State of Florida Centers of Excellence Competition

Winfred M. Phillips, Vice President for Research

The UF Office of Research solicits preliminary proposals for the State of Florida Centers of Excellence competition. Preliminary proposals will be reviewed by faculty committees. Committees will make recommendations on the best proposals to the Sr. Vice Presidents. UF will target no more than 5 proposals to go forward to the Board of Governors. Preliminary proposals should contain the following information:

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

RATIONALE AND VISION: describe the relevance of the research; describe the impact at the State/national level – does the proposal address any specific societal issues pertinent to Florida; describe a clear vision why the research will develop commercially viable innovative products/technologies (2 pages)

RESEARCH FOCUS: Describe the technology-centric research focus/focus areas; describe the scientific contributions of the individual partners/units; explain how the center’s research will diversify to continue to stimulate and maintain discovery/development of new technologies for commercialization; describe any potential products/technologies already in the pipeline (6 pages)

SUSTAINABILITY OF THE CENTER: List the individual partners/units and their contributions (in kind, matching funds, or other tangible investments) to ensure long term sustainability of the center; how does the Center propose to encourage long-term university/industry collaborations and/or collaborations with other universities/national labs; identify the potential of the center to raise federal and non-federal funds, (3 pages)

ECONOMIC IMPACT AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT: Predict how the center will catalyze economic development at the local and state levels; describe the training and development of a technologically savvy workforce – at the undergraduate and graduate levels and if appropriate at the K-12 level. (3 pages)

MANAGEMENT: describe the plans for administering the center’s programs – the selection/evaluation process for choosing research projects to be further developed, describe the role collaborators from other units at UF/other institutions will play in the decision making process; describe the facilities and infrastructure required for the establishment of a center – the infrastructure provided by collaborators/other institutions (3 pages)

BUDGET: provide a detailed cost proposal: describe projected annual expenditures for the first 3 years; describe the allocation of funds to the different research projects and to the collaborators; justify the request for capital equipment. Describe the leveraged funds/resources from each institution/unit participating in the proposed center (4 pages)

Preliminary proposals must be submitted via email (.pdf or word) on or before SEPTEMBER 10, 2007 to Dr. Sobha Jaishankar, Assistant Vice President for Research, at sjaishan@ufl.edu.

It is anticipated that the Board of Governors will release the final Request for Proposals for 2007 shortly. The RFP will be distributed to the UF community. A DRAFT of the recommended guidelines for the 2007 competition can be found at http://www.flbog.org/bog/meetings/2007_08_09/docs/081.pdf. For questions, contact Dr. Sobha Jaishankar, Assistant Vice President for Research, at sjaishan@ufl.edu or 392-9271.