Most Recent RFP

Harvard Medical School Foundry: 2025 Award Program

Note: For complete RFP documents for the 2025 Foundry Award Program, including the Appendices, please see the PDF documents at the bottom of this page

I. Key Dates

RFP announcement: November 19, 2024

Required pre-proposal submission: January 24, 2025 (5 pm ET)

Deadline for submission of proposals: February 28, 2025 (5 pm ET)

Announcement of new awards: May 2025

Anticipated funding start date: July 1, 2025

II. Overview and Goals

The Harvard Medical School Foundry supports technology development and research infrastructure by providing central coordination, funding, and administrative resources for technology development projects, research core facilities, and technology platforms. An important goal of the Foundry is to support programs that will positively impact HMS Quad-based research and that have strategic importance to HMS programs.

Requests for applications for Foundry funding are anticipated to be issued annually. Four categories of proposals will be considered in each award cycle:

To renew or expand existing HMS or HMS-supported core facilities
To establish new core facilities/technology platforms
To develop new technologies (which could potentially be placed in a core facility in the future)
To fund short-term planning projects during which work will be done to develop detailed proposals that would be submitted to the Foundry in future application cycles.

III. Program Details and Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for Foundry funding, applicants must be: (i) faculty members who hold a primary appointment at Harvard Medical School as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or Professor in an HMS Quad department (Quad A[1] and Quad B[2]); or (ii) Directors of HMS Quad-funded core facilities or shared resources. Interested applicants not falling into either of these categories should contact the Foundry program to discuss their ideas and, if appropriate, request approval to apply. There is no departmental limit on the number of proposals that can be submitted.

A one-page pre-proposal (due January 24, 2025) is required for all applications. These documents will help us plan the application review process and identify overlapping projects early. They will also help to identify potential collaborations with existing HMS core facilities. Full-length Foundry proposals will be due on February 28, 2025.

Proposals can request funding to cover equipment purchases and/or operating costs for core facilities and new technology development projects. Funds will be awarded for the purchase of shared instruments, salary support, service contracts, and other costs associated with the development of new technology or the operation of a research core facility. Support for operating expenses can be requested for a maximum three-year period. Some proposals for new shared resources or services might be smaller in scale, e.g., to test the feasibility of a new idea over a shorter period of time rather than to develop a full core/technology platform at the outset.

Applicants proposing new shared resources or services are encouraged to work with existing HMS research core facilities and Core Directors when possible. Information about current HMS research cores can be found on the HMS Cores website (https://corefacilities.hms.harvard.edu). In many cases, it might be more efficient to add proposed new instruments or services to existing HMS research core facilities, under the management of experienced Core Directors, than to establish a new core facility to provide access to the new technology or method. Requests to start new cores will be reviewed separately from requests related to existing cores, and funding support will be allocated according to the assessed need and likely impact of each of the proposed activities.

To this end, all applications will require a description of likely users of proposed instruments and services. The review committee will use this information to understand the community that will be served by each proposed resource, but numbers of potential users will be only one of several factors used to prioritize proposals for funding. The strategic importance of the activity to HMS Quad research and the feasibility of the proposed program will also be evaluated.

Some ideas might require additional study or development before a multi-year request is made to the Foundry. Requests can be made to fund short-term (e.g., one year) planning projects to develop detailed proposals that can be submitted to the Foundry in future application cycles. Planning project requests can include partial salary support for faculty, staff, or trainees, relevant travel expenses, and/or funding to organize a small workshop.

Applications that leverage additional support from major stakeholders are encouraged and are generally prioritized. Sources of additional support could be funding from grants, from HMS departments, or from HMS-affiliated institutions. For new or existing cores requesting operating costs, cost recovery via user fees is also considered a type of support, as are space allocations from departments or affiliated institutions.

This opportunity may be used as a mechanism to gain institutional support for a 2025 NIH S10 Shared Instrumentation Grant submission. The intention to submit a 2025 S10 proposal should be indicated in the pre-proposal so that the program can plan to prepare an appropriate letter of support with a commitment of funds in time for completion and submission of the S10 proposal by the NIH deadline. Institutional support funds approved by the Foundry Committee would be made available for such S10 proposals that are selected for funding by the NIH.

