Research Development

The Engineering Office of Research and Innovation supports the development of research plans and strategies and assists faculty in finding and pursuing funding opportunities. Priorities for the office include supporting early career faculty in identifying opportunities and developing proposals, supporting center-level efforts, and coordinating a grant brewing program. View the sections below for more information and additional resources. Contact us for assistance with finding potential collaborators, pursuing the NSF CAREER or other early career programs, or any other questions about the UVA research ecosystem.

The office also manages two internal funding programs: Research Innovation Awards and Research Interest Groups. The UVA Engineering Research Innovation Awards (RIA) program is designed to promote research excellence and facilitate pursuit of external research funding. The UVA Engineering Research Interest Groups (RIG) program is designed to connect and build research communities within UVA around cross-disciplinary topic areas that represent existing or emerging opportunities to increase the research reputation of UVA Engineering.

Not sure where to start?

If this is your first time pursuing a grant, or if you are new to UVA, or if you just need help getting started, we can help!

Contact Jeff Fox for help

Finding Collaborators

  • Meet with us to brainstorm for potential collaborators in Engineering and across UVA.
  • Use the Research Finder to identify potential Engineering collaborators in specific research areas.
  • Browse the list of Research Interest Groups below to look for faculty who share cross-departmental interests.

Identifying Funding Opportunities

  • The Engineering Office of Research and Innovation distributes announcements of funding opportunities, such as internal limited submission announcements from the VPR office or foundation opportunities from UVA’s Corporate and Foundation Relations team, to the Engineering faculty list. In general, we distribute those announcements broadly.
  • We are happy to meet with you to brainstorm for opportunities that might align with your research interests.
  • You can use GrantForward, a funding discovery tool, to create custom searches and email alerts. All UVA faculty, students, and staff have access to GrantForward, which is licensed by UVA's VPR office.
  • Most federal agencies have funding search tools, including NSF, NIH, and DOE Office of Science. Grants.gov contains funding opportunities from across the federal government.

Proposal Development

The Engineering Office of Research and Innovation offers services to assist faculty in developing competitive proposals, with a priority for early career faculty and large proposals (>$2M). We will also work with other units across Grounds to help you find additional support that you might need. Please contact us as early as possible, and no later than 1 month before the proposal deadline, so that we can provide the help you need. Some services require additional advance planning. Some of the services we provide include: 

To assist faculty in developing more competitive funding proposals, the Engineering Research Office will facilitate a Grant Brewing Cohort Workshop the afternoon of Wednesday 1/15/25. Testimonials from faculty who participated in previous workshops are included at the end of this email. This program provides early-stage peer feedback on draft proposal ideas and helps faculty frame these ideas to develop a compelling proposal strategy (such programs are sometimes referred to as “grant brewing”). It will draw on a cohort and peer review model similar to that used in Course Design Workshops held by the Center for Teaching Excellence. Participating faculty will:

  • Provide a 1-page proposal summary in advance of the workshop for distribution to panelists;
  • Present a brief 5-minute overview of their proposal ideas and requested areas for panel feedback at the workshop, and participate in a 25-minute discussion;
  • Receive written and verbal feedback from a panel of three faculty, made up of a senior faculty member and two other faculty participants;
  • Serve as a panelist and provide written and verbal feedback to two other faculty participants;
  • Have the option of watching the feedback discussion of the other participating faculty.

In addition to helping faculty write more competitive proposals, this program will help share knowledge across the School and will encourage collaborations.

The workshop will be held the afternoon of Wednesday January 15, 2025. The grant brewing program is an excellent opportunity for faculty to receive early feedback on proposal ideas in a collegial and safe setting, so that these early ideas can be refined and reshaped well in advance of the proposal deadline.

Faculty participants will provide a one-page draft of their initial proposal ideas no later than Thursday January 9, 2025 so that the panel has time to read the draft. The single page summary should follow the format of the NSF Project Summary, NIH Specific Aims page, or the equivalent.

