Guidelines of UIC Research Grant

(2024-2025 Academic Year)

United International College Research Grant (UICRG) was established to support basic and applied research because the College strongly believes that research is an integral part of higher education.

Establishment of UICRG represents UIC’s commitment to continuously improve the research capability of our staff so as to better serve our national and local needs on innovation in science and technology, arts and social development. Teachers are urged to engage students in their research activities such that they can experience first-hand, the importance of research in knowledge creation, problem solving and life-long learning.

Funding policy

UIC encourages staff to seek external funding to support their research and other scholarly activities because of limited resources available within our College, and more importantly, because to be funded by established funding agencies is a form of recognition of your achievements in the field. However, we do understand that external research funds are highly competitive. With limited budget available, the College plans to provide start-up fund and catalytic fund to support promising projects to pave a research record for the external funding application.

Only one application from each staff will be considered. Individuals are allowed to hold a maximum of one Category I or Category II grants as principal investigator. There is no limit on the number of grants individuals can serve as co-investigator. Indeed staff is encouraged to seek co-investigators especially from other disciplines. Grants where the completion reports have not been submitted are considered as active grants.

Categories of grant

a)      Start-up Research Fund (科研启动经费) – RMB 50,000-100,000. This category provides seed money for new faculty to kick start their research activities. The final amount of funding will depend on research track record, actual needs of the project and disciplinary factor. PI will be required to submit a project completion report to RDKTO when the grant falls due.

Eligibility:

Full time new faculty members with PhD degree at the rank of assistant professor or above is eligible to apply for the start-up fund.

Project duration: three years.

b)      Category I （General project 面上项目）– RMB 50,000-100,000. This category is to provide fund to support staff who have established track record in their field of research.

Eligibility:

Full time faculty members with PhD degree at the rank of assistant professor or above who possess any one of the following described track records during the past six years are eligible to apply for this category project: 1) PI of a national or provincial research grant which is not limited to Chinese funding agencies but also includes overseas providers.; 2) PI of a sub-project of the Ministry of Science and Technology or other national research grant; 3) PI of competitive categories of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Education Project  (广东省教育厅高等学校科研平台和项目：重点科研平台、广东省普通高校特色新型智库、创新团队项目、重点领域项目；广东省教育厅教育科学规划项目)；4) PI of other equivalent research grants.

If the project leader is eligible to apply for Matching fund at the same time, he can only choose between UIC Research Grant and Matching fund.

Project duration: two or three years.

Expected research output(s) of this category:

Two representative research outputs in the form of: SCI/EI/SSCI/A&HCI journal paper (Q1 or Q2), or paper presented on CCF listed conference, or patent, or book/book chapter published by renowned publisher, or other kind of research output recognized by the review panel.

c)      Category II（Research team 科研团队）– RMB 200,000-500,000. This category aims to support the promising research team to carry profound studies especially those interdisciplinary one.

Eligibility:

The eligibility for this category is the same with that of Category I. In addition, the research team is required for double qualified PI. Project duration: three years.

Expected research output(s) of this category:

Eight representative research outputs in the form of: SCI/EI/SSCI/A&HCI journal paper (Q1 or Q2), or paper presented on CCF listed conference, or patent, or book/book chapter published by renowned publisher, or other kind of research output recognized by the review panel.

Application Procedures

a)      Eligible staff for start-up fund will be informed of the application by RDKTO at the beginning of the semester.

b)      Applications for Category I & II should be submitted to the office of the relevant teaching units for Dean/Director’s endorsement first.

c)      RDKTO will send applications to appropriate external and internal peer reviewers for their recommendations.

d)      RDKTO will organize a Panel meeting consisted by both UIC and outside academics with profound research backgrounds.

e)      The Research and Postgraduate Studies Committee will consider the recommendations from the review panels and make the final decision on the funding of the projects.

f)      The decision, together with comments from the review panel will be sent to the applicants.

Project Management

a)      Budget management: UIC Research Grant will be provided on a cost-reimbursement basis. After the project is approved for funding, RDKTO will inform the Finance Office to set up an account for the project. All expenses should adhere strictly to the approved budget. Reimbursement of research grant should be submitted by the principal investigator to RDKTO for approval.

b)      Project Management: Category I & II projects are required to submit a mid-term progress report to RDKTO for assessment. Investigators who failed to submit the mid-term reports or whose mid-term reports were rated unsatisfactory will have their funding terminated. All projects are required to submit a completion report when the project falls due. Investigators who failed to submit their project completion reports in time or whose completion reports were rated unsatisfactory will be allowed for extension for one year. If the re-assessment on project completion still fails, the PI will be barred from application of UICRG for one year and the remaining grant will be withdrawn.

c)      Publication or publicity of work that are fully or partly funded by UICRG should acknowledge support from UIC with grant number of the funded project. Work that did not acknowledge UIC support cannot be included in grant completion report as evidence of accomplishment of funded project. Meanwhile, the first affiliation should be UIC. For double-hired staff, one of the affiliations should be UIC.

Application Period

Start-up Research Fund: at the beginning of each semester;

Category I: November;

Category II: all year round.