RED COVID-19 Town Hall on April 7, 2020 

Near term → More federal funding coming

  • Anticipate a flood of opportunities in next few months
  • Short notices
  • Short deadlines

Longer term → What can we prepare ourselves for

1.  Increase in funding budget

  • Especially for proposals that are 
  • Ready to deploy.  Ready to spend.
  • Supplements to existing grants
  • (potential 15% increase to active awards)
  • MRI/HPC proposals especially for Big Data and Large Dataset
  • Highly relevant to CCI

Near-term initiatives at UNC Charlotte

If you have COVID-19 projects, 

  • then contact Mike Fresina to have it posted on RED site

New Ignite Planning Grants ($5k - $10k for 3 months)

  • Collaborative groups to go after short deadlines for COVID-19 

Catalyst program

  • Going online
  • Start in May
  • More participants → Note for Department Chairs in CCI

Q&A

If you are in year 1 or 2, should we apply for No-Cost Extensions now?

  • Agencies will probably not entertain the 2nd NCE
  • Note: First year NCE is automatic

Can extensions be requested for ROI grants?

  • Will need to be checked with the systems office

Can we have undergrad and grad students back on campus to do research this summer?

  • We don’t know yet.
  • Note: 
  • No in-class courses for summer 1

When will we know the supplement requests will be coming from the sponsors?

  • RED is checking daily
  • If there is any Phase IV funding, the supplement funding will be included in that Phase IV
  • Note: it would be worthwhile to keep documenting the costs that have been impacted by COVID-19 for these types of supplement requests.

Will the University consider reducing charged Overhead to "off campus" rates for the 2-3 months that we are off-campus? 

  • Federal government will not allow this at this point

It is likely that industrial affiliates in some centers will have to temporarily withdraw support. These centers employ a lot of grad students. Could this qualify for relief funding?

  • What’s covered by the CARE act is somewhat vague/unclear
  • Will become more clear in next 2 weeks
  • We will need more guidance from the sponsors

If teams are interested in apply for COVID-19 proposals, 

  • then please apply for COVID-19 Ignite proposals

We have committed undergrad students with money for summer, what do we do?

  • Consider ways of doing research remotely somehow

Should summer salary proceed as “normal”?