan Nieto 's lab at Northern Arizona University. You'd get back info on the critter that bit you and, if applicable, a pathology report.  Nieto's project wasn't just a goodwill gesture: It was an unprecedented attempt to include the public in tick research.

Most political discussion of higher education these days focuses on the return on investment to individuals, rather than on the contributions that colleges and universities make to society broadly. So it wouldn't be surprising to find that many Americans don't put much stock in the "public good" arguments on which much government funding of higher education was premised. But a new survey finds that most Americans continue to support government funding of higher education and to recognize that colleges and universities play many roles beyond helping them (or their children) get a good job or other personal return on investment.
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