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Research Funding Resources

Proposal Development

Contact your regular proposal development person to get upcoming proposal deadlines on their radar, for assistance with budget /proposal development, and submission (don’t forget Policy 20.2, i.e. the 10/5/2 timelines).

For assistance, please contact:

  • Stacy Leotta, Center for Research Excellence (Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Energy, EPIC)
  • Jordan Rizzo, Office of Research Services (Industrial and Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Science, School of Energy)

Award Management

  • Please see your departmental contact (listed below) for purchase orders, student eGAs, SEA, travel, etc.
  • For the more nuanced award spending questions and fund updates, please contact the following in the Office of Research Services (ORS):
    • Nataly Tapper (Electrical and Computer Engineering, EPIC, Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Science, School of Energy, ODS)
    • Kim Wilson (Civil and Environmental Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering)

If Nataly or Kim are at capacity your query may be diverted to another member of the post award team within ORS. The ticketing system will enable you to track the status of your query.

Departmental contacts for spending on grants:

Internal Funding

Leading-edge, collaborative research activities lie at the core of the William States Lee College of Engineering’s culture and success. To further advance and accelerate novel concepts in fundamental, applied, and educational research, four new seed grant programs are being supported by the College. A total of $125,000 per year will be available to support these programs. The primary purpose of the seed grant programs are to provide funds to stimulate activities that will lead to the development and submission of competitive research proposals to an external funding agency that provide full Facilities and Administrative (F&A) cost recovery. The programs encourage multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations.

Seed Funding Proposal Guidelines provide details on the 4 different opportunities: 

  • Type I: Competitive Proposal Enhancement (CPE) Grant
  • Type II: Multidisciplinary Team Initiation (MTI) Grants
  • Type III: Trans-Discipline College Initiation (TCI) Grants
  • Type IV: Education Initiative (EI) Grants
  • Type V: Junior Faculty Research (JFR) Grants

Deadline for AY 2025/2026: Please Review the CoEN Seed Funding Guidelines
Submissions should be emailed to Angela Flanagan-Coker

Awarded Seed Grants

Type II

2026A Predictive Machine-Learning Framework for Non-Equilibrium Laser Synthesis of High-Entropy Materials 

  • PI: Sheldon Xie, Co-PI: Zheming Gao
  • Funding Type II, Amount: $10,000

2026: Field-Driven Modulation of Endothelial Barrier Permeability

  • PI: Rodward Hewlin, Co-PI: Nan Zhao 
  • Funding Type II, Amount: $10,000 

2024: 3D Printing of Fully Integrated Flexible Humidity Sensor For Long Term Health Monitoring In Space

  • PI: Erina Baynojir Joyee, Co-PI’s: Tiefu Zhao
  • Funding Type II, Amount: $10,000

2022: Variable Resolution Information Optimized Perception Planning and Control for Multi-Robot Systems

  • PI: Dipankar Maity, Co-PI’s: Andrew Willis, Artur Wolek
  • Funding Type II, Amount: $9,988
Type III

2026: A Policy-Driven Cross-Layer Framework for Trustworthy AI Inference

  • Lead PI: Ke (Cory) Wang, PI’s: Razvan Bunescu, Li Yang 
  • Funding Type V, Amount: $10,000

2024: Double Torsion Tester

  • Lead PI: Maciej A. Noras, PI: Martha-Cary Eppes
  • Funding Type III, Amount: $9,907

2023: Bridging the Disparity Gap in Charlotte Underserved Communities through Equitable Accessible on-demand Bus Transit

  • PI: Hamed Tabkhi, Co-PIs: Mona Azarbayjani, Taghi Mostafavi, Suzanne Leland, S. Pulugurtha , Zahra Baharani, Felesia Stukes
  • Funding Type: Type III, Amount: $20,000

2023: An eXtended Reality BehaviOral Therapy (XR-BOT) for Opioid Use Disorder and Recovery

  • PI: V. Girishan Prabhu, Co-PI. Ming-Chun Lee, Kelsie J Pierre, A. B Morgan
  • Funding Type: Type III, Amount: $10,000

2023: Immersive and Interactive Simulations to Evaluate Vulnerable Road Users’ Behavior on Scooters, E-scooters, and E-bikes

  • PI: Omidreza Shoghli, Co-PIs: Aidong Lu,  Heydarian
  • Funding Type: Type III, Amount: $20,000

2022: Human-Data-Driven Optimization for Pandemic-Resilient Facility Layout Planning

  • PI: Churtzu Lim, Co-PI’s: Kyoung-Hee Kim, Simon Hsiang
  • Funding Type: Type III, Amount $10,000

2022: Neuroprotective Mechanism for Cisplatin Induced Peripheral Neuropathy

  • PI: In Hong Yang, Dept, Co-PI’s: Shan Yan
  • Funding Type: Type III, Amount: $20,000
Type IV

2022: Understanding the Role of Engineering Identity in the Academic Success Patterns of Under Represented and Low Income Students Who Graduated from the College of Engineering

  • PI: Dr. Smith-Orr, Co-PI’s: Stephanie Galloway
  • Funding Type: Type IV, Amount: $5,000
Type V

2026: Reaction Sintering as a Mechanism for Defect Mitigation in Additively Manufactured Ceramics

  • PI: Lynnora Grant-Kahan
  • Funding Type V, Amount: $8,000

2026: Transferable Deep Reinforcement Learning Across Diverse State and Action Dimensions for Energy-aware Manufacturing System Scheduling

  • PI: Lingxiang (Albert) Yun
  • Funding Type V, Amount: $8,000

2026: Modeling Blood-Brain Barrier Dysfunction in Alzheimer’s Disease Using a Tissue-Engineered Brain Microvessel

  • PI: Nan Zhao
  • Funding Type V, Amount: $8,000