Faculty wishing to participate in the cohort workshop should send an email to Jeff Fox (jjf5x@virginia.edu)  with the following information no later than Monday December 16, 2024:

  • Name of the faculty member’s departmental mentor (the mentor will be invited to serve as the senior faculty panelist)
  • Target program/solicitation (including the URL if possible)
  • Sponsor deadline
  • Rough estimate of the total proposal budget

The Associate Dean for Research and the Research Office will work with the mentor to identify a panel of 1 senior faculty member (who may be the mentor) and 2 participants. The panel will read the proposal summary, participate in the discussion, and provide oral and written feedback. Written feedback should be provided to the faculty member no later than one week following the workshop. The Research Office will organize the workshop and facilitate feedback. If the faculty member is interested, the Research Office will also review and provide feedback on a subsequent proposal draft.

 Eligibility: this program is open to all Engineering faculty.

Requirements:

  • The sponsor deadline should be roughly 4 months, and ideally 6 months, after the workshop date of 1/15/25.
  • The presentation to the faculty panel should be approximately 5 minutes and briefly summarize the proposal as well as highlight requested areas for the panel to provide feedback and suggestions. 25 minutes will be reserved for discussion with the panel.
  • The faculty member must provide at least a 1-page proposal summary in the format appropriate for the sponsor (i.e., for an NSF proposal, the summary should include a brief overview and sections on Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts) by 1/9/25. 

Testimonials from previous workshop:

  • Camille Bilodeau, Chemical Engineering: Before the grant brewing workshop, I was on the fence about whether or not to apply for the NSF CAREER award. Preparing for the workshop pushed me to refine my ideas to have something to present to the panelists and the feedback from the workshop helped me understand which aspects of my ideas were promising and which aspects need to be altered. Now, submitting a strong CAREER proposal seems like a much more achievable goal and I feel like I have a concrete path to get there.
  • Chris Highley, Biomedical Engineering: I thought the session was a great opportunity to see how colleagues are framing grants, to receive experienced feedback, and to generally plug into the collegial academic community here at UVA. It helped me start refining ideas early, which I expect will increase my proposal’s chances.
  • Chang Lou, Computer Science: To me the workshop was an extremely useful experience. Even though most proposals we discussed were not from CS, I was inspired by the general discussion and I was fortunate to learn the bar of a successful CAREER proposal.

 

  • If you are developing a large, complex proposal, the Engineering Office of Research and Innovation can engage the VPR Research Development team for assistance; that team requires at least 3 months notice in advance of the deadline.
  • SEAS Pre-award will prepare proposal checklists, budgets, budget justification, biosketches, current and pending, and other sponsor forms as required.
  • If you are working with the VPR RD team, SEAS pre-award will coordinate closely with that team throughout the proposal process
  • SEAS pre-award will provide suggested timelines for large, more complex proposals.
  • The Engineering Office of Research and Innovation can provide review and feedback on proposal drafts at any stage of the proposal development process. Please contact the office as soon as possible, and no later than 1 month before deadline, to coordinate the timing of the reviews and feedback.
  • The Engineering Office of Research and Innovation can provide contact information for professional graphics services and financial support for professional graphics for a key figure or image for large proposals (>=$2M proposals) or Early Career Award proposals (such as NSF CAREER). UVA must be the lead institution on the proposal. Requests for a key figure are typically ~$500. Larger requests may be considered for large proposals. Budget is limited, and requests are considered on a rolling basis until funds are expended. Requests should be sent at least 4 weeks prior to the proposal deadline.
  • The SEAS pre-award team interfaces with Departments, the Office of Sponsored Programs, and other units to coordinate budgets and facilitate approvals.
  • Site visits/reverse site visits: the Engineering Office of Research and Innovation and VPR RD team can assist with planning and practice sessions. 

some links below require UVA login

VPR Office proposal development resources

General guidance  

High-level description of UVA and Engineering School

CCAM information

Agency-specific guidance 

National Institutes of Health (NIH)  
National Science Foundation (NSF) 
Department of Defense (DoD) 

