The Oliver Fund Scholars Award

 Inaugural Competition

Fall 2009

 

     The Oliver Fund was created to support and enhance Tulane's faculty and intellectual capital as among the institution's most valuable resources.  The fund is intended to represent an enabling resource to stimulate outstanding faculty research initiatives, to sustain such projects and to increase their competitiveness for national research support. 

     The Oliver Fund will support a competitive, merit-based faculty award process, with particular focus on faculty-driven, interdisciplinary research initiatives in the sciences and engineering broadly defined.  Competitions will be held twice yearly, each focused in a particular area of research strength at Tulane.  Award recipients will be named as Oliver Fund Scholars.

 The inaugural competition, to be conducted in Fall 2009, will focus on the area of Hypertension and Renal Biology, as reflected by the mission of the Tulane Hypertension and Renal Center of Excellence(THRCE). 

  Hypertension is one of Louisiana’s and the Southeast region’s primary health care issues, a major cardiovascular risk factor, and is closely linked to kidney disease. THRCE was developed to centralize and foster high quality interdisciplinary research in hypertension and related kidney and cardiovascular diseases, and represents a major force in support of interdisciplinary research university-wide.  The Inaugural Oliver Fund Scholar will be a member of the Tulane faculty who conducts outstanding research in the broad area of hypertension and renal biology, in support of the interdisciplinary mission of the Center.

It is anticipated that an award of $44,000 will be made to support research initiatives of the Inaugural Oliver Fund Scholar.  Proposals will be reviewed by a committee of senior faculty including THRCE leadership, according to the follow criteria: 

• The Scientific merit of the project

• The potential to elevate the national visibility and reputation of Tulane University faculty for excellence in research accomplishment.

• The potential for future support from competitive national funding agencies.  It is expected that a graft application to a federal agency (e.g., NIH, HSF) will be submitted within one year of the award 

• The relevance of the proposal to the research mission of the Center.

• The potential to strengthen Tulane’s educational offerings through increased opportunity for student participation in research.

Proposals should be submitted to the Office of the Associate Senior Vice President for Research (llevy@tulane.edu) by November 15, 2009 in a format consistent with the  guidelines.

Fall '09 Competition

  Including Proposal Submission Guidelines