Baylor in Deeds Research Incubator Awards
The Baylor in Deeds Strategic Plan’s Commitment II calls the university to Broaden Interdisciplinary Research and Impact. It states:
“Contributing meaningfully to society’s greatest challenges through research will require us to think and act beyond our comfort zone, to move beyond our siloed areas of interest and expertise, and to embrace collaboration at the intersection of where a global Baylor meets a diverse and complex world. To do this, we must recruit, develop and retain talented faculty, staff and students who pursue innovative interdisciplinary research and scholarship in existing areas of strength” (p. 8)
In response to this summons, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research is launching the Baylor in Deeds Research Incubator Awards to better prepare faculty to engage in innovative interdisciplinary collaborations in strategic areas of strength.
Research Incubator Award Funding Process
Our new incubator funding process seeks to attract both researchers who may not currently be in an interdisciplinary research team as well as those currently engaged in research with an interdisciplinary team. No existing team is needed in the first stage of the process. Rather than simply inviting faculty to apply for collaborative internal research awards broadly, we are structuring our collaborative internal awards to cultivate communities of faculty – or “research incubators” – within our university related to areas of strategic focus identified in Baylor in Deeds. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research will then fund interdisciplinary teams that emerge from the incubator communities. The teams will be eligible to apply for $30-60k research funds to be spent over the following fiscal year (June 1 – May 31). Each year, we will choose two areas of emphasis (see below) to engage faculty in the following multi-step funding model. Areas of emphasis from the strategic plan will rotate annually.
Step 1: Apply to join an interdisciplinary area incubator group. The application requires just two documents: 1) a CV and 2) an application form that indicates the incubator group of interests and provides a 250-word description of how the faculty applicant’s work connects to the incubator group. Step 1 applications will be due November 1, 2026 at 11:59 p.m.
Step 2: Faculty who are selected for an incubator group will attend 3-5 sessions with the chosen interdisciplinary incubator group. Each group will be convened by senior level faculty with an extensive record of funding in the area. The sessions will be structured to ideate potential applications to specific funders and funding mechanisms, forming interdisciplinary teams among participants to propose pilot projects that Baylor might fund. Sessions will be hosted November-March of each year.
- Step 3: Teams from the incubator groups will apply for $30-60k awards within the area with specific funders identified. Step 3 applications will be due in late March 2027.
- Step 4: The conveners of each group will facilitate the review process with internal and/or external reviewers who are subject matter experts and will make final funding recommendations to the Vice Provost for Research. Decisions will prioritize ROI for future funding in the area of emphasis.
- Eligibility: Full-time Baylor faculty, regardless of academic rank, are eligible to submit a Step 1 application. Visiting faculty, adjunct faculty, and postdoctoral fellows are not eligible. Faculty do NOT need to have a pre-existing collaborative team organized before applying to Step 1. Instead, faculty will apply as individuals and then teams will form through initial meetings with others related to the topic. Faculty may have collaborators in mind who also choose to apply to the incubator, but the teams will not be officially constructed until Step 2 of the process. Faculty are not eligible to apply for the $30-60k awards if they have not participated in Steps 1 and 2 of the process. If faculty would like to directly apply for funds to support individual research, they should apply for the University Research Committee (URC) $5,000 standard awards.
Current Interdisciplinary Research Incubator Areas (Fall 2026 Step 1 Applications for June 2027-May 2028 Funding)
Human Flourishing
Convener: Sarah Schnitker (Associate Vice Provost of Interdisciplinary Initiatives; Director, BRIGHTS Center)
Advisors: Byron Johnson (Director, Institute for Global Human Flourishing), Erik Carter (Executive Director, Baylor Center for Disability and Flourishing)
Faculty are invited to join the Human Flourishing Incubator group to discuss research projects related to the study of human flourishing, addressing what flourishing is and how we might cultivate it in individuals, groups, and societies. The group will discuss how projects might be developed to test internal and external factors that might affect individual flourishing (e.g., sleep, physiological and psychological processes, environmental toxins, AI, culture). Likewise, we will consider how flourishing might present in distinct populations (veterans, global trends, students, people with disabilities). Human flourishing has been a topic of inquiry in the humanities and arts for millennia, and scientific methods have been brought to bear in the last century. Thus, we welcome scholars with diverse disciplinary backgrounds to join this group. Funding targets will focus primarily on foundations (e.g., John Templeton Foundation, Temple Religion Trust, Templeton World Charity Foundation, Fetzer Institute, Well Being Trust, David and Carol Myers Foundation) as well as the U.S. Department of Education, Texas Health and Human Services Commission, National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR).
Advanced Materials and Manufacturing
Conveners: Paul Allison (Director, Point-of-Need Innovations Center), Brian Jordon (Associate Director, Point-of-Need Innovations Center), Garritt Tucker (Director, Materials Science & Engineering Program)
Help make American manufacturing faster to qualify, easier to trust, and ready to come home. Bringing critical manufacturing back to the U.S. is rarely held up by whether we can make a part. What holds it up is proving that a newly made part is sound, and building the suppliers, workforce, and business case to make it again and again. This incubator brings together faculty from across the university to take on that problem, engaging research on fundamental materials science all the way to how new technologies get adopted in practice. We're looking for faculty whose work touches any of the following:
- Making and joining materials: additive and solid-state manufacturing, dissimilar-material joining and repair, novel materials and interfaces, critical-material substitution
- Knowing a part is good: embedded and photonic sensing, nondestructive evaluation, modeling and materials informatics, statistics, reliability, and qualification and certification
- Getting innovations into use: supply chains and reshoring, the economics of domestic production and supplier adoption, operations, standards and policy
- The people behind it: workforce development, technical education and credentialing, human factors, technology adoption, and communication
You don't need a manufacturing background to take part. If your expertise in business, economics, education, psychology, policy, communication, computing, or the physical sciences could shape how new technologies reach the factory floor, there is a place for you here. The incubator is building convergent teams for large, multi-institution proposals to NSF, DoD, DOE, NASA, and industry partners, with applications in aerospace and defense, energy, and critical infrastructure.
Step 1 Application Instructions and Deadlines
To submit a Step 1 application for either the Human Flourishing or the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing incubator groups, individual faculty should email 1) a CV and 2) the application form that indicates the incubator group of interests and provides a 250-word description of how the faculty applicant’s work connects to the incubator group to Research@baylor.edu. Internal awards are NOT routed through Pre-Award University Research Administrators.
Step 1 application materials are due by 11:59 p.m. on November 1, 2026. Questions can be directed to Dr. Sarah Schnitker, Associate Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Initiatives.
