The Graduate School at UMBC Dissertation Fellowship Application Deadline:  Friday, November 1, 2019

The Dissertation Fellowship is designed to provide doctoral candidates at UMBC an opportunity to devote the necessary concentration and attention towards finishing the writing of their dissertations.  The Fellowship is specifically designed for students with full-time jobs off-campus, for those without any financial support who are making steady progress with their writing, and for whom having additional time and resources would permit them to complete the process more expeditiously.  This Fellowship is not available as an option for students with available graduate assistantship support.

The Dissertation Fellowship could provide promising doctoral candidates with financial support so that they may reduce their current obligations and partially offset any reductions in salary or increases in expenses.  No additional work assignments other than work on the dissertation are to be associated with this support.

Priority will be given to students who demonstrate that the Fellowship will allow them the needed time to complete their writing and to make revisions in time to defend the work within a realistic but expeditious time frame.  Awards will be made to students who have demonstrated a commitment to provide at least 20 hours per week for an entire academic semester to writing the dissertation.

Dissertation Fellowship awards are available for Spring 2020.  The duration of an award is for one semester. The maximum level of support for Spring is a total stipend of $8,919.68 per Fellowship plus tuition remission for two credits of 899.

To be considered for a Dissertation Fellowship, the Ph.D. candidate must:

• be  in good academic standing;

• provide a letter of support from the Chair of the Dissertation Committee that 

1.  describes the state of the dissertation and the probable impact of receipt of the Fellowship on the progress toward completion; and,

2. verifies that no UMBC-administered financial support is available for the student;

• provide, if employed outside the university, written evidence from the student’s employer indicating the employer’s willingness to reduce job time and duties in order for the student to participate in the Fellowship;

• submit a dissertation abstract of no more than two pages in length; and

• submit a 1-2 page management plan signed by the Chair of the Dissertation Committee describing the status of the dissertation work, the steps required to complete the work, and the feasible timeline for completion; and 

• identify, if a prior recipient of a Dissertation Fellowship, the prior term (e.g., Spring 2017) in which the Fellowship was received.

Applications for Spring 2020 Dissertation Fellowships will be accepted by the Office of the Associate Dean of the Graduate School until Friday, November 1, 2019.  Completed applications may be submitted via email as a single PDF to DFSpring2020@umbc.edu or hand-delivered to the Office of the Associate Dean of the Graduate School, Room 208, Administration Building, by 4:30 p.m.  A committee consisting of three members of the Graduate School Leadership Team will review applications and announce recipients of the Fellowship by Friday, November 22, 2019.  Selection will be based on the extent of convincing evidence that the award will provide the critical element needed to complete the dissertation.

LINK TO SPRING 2020 DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIP APPLICATION

Three new positions we are recruiting for related to the undergraduate and graduate applied biotechnology programs at UMBC-Shady Grove:

For updated information regarding this opportunity please visit:

https://www.zintellect.com/Opportunity/Details/FDA-CDER-2019-0447

Looking to hire postdocs with expertise in biochemistry and protein purification/membrane proteins and interest in structural biology.

The lab is located at ETH in Zurich, Switzerland and has access to cutting-edge cryo-electron microscopy equipment.

You can read more about the current research on the website: https://locherlab.ethz.ch/

Water Foundation Grant 
Assessing the Microbial Risks and Potential Impacts from Stormwater Collection and Uses to Establish Appropriate Best Management Practices
Deadline: September 24, 2019 
To assess the microbial risks and potential impacts from stormwater collection and onsite reuse to and help establish appropriate best management practices for stormwater harvesting/reuse and other stormwater control measures.
For more specifics. 

The Getty Foundation
Getty Scholars Grants
Deadline: October 1, 2019
Getty Scholar Grants are for established scholars, or writers who have attained distinction in their fields. Recipients are in residence at the Getty Research Institute or Getty Villa, where they pursue their own projects free from academic obligations, make use of Getty collections, join their colleagues in a weekly meeting devoted to an annual research theme, and participate in the intellectual life of the Getty. Applications are welcome from researchers of all nationalities who are working in the arts, humanities, or social sciences.
For more specifics.

Robert Woods Johnson Foundation 
Advancing Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Policy and Law Research
Deadline: October 2, 2019 
Policies for Action (P4A), a signature research program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is issuing a special call for proposals (CFP) to advance health equity by actively seeking new and diverse perspectives from the policy research field. This opportunity is designed to support researchers from multiple disciplines to better understand and find solutions that will promote health equity and foster action on policies and laws that ensure all people in America can attain and preserve good health and well-being.
For more specifics.

NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship Program in Education Research 
Deadline: October 3, 2019
The Dissertation Fellowship Program seeks to encourage a new generation of scholars from a wide range of disciplines and professional fields to undertake research relevant to the improvement of education. These $27,500 fellowships support individuals whose dissertations show potential for bringing fresh and constructive perspectives to the history, theory, or practice of formal or informal education anywhere around the world. Fellows will also attend professional development retreats and receive mentorship from NAEd members and other senior scholars in their field. This highly competitive program aims to identify the most talented emerging researchers conducting dissertation research related to education. The NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship program will fund 35 promising young scholars for the 2020-2021 academic year.  Click hereto learn about the current fellows.NAEd will host a webinar for interested applicants on Wednesday, September 4th, 2019 at 2:00pm ET.  Register for the webinar and find the fellowship application form on the NAEd website: https://naeducation.org/naedspencer-dissertation-fellowship-program/

Institute for Research on Innovation & Science 
Deadline: October 15, 2019 
The Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS) seeks to fund researchers who will use the IRIS UMETRICS data to address questions about the social and economic returns to investments in research. IRIS seeks to enable fundamental research on the results of public and private investments that support discovery, innovation, and education on the campuses of U.S. universities. We accomplish that goal by: (1) collecting and curating data from universities around the country; (2) cleaning, integrating and protecting that data in our capacity as an IRB approved data repository; (3) partnering with the U.S. Census Bureau to link university data to restricted federal micro-data; and, (4) making the resulting datasets as broadly available to research users as the law and responsible research practice allow. The IRIS UMETRICS dataset is available to researchers within the secure IRIS Virtual Data Enclave (VDE) environment. This dataset is comprised of three collections: (i) core files in which researchers find university financial and personnel administrative data pertaining to sponsored project expenditures at IRIS member universities during a given year; (ii) auxiliary files which provide researchers with look-up and contextual information on institutions, awards, vendors and subaward recipients, and (iii) linkage files in which researchers find crosswalks between IRIS data and external datasets (e.g., publications, patents, and federal award data) at the individual and award level. Awards up to $20,000 to support innovative research using IRIS UMETRICS data will be disbursed to the recipient’s institution. Funds can be used for personnel (e.g., research assistance, salaries, or stipend if recipient is a student), equipment, supplies, travel (may include travel mandated by the award), and other expenses (e.g., professional development and training). Awards must include no more than 12% overhead or indirect costs to be paid as a part of the award total. Applicants with proposals for projects with longer timelines may be considered, but the monetary award is limited to a 15-month time period beginning January 2020 through March 2021.
For more specifics.

Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council 
Deadline: October 15, 2019 
Insight Grants support research excellence in the social sciences and humanities. Funding is available to both emerging and established scholars for research initiatives of two to five years. Stable support for long-term research initiatives is central to advancing knowledge. It enables scholars to address complex issues pertaining to individuals and societies, and to further our collective understanding. Insight Grants support research proposed by scholars and judged worthy of funding by their peers and/or other experts. Insight Grant research initiatives may be undertaken by an individual researcher or a team of researchers working in collaboration.
For more specifics.

Princeton University 
Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellowships 
Deadline: November 4, 2019
The University Center for Human Values at Princeton University invites applications for Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellowships for the academic year 2020-21. Fellows devote an academic year in residence at Princeton to research and writing about topics involving human values in public and private life. This full-time visiting program is open to scholars in all disciplines provided their research plans qualify. In recent years fellows have been drawn from fields including philosophy, political theory, literature, history, classics, economics and law, but this list is not meant to be exhaustive.
For more specifics.

NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Education Research 
Deadline: November 20, 2019
The Postdoctoral Fellowship Program supports early-career scholars working in critical areas of educational scholarship. Fellows will receive $70,000 for one academic year of research, or $35,000 for each of two contiguous years, working half time. Fellows will also attend professional development retreats and receive mentorship from NAEd members and other senior scholars in their field. Applicants must have had their PhD, EdD, or equivalent research degree conferred between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2018.  This fellowship is non-residential, and applications from all disciplines are encouraged. The NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship program will fund 30 early-career researchers for the 2020-2021 academic year. Click hereto learn about the current fellows.

And please don't miss out on these Internal Opportunities:   

• September 25: Deadline for initial draft proposals for the Technology Catalyst Fund, with final proposals due October 16, to advance innovations originating from UMBC research to more commercially viable technologies.

• October 8: Deadline for the fall semester CAHSS Dean’s Research Fund (CDRF) funding opportunity.Provides up to $5,000 to support the research endeavors of CAHSS tenured and tenure-track faculty and lecturers.