Guidance for Specific Proposal Sections

Executive Summary
Project Management
Broader Impacts, broadening participation, outreach, and student recruiting
Data Management

links to UVA examples require UVA login and are only for use by UVA researchers and staff

National Institutes of Health

SAMPLE APPLICATIONS from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

National Science Foundation

NSF CISE CAREER EXAMPLE (note, this example does not include details of the Research Plan, but includes the other sections, including Introduction, Intellectual Merit, Broader Impacts, and Integration of Research, Education, and Outreach)

NSF ENG CBET CAREER EXAMPLE 1

NSF ENG CBET CAREER EXAMPLE 2

NSF ENG ECCS CAREER EXAMPLE

NSF MPS DMR CAREER EXAMPLE 1

NSF MPS DMR CAREER EXAMPLE 2

WORKSHOP AND EXAMPLE PROPOSALS for the NSF CISE CAREER program, from UNC

NSF CISE CAREER EXAMPLE, from Philip Guo, UCSD

EXAMPLE NSF FACILITIES PAGE (multi-investigator; computational focused)

NSF BIOSKETCH TEMPLATE (links to a template from Harvard)

Department of Defense

The proposals below are only available through the Engineering School, not via the VPR Proposal Library. These proposals are for use only by UVA researchers and staff and are not for distribution. 

Department of Energy

The proposals below are only available through the Engineering School, not via the VPR Proposal Library. These proposals are for use only by UVA researchers and staff and are not for distribution. 

Research Innovation Awards

The UVA Engineering Research Innovation Awards (RIA) program is designed to promote research excellence and facilitate pursuit of external research funding. The RFP for RIAs typically goes out in October, with a deadline in January before classes begin. Projects generally begin in early May. There are 2 grant types, seed and planning. The program aims to enable faculty to gather preliminary data (seed) needed for external proposals or plan for pursuit of major external funding opportunities (planning), such as center grants. For seed grants, new collaborations are encouraged. The FY25 RFP can be found at this link. A list of previous RIAs awardees for projects funded in FY22 to date is below. Since FY22, roughly $23.6M in externally sponsored grants have links to RIA investments. 

Planning (project is completed) 

  • "Organizing an NCI-sponsored U54 Center for Cancer Systems Biology," Kevin Janes, Matt Lazzara, Jason Papin. Final report at this link. 

Seed (projects are completed) 

  • "Advancing Markov Chain Monte Carlo Algorithms to Support the Design of Green Infrastructure Portfolios for Increased Flood Resilience and Environmental Sustainability," Julianne Quinn & Negin Alemazkoor. Final report at this link.
  • "Enabling Self-Adaptation in the Next Generation Machine Learning," Aidong Zhang & Stefan Bekiranov. Final report at this link.
  • "Identification of a Material System for Producing Functional Metallic Coatings That Impart High Antimicrobial Efficacy," Rich Martukanitz, Ji Ma, John Scully, Daniel Engel. Final report at this link.
  • "Novel Virtual Reality User Interface Supporting Dexterous Manipulation," Seongkook Heo & Kyusang Lee. Final report at this link. 

Planning (project ends 4/30/25) 

  • "Center for Advancing Flood Technologies for Equitable Resilience (AFTER)," Jon Goodall, Laura Barnes, Ben Calhoun.  

Seed (projects end 4/30/24) 

  • "Adaptive Safety Assurance Cases for Machine Learning-enabled Medical Cyber-Physical Systems," Homa Alemzadeh & Lu Feng.
  • Nikhil Shukla and Zongli Lin; "Developing the Control-Theoretic Foundations of Analog Computing: A Pathway to Overcoming the Challenges of the Digital Computing Paradigm."
  • "Distributed Scheduling of Distributed Smart Data Storage for Exascale Computing," Haiying Shen & Geoffrey Fox.  
  • "Epitaxial Growth of Topological Insulator Thin Films for Experimental Studies of Novel Physical Phenomena," Stephen McDonnell & Joe Poon.  
  • "Explainable Artificial Intelligence based Medical Image Analysis for MR-guided Focused Ultrasound Neurosurgery," Natasha Sheybani, Scott Acton, Shayan Moosa.
  • "Seeing the City: Understanding Pedestrian Gaze in Virtual Reality vs. Real World," Donna Chen, Arsalan Heydarian, Andrew Mondschein.
  • "Trustworthy Learning of Medical Images with Causality-Powered Shape Analysis," Miaomiao Zhang & Jundong Li.  

