Funding

Any investigators working at the intersection of climate and human health are eligible. We also encourage interested investigators to join our Community of Practice by completing our intake form here and register for our annual meeting here.

Submit your application by email to climatecafe@bu.edu with the subject line  “2025 Pilot Application [Last name]” by April 15th 2025 11:59 PM EST.

We anticipate announcing awards in mid-May.

Total requested costs for a 1-year pilot project may not exceed $20,000, although smaller budgets and shorter timelines are encouraged. Budgets may include funds for supplies, technical support, student or staff support, laboratory analyses, and training, workshops, and other appropriate costs directly relevant to the project. Any travel funds, workshop or conference registration fees, or computer resource requests must be directly related to the proposed project and be clearly justified. Faculty salary and indirect costs will not be supported.

Applicants will not be required to submit a formal budget through their institutional office of sponsored research until an award is made, but applicants will be asked to provide sufficient detail in their pilot proposal to allow the budget to be evaluated and modified if needed.

Applications are welcome from projects from US-based institutions. We cannot support any activities that would meet the NIH definition of a clinical trial. Any projects with human subjects components would require IRB approval from the applicant’s home institution before any pilot activities could commence. We welcome applications spanning disciplines and content areas with a focus on projects that would be in support of future funding to support work at the intersection of climate and human health.

CAFE has extensive data management resources, some of which will be made available only to pilot awardees.

Resources available to all members of the Community of Practice include access to commonly used datasets, widely used geospatial and data harmonization tutorials, guidelines and tutorials on access to cloud computing / using Dataverse/ using GitHub, and templates for data management plans. For more information, please visit our CAFÉ Data Management page.

In addition, pilot awardees will be able to utilize the CAFE data management team consulting services for a limited number of hours. These consulting services may fall into the following categories:

● Geospatial data processing (i.e. geocoding, spatial joining, raster and vector processing)

● Data harmonization

● Data visualization (i.e. ggplot, data dashboarding)

● Additional guidance on development of data analysis and management plans

● Additional guidance on computational services for storage and processing (i.e. cluster and/or cloud computing)

● Code development and sharing

These services are intended to support investigator-led tasks with the goal of capacity building. We may reach out to applicants for additional information on data management service requirements at the application stage, given limited capacity for direct support.

Pilot awardees can also connect with the CAFE mentoring network if relevant, though applicants are not required to do so.

Evaluation criteria will parallel those ordinarily used within NIH reviews (e.g., significance, innovation, approach, and project team), with an emphasis on the project’s potential to catalyze future funding and the relevance of the proposed work to the study of climate and human health. Each application will be reviewed by a combination of CAFE team members and external reviewers, who will be selected with consideration of any potential conflicts of interest. Final funding decisions will be made by CAFE leadership.

At the end of each award, the CAFÉ pilot project PI will be required to submit a short summary of progress on the project and its findings, any publications or conference presentations, and applications for independent funding that resulted from the pilot project. Periodic updates from pilot awardees will be requested throughout the remaining CAFÉ period. PIs will also be invited to present their work at a CAFE-sponsored event, or if relevant and appropriate, to contribute generated data to the shared database being curated by the CAFE team. Any publications or presentations that result from the pilot project should acknowledge CAFE support with a statement that reads “This work was supported by a pilot award from the BUSPH-HSPH-CAFE, funded by NIH U24ES035309.”