Program details specific to technology development projects

For technology development projects, it is understood that the new technology will likely not be available broadly to the HMS community at the outset. However, the Foundry Committee prioritizes projects that are expected eventually to benefit HMS research beyond the lab of the project PI and close collaborators. Thus, technology development proposals require a description of a path for future HMS community access to the proposed technology. For example, a plan might be proposed to begin work with a local core facility to implement the technology, to establish a new core facility when the technology is ready, or to work with the Harvard Office of Technology Development to commercialize the technology.

The Foundry Committee considers a combination of both the potential risk, potential impact, and the project cost in evaluating technology development proposals. Technology development applicants are encouraged to provide preliminary data that address risk. For very early-phase projects where no preliminary data are available, applicants are strongly encouraged to request funding for a first phase of the project only, to gather preliminary data, with a proposed total budget of $300,000 or smaller. If a Foundry-supported early-phase technology development project is successful, an application can be submitted to a subsequent Foundry Award cycle for additional funding.

IV. Application Information

Note that a PDF of the full Foundry RFP, including the Appendices, is available at the bottom of this website, along with the Foundry Budget Template

Pre-Proposal

Instructions for the required pre-proposal are provided in Appendix A. Each pre-proposal should be submitted to the HMS Internal Awards System using the following form https://forms.hms.harvard.edu/f/2025prefoundry by 5 pm on January 24, 2025. The pre-proposal document should be a single PDF file named according to the following convention: “Foundry_Pre-Proposal_[brief title for your proposal]”. For example, “Foundry_Pre-Proposal_Zeiss_confocal,” “Foundry_Pre-Proposal_Cryo-EM,” or “Foundry Pre-Proposal_Microscope_planning_project.”

Proposal

Instructions for Foundry Proposals are provided in Appendix B. Note that Foundry funding can be requested for a maximum of three years of operational support. The budget template (see Appendix C) requires a five-year operating budget so that long-term plans for support and sustainability of the program (e.g., support for service contracts, supplies, and personnel) beyond the term of Foundry funding are described in detail.

Applications submitted by existing HMS-supported research cores are required to provide additional supporting documentation. For the 2025 Foundry award cycle, this includes only a letter of support for the request from the core’s steering or advisory committee (to be submitted with the application).

Foundry proposals should be submitted to the HMS Internal Awards System using the following form https://forms.hms.harvard.edu/f/2025fullfoundry by 5pm on February 28, 2025. The proposal document should be a single PDF file named according to the following convention: “Foundry_Proposal_[brief title for your proposal]”. For example, “Foundry_Proposal_Zeiss_confocal,” “Foundry_Proposal_Cryo-EM,” or “Foundry Proposal_Microscope_planning_project.”

V. Review Process and Criteria

Proposals will be reviewed by a committee comprised of HMS Faculty and HMS Core Directors. Proposals for renewal or expansion of existing research cores will be reviewed separately from proposals for new research cores and technology development projects. The foremost evaluation criterion during the review process will be how proposed projects will impact and benefit HMS Quad-based research. Specific, additional review criteria for the various categories of proposals include:

Review criteria for proposals for renewal or expansion of existing HMS and HMS-supported research cores

Strategic importance of the proposal to HMS Quad research
Size of the community of users/potential users
Leverage of support from non-Foundry resources
Continuing need onsite at HMS vs. as an outsourced resource
Community feedback, gathered by the Foundry, about operation of the core

Review criteria for proposals for new research cores/technology platforms and technology development projects

Strategic importance to HMS Quad research
Innovation of the technology/resource
Size of the community of potential users
Leverage of funds from non-Foundry resources
Need for onsite location at HMS vs. as an outsourced resource

Proposals for technology development projects will be reviewed according to all of the criteria listed above for new research cores plus: inclusion of a reasonable and well-described path for future HMS community access to the proposed technology.

Contact Us

For more information about HMS Core Facilities, please visit: https://corefacilities.hms.harvard.edu/

Please direct questions about this RFP to Caroline Shamu (caroline_shamu@hms.harvard.edu) and to John Goettelmann (john_goettelmann@hms.harvard.edu).

[1] Faculty whose primary appointment rank is Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or Professor and whose primary appointing department is a Basic or Social Science Department and whose primary job location is on Quad.

[2] Faculty whose primary appointment rank is Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or Professor and whose primary appointing department is a Basic or Social Science Department and whose primary job location is off Quad.