Planning Projects

  • “Earthshot: Transition Metal Carbides as Pluripotent Materials for Water Electrolysis,” Petra Reinke, Ji Ma, Leo Zhigilei, Chris Paolucci, Kory Burns, Sen Zhang
  • “Planning Grant for GAANN Submission,” Gary Koenig, Geoff Geise, Lisa Colosi-Peterson
  • “Wildfire Investigations and Prevention ERC (WIPE) ERC planning grant for NSF,” Venkat Lakshmi & Prasanna Balachandran

Seed Projects

  • “Artificial Insect Eye for Spatiotemporal Perception and Cognition in 3D Space via Edge Computing,” Kyusang Lee & Cong Shen
  • “Casting Light on the Gray Zone: Computational Methods for Identifying Borderline Research,” Matthew Bolton, Robert Riggs, William Scherer
  • “Empowering Ferroelectrics to Access the Z Dimension,” Nikhil Shukla & Jon Ihlefeld
  • “Exploring focused ultrasound as a non-invasive therapeutic strategy for neurodevelopmental disorders,” Natasha Sheybani & Sameer Bajikar
  • “Mitigating the Analog Data Deluge with Asynchronous Stochastic Computing (ASC) and Asynchronous Stream Processing (ASP),” Mircea Stan & Qiaochu Zhang
  • “Non-invasive Spectroscopic Detection of Macronutrients,” Afsaneh Doryab, Amanda Watson, Sibylle Kranz
  • “Rapidly Scaling-up Laboratory-to-Real Surface Materials for Hypersonics,” Xinfeng Gao & Beth Opila
  • “Thomson cooling in Metavalent Materials,” Mona Zebarjadi & Despina Louca
  • Toward 3D Graph Foundation Models for Molecular Property Prediction,” Jundong Li & Camille Bilodeau
  • “Understanding and Mitigating Privacy Leakage Risks for Large Language Model Applications,” Ferdinando Fioretto & David Evans

Planning Projects

  • “Materials Research for a Fission- and Fusion-Powered Future,” Sean Agnew and Kory Burns
  • “Research Centers on Indoor Health Technology and Resilient Communities,” Arsalan Heydarian, Somayeh Asadi, and Brad Campbell

Seed Projects

  • “AI-driven Realtime Gas Leak Localization using Artificial Olfactory Systems,” Seokhyun Chung and Kyusang Lee
  • “Autonomous Platform for Advanced Cementitious Materials Development,” Andres Clarens and Prasanna Balachandran

Research Interest Groups

Research Interest Groups: 

The UVA Engineering Research Interest Groups (RIG) program is designed to connect and build research communities within UVA around cross-disciplinary topic areas that represent existing or emerging opportunities to increase the research reputation of UVA Engineering. The program aims to enable faculty to plan and execute catalyzing activities, which might include convening informal and/or formal visioning meetings, planning seminars by internal and/or external speakers, establishing cross-departmental journal clubs, organizing a SEAS-wide event, and/or other activities. The RIG projects have provided a point of contact, short description, and for some groups a URL, so that faculty who might be interested can get in touch with the RIG. Information on this webpage will be updated as groups evolve and develop. The FY25 RIG solicitation is at this link.

 

Title: AI-CoDes: UVA Research Interest Group on AI Hardware/Software Co-Design 

  • Contact: Mircea Stan, mrs8n@virginia.edu
  • Short description: In SEAS there are great opportunities for interdisciplinary activities at the intersection of hardware and software for AI. Activities for this interest group include periodic meetings, a series of talks and seminars in AI hardware-software co-design, AI hardware-software co-design student competitions/hackathons, forging academic partnerships with other institutions, and engaging in open-source initiatives related to AI hardware-software co-design. 

