The CCBS Opportunity award competition is open to any UCI graduate student or postdoctoral researcher (including project scientists, specialists, etc.), who attended the 2025 Sys Bio Retreat. Any pair (or trio) of individuals who meet the above criteria may jointly submit a proposal for this year's competition following the instructions below. The progress reports from previous years' awardees are available below.
2025 - 2026
Impact on Humanity
It's common to justify our research on the basis of expected benefit to health, the environment, or human achievement and happiness. Here, we seek proposals that make an explicit connection between what will be accomplished by the project and a tangible benefit to the human race. Interdisciplinary projects in areas of systems, quantitative and computational biology are eligible.
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The proposed project must be a short-term (up to 1 year), feasible research investigation that answers a research question related to this year's theme.
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It must be interdisciplinary: it must involve participation from at least two lab/research groups representing different disciplines or departments.
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It must be a "new" project, and it must address the year's theme.
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Your advisor/PI must agree to let you work on the project.
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You/your team must attend next year's retreat and give a presentation on your progress (retreat registration fees are waived for opportunity awardees).
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Step 1 - BEFORE 12:30pm on Sunday, 3/30, hand in (or e-mail to Emi) a one paragraph abstract (can even be handwritten) briefly describing the nature of the project.
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Step 2 - Send a more complete description (up to 3 pages) by e-mail to Emi (eembler@uci.edu) by MIDNIGHT on Monday, 4/14.
REVIEW CRITERIA -
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Proposals will be judged by the CCBS faculty, based on significance, interdisciplinarity, feasibility and responsiveness to the theme.
2025 Award Winners!
TBD
