Enterprise Innovation brings internal and external collaboration opportunities to our faculty and trainees. These programs provide extra funding and opportunities to work with industry to advance faculty/trainees' translational research projects.
Please contact Dr. James Bellush at james.bellush@cornell.edu if you have any questions or need guidance on your application.
1. Michelson Foundation: Next Generation Grants
- Eligibility: Annual award supporting early-career investigators working to advance human immunology, vaccine discovery, and immunotherapy research for major global diseases.
- In-scope projects will aim to tackle existing roadblocks for human vaccine development and expand limited understanding of immune biology to enable successful vaccine and immunotherapy development
- Proposals must be from investigators under 35 years of age
- Submission Details: Applications must be submitted through online portal
- Award Details: Budgets up to $150,000 for 12-month projects
Submission Deadline: June 22, 2025
2. Pilot Research Program for the Study and Support of Caregivers
The Program for the Study and Support of Caregivers, a new program in the Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, is pleased to announce its inaugural pilot research program. The Program is intended to serve as an incubator for new research, exploration of new interventions, a training venue, and a vehicle to promote new collaborations.
The program will support two levels of awards:
- Early-Stage Investigator Pilot Award
- Up to 50K
- Up to 2 years
- Trainee Pilot Award (post docs/fellows, PhD students, medical students)
- Up to 10K
- 1 year
Submission Deadline: June 30, 2025.
Anticipate funding one Early-Stage Investigator Award and two Trainee Awards in the current funding year. Funding decisions will be made by July 30th, 2025. For program guidelines and application forms please contact Adrienne Jaret, MSPH, Program Administrator at adj2012@med.cornell.edu.
3. Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award
- Eligibility: Innovation Award is designed to provide support creative high-risk / high-reward ideas that lack sufficient preliminary data to obtain traditional funding. The potential of proposed research should lead to advances that significantly impact prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer.
- Submission Details: Review application materials at website and log into Proposal Central to search “Damon Runyon – Rachleff Innovation Award”
- Award Details: Stage 1 award for two-years, $200,000 per year ($400k total) with opportunity to renew additional two- years of funding ($800k total)
Submission Deadline: July 1, 2025 at 4pm EST
4. BrightFocus Foundation: Innovative Research Grants in Macular Degeneration
- Eligibility: Foundation’s goal is to advance innovative research promoting advances in the etiology, prevention, and treatments of Alzheimer’s disease, macular degeneration, and glaucoma.
- Innovation Grant is intended to provide support for high-risk / high-reward projects in AMD space. Proposals should not be derivative and must instead focus on outside of the box ideas.
- Submission Details: Eligibility and proposal guidelines can be found at the BrightFocus RFP website.
- Award Details: Budgets up to $200,000 per year ($600,000 for three-years)
Submission Deadline: July 17, 2025 by 5pm
5. Wellcome Trust: Mental Health Award
- Eligibility: Award is designed to fund projects that draw on the potential of longitudinal data to drive innovation in early identification of anxiety, depression, and/or psychosis
- Successful teams will integrate advanced analytics or longitudinal data with research to enable more precise and effective early interventions
- Applications from diverse and interdisciplinary teams are encouraged
- Submission Details: Eligibility and proposal guidelines can be found at the BrightFocus RFP website.
- Award Details: Between $1 million and $5 million for 3-5 years
Submission Deadline: July 22, 2025