Title: Biopharmaceutical Engineering Interest Group 

  • Contact: Blair Okita, wbo8vw@virginia.edu
  • Short description: The Biopharmaceutical Engineering Interest group will serve to connect those within the UVA community who engage in the advancement of biopharmaceutical process science and engineering. It will do so through a speaker series consisting of people from both the University and Industry as well discussion groups to enhance the connections between adjacent research interests.  

Title: Establishing a Human-Centered Technology Cohort within UVA SEAS 

  • Contact: Afsaneh Doryab, ad4ks@virginia.edu
  • Short description: This interest group aims to unite faculty members engaged in research on human factors, computation, and artificial intelligence (AI) to address the pressing need for human-centered technology solutions. Activities will include bi-weekly or monthly research lunch meetings with faculty and PhD students. Once we identify common themes during research lunches, we will organize regular proposal writing meetings and research sub-groups for the participating faculty to acquire funding and work together to produce publications, patents, and technology prototypes.  
  • URL: https://hai-lab-uva.github.io/uvahct/

Title: Scholarship of Engineering Education Research Interest Group 

  • Contact: Co-leads are Reid Bailey and Anne McAlister. Group is developing an email address; in the meantime, can contact Reid Bailey, rrbailey@virginia.edu
  • Short Description: The Scholarship of Engineering Education Research Interest Group will hold monthly meetings and an annual symposium to (1) build a welcoming community where participants can advance their engineering education scholarship abilities, form research collaborations, and develop research proposals, and (2) elevate the internal and external visibility of engineering education scholarship happening in SEAS and across UVA.  Participation is open to all UVA faculty, staff, and graduate students interested in engineering education scholarship.
  • URL: Registration for Symposium, 9/21/24

Title: SEAS Workshop on Large Language Models for Engineering Applications 

Title: UVA Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIML) seminar 

  • Contact: mailing list: aiml-seminar@virginia.edu; Emails to contact the organizers: {yangfeng, ptf8v, ylkuo} at virginia.edu
  • Short description: The UVA Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIML) seminar is a seminar series for AI/ML researchers to present their work. It provides a communication platform for our colleagues to discuss and brainstorm AI/ML methods and applications, and to foster collaborations.  
  • URL: https://uvaml.github.io/  

Title: UVA workshop (3-day short course) on “Synthesis and characterization of microfluidically-generated biomaterials” 

  • Contact: Don Griffin, dg2gf@virginia.edu
  • Short description: The primary goal of this workshop is to grow and strengthen a community of biomaterials and tissue engineering researchers. The proposed workshop would combine seminar-based instruction and hands-on training to disseminate the knowledge needed to make and accurately characterize microfluidically-generated granular hydrogels. In addition, we will invite a non-UVA topical expert in particle-based hydrogel computational characterization to present.

Title: University of Virginia Artificial Intelligence in Materials Science (UVA-AIMS) Consortium 

  • Contact: Prasanna V. Balachandran (pvb5e@virginia.edu) and Stephen Baek (baek@virginia.edu)
  • Short description: Our goal is to establish a consortium that includes faculty members, research associates, and students with unique sets of expertise and overlapping interests across the UVA Grounds on the rapidly emerging topic of artificial intelligence in materials science (AIMS). The RIG team will organize: (1) research proposal visioning sessions for idea sharing and brainstorming; (2) AIMS journal club series open to faculty, postdocs, and students across the Grounds; and (3) AIMS themed seminars. 

