MIT HEALS Seed Grant Call for Applications
Seed Grant Application Open
About The Grant
The MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS) will soon accept applications for Seed Grants. This program will support collaborative projects at the cutting edge of health and life sciences with the goal of catalyzing new interactions, developing new technologies and methodologies, generating core datasets, and accelerating discovery.
The proposed work must touch on a key aspect of health and/or the life sciences, consistent with the core mission of HEALS. We encourage proposals from across all Schools, the College, Departments, and units at MIT. These grants are particularly designed to support teams of researchers whose work crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries and integrates diverse approaches to develop bold, paradigm-shifting ideas.
- Break conventional disciplinary silos and merge expertise from multiple fields
- Ask new and ambitious scientific questions—not just incremental advances, but entirely new ways of understanding health and life sciences
- Develop solutions to critical problems or bottlenecks where new approaches are needed
- Harness cutting-edge technologies, methodologies, or theoretical frameworks to transform a field
- Build new partnerships between collaborators who haven’t worked together before and aim to try out new, potentially risky ideas
- Push beyond traditional research constraints, particularly those that struggle to fit within standard grant mechanisms
- Create a framework to generate tangible preliminary findings towards obtaining long term external funding support
- Have the potential to transform health and life sciences
We will consider applications in any research area that touches on health and life sciences.
Eligibility and Funding
We are looking for bold, cross-disciplinary research projects tackling major challenges or problems in health and life sciences. The grant is open to all MIT faculty and PIs whose work aligns with the HEALS mission. We encourage applications from those whose research:
- Bridges disciplines and integrates approaches from different fields and departments
- Explores new conceptual frameworks to tackle complex health challenges
- Develops cutting-edge tools, technologies, or methodologies, including collaborations that provide support to scientific core facilities
- Has the potential to transform health and/or life sciences
Seed grant proposals will be funded for one year. However, teams will be given the opportunity to apply to renew their research projects, with evidence of clear and effective collaboration and progress within the first year serving as key elements for consideration. The proposed budget should match the proposed work and needs of each research team, with potential funding at a level of $50k-200k per lab or research group, inclusive of indirect costs.
Collaborative Grant Framework
HEALS seeks to provide not just funding, but to create an intellectual ecosystem where risk-taking, boundary-pushing, and paradigm-shifting ideas can thrive.
We particularly encourage grant applications that create new research directions from teams of researchers that cross traditional disciplines and boundaries. We recommend defining a research team with 2-5 participating laboratories or research groups and encourage teams with researchers in different departments, career stages, and disciplines. We particularly encourage the formation of new collaborations, connections, and research directions. Each individual research team that is part of the collaboration must be led by an MIT-affiliated faculty or PI. No funding can be distributed to collaborators outside of MIT.
Heals Grant Expectations
Unlike traditional grants, HEALS-funded faculty are expected to be part of an intellectually vibrant and interdisciplinary cohort, with structured opportunities to collaborate, exchange ideas, and refine their scientific vision. Participating in these activities is a central expectation for receiving a grant from HEALS.
Quarterly meetings: Faculty will present their research, receive peer feedback, and participate in discussions on emerging topics in health and life sciences.
Collaboration planning: Faculty are expected to participate in a workshop hosted by Research Development on establishing a constructive and effective framework for collaboration.
Institute-wide symposium: Faculty will showcase their work at an annual symposium, engaging with the broader research community.
Yearly grant report: 1 page describing accomplishments and follow on plans.
Timeline
April 28, 2025
Information Session
May & June 2025
Matchmaking workshops to seed new collaborations – info below
July 31, 2025
Applications due
Sept 15, 2025
Applicants notified
Oct 1, 2025 – Sept 30, 2026
Grant period
Seed Grant Workshops
The workshops will provide opportunities to discuss research topics, meet other PIs, and establish new collaborative teams. Each workshop will provide opportunities to propose ideas and discuss a range of areas. In addition, to convene specific areas, we encourage those interested in the topics listed below to attend the corresponding workshop(s).
Workshop 1: Nutrition; Health and society
Monday, May 12, 3-4:30pm, 76-156
Specific Topics: Nutrition; Health and society; Cancer biology and therapeutics; Rare human disease; Synthetic biology
Workshop 2: Neuroscience; Mental health
Tuesday, May 20, 2-3:30pm, 45-432
Specific Topics: AI and Health; Neuroscience; Mental health; Reimagining the future of health care; Computational and experimental approaches to protein structure
Workshop 3: Women’s Health
Wednesday, June 11, 2-3:30pm, 76-156
Specific Topics: Women’s Health; Health and society; Low-cost diagnostics; Pathogens and disease; The immune system; The virtual cell
Workshop 4: AI and Health
Thursday, June 26, 3-4:30pm, 68-181
Specific Topics: AI and Health; Environmental life sciences; RNA biology; Aging; Advanced technologies to measure health or biology; Biomaterials
Application Components
- Proposal of the planned research with a separate proposal from each participating PI (2 pages maximum per investigator, not including figures or references, so a proposal from 3 investigators can be up to 6 pages)
- Summary describing why this proposed work fits within the overall goals and mission of HEALS (1 page maximum per team)
- Description of collaborative elements and why the proposed team is necessary to achieve the overall goals of the research project (1 page maximum per team)
- Collaboration plan to describe how the research groups will interact and work together and ensure ongoing engagement (1 page maximum per team)
- CV or biosketch from each applicant
- Budget and justification indicating how grant funds will be used (1 page for each applicant)
Selection Criteria
The selection committee will evaluate applicants based on:
- Scientific or engineering excellence and innovation
- Potential to impact health and life sciences
- Commitment to collaboration and constructive engagement in the cohort
- Interdisciplinary scope and creativity
- Nature of the proposed research team and the collaborative contributions of each team member for the success of the project
- Evidence to support the tangible interactions and collaboration between team members; we are not looking to simply fund individual labs or research groups to work separately.
- Preliminary data is not required, particularly for projects that take a new direction, but a justification of feasibility or a description of the prior work that provides a foundation for the proposed experiments is encouraged.
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