Title: Accelerating Multiscale Materials Innovation through Advanced Electron Microscopy, AI-Driven Analysis, and Core Facility Engagement

  • Contacts: Toni Tang, bav7wh@virginia.edu; Kory Burns, cyu4js@virginia.edu; Art Lichtenberger, awl1l@virginia.edu
  • Short description: This research interest group aims to build an interdisciplinary community that leverages cutting-edge electron microscopy (EM) and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to accelerate multiscale innovation in both engineered and biological materials. Activities include hands-on workshops on advanced EM tools (FIB-SEM, TEM, Cryo-EM), demonstration of AI-driven image data analysis and collaborative seminars with internal and external experts.

Title: Human-Centered Technology Cohort within UVA SEAS 

  • Contact: Afsaneh Doryab, ad4ks@virginia.edu
  • Short description: This interest group aims to unite faculty members engaged in research on human factors, computation, and artificial intelligence (AI) to address the pressing need for human-centered technology solutions. Activities will include holding monthly research lunch meetings with faculty and PhD students, organizing seminars featuring distinguished external speakers, collaboratively pursuing external funding, and working to connect the AI/ML and HCT research communities at UVA.  
  • URL: https://hai-lab-uva.github.io/uvahct/

Title: An Integrated Computational and Experimental Study of Gas-Surface-Materials in Nonequilibrium Flows 

  • Contact: Xinfeng Gao; dedicated email address: hi.rig@virgina.edu
  • Short description: This RIG project is focused on the fundamental understanding of gas-surface interactions under extreme conditions. Featured by complex nonequilibrium and nonlinear processes, this research topic is inherently multidisciplinary, requiring integrated knowledge and skills from thermodynamic, mechanical, chemical, electromagnetic, and materials fields, which span across the team members and the unique strengths of each team member will be leveraged to address this cutting-edge problem.

Title: Research Group on Foundations of Computer Science

Title: Robotics + X Symposium 

  • Contact: Rohan Chandra, rohanchandra@virginia.edu
  • Short description: Recent advances in Generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs) and vision language models (VLMs), are revolutionizing robotics by enabling intelligent interaction with multimodal data such as vision, language, speech, and semantic behavior. At UVA SEAS, the Robotics + X initiative leverages interdisciplinary expertise to unify robotics research efforts across departments, fostering collaboration and innovation through symposia, joint proposals, and shared resources in areas such as autonomous systems, human-robot interaction, and embodied AI.
  • URL: https://engineering.virginia.edu/roboticsx

Title: Scholarship of Engineering Education Research Interest Group 

  • Contact: Co-leads are Reid Bailey and Anne McAlister; dedicated email address: engineeringeducation@virginia.edu
  • Short Description: The Scholarship of Engineering Education Research Interest Group will hold monthly meetings and an annual symposium, and will gather, maintain, and share data on UVA engineering education scholarship. Participation is open to all UVA faculty, staff, and graduate students interested in engineering education scholarship.

Title: The 2nd UVA Workshop on Large Language Models: Generative Language Technology and Its Societal Impacts 

Title: Soft-/BioMaterials and Biomanufacturing (SMB/B) 

  • Contact: Chris Highley, ch2qm@virginia.edu, and George Christ, gjc8w@virginia.edu
  • Short Description: UVA is home to a strong community of Soft/BioMaterials and Biomanufacturing researchers whose work is addressing cutting edge challenges in the design and application and soft matter and biomanufacturing technology. This Research Interest Group is formed 1) to coalesce members of this community to identify and pursue strategic opportunities that will continue building momentum around this work at UVA and 2) to organize activities, including a journal club and hosting invited speakers, that energize and enhance interactions across labs, departments, and schools. 

Title: UVA Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIML) seminar 

  • Contact: mailing list: aiml-seminar@virginia.edu; Emails to contact the organizers: {yangfeng, ptf8v, ylkuo} at virginia.edu
  • Short description: The UVA Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIML) seminar is a seminar series for AI/ML researchers to present their work. It provides a communication platform for our colleagues to discuss and brainstorm AI/ML methods and applications, and to foster collaborations.  
  • URL: https://uvaml.github.io/  

 

Contact Information

Jeffrey J. Fox, Ph.D.

Assistant Dean for Research
Email jjf5x@virginia.edu