Instrumentation Award

The USC Research Initiatives & Infrastructure (RII) Instrumentation Award Program intends to establish and bolster the University of Southern California’s infrastructure by supporting the purchase of shared instrumentation and further preparing faculty to submit large-scale instrumentation grants to external sponsors.

Scientific instruments are typically too expensive to be obtained by an individual investigator with a research project grant. This Request for Proposals supports the purchases of a single state-of-the-art commercially available instrument or an integrated instrumentation system to enhance research of university faculty, with the primary goal of expanding USC’s current institutional infrastructure. Every instrument awarded is to be used on a shared basis by multiple faculty, which makes the program cost-efficient and beneficial to multiple USC investigators. This allows the instrument to contribute to building the research infrastructure that benefits a team of researchers that may extend beyond a single USC school.

Such an expanded infrastructure will provide investigators who use the instrument the opportunity to generate data and publish scientific papers, thereby increasing the competitiveness of these investigators when pursing external funding opportunities. Therefore, the return of investment for this program is assumed to be the generation of data and resulting publications that will enable researchers to pursue research funding from federal agencies and other external sponsors. The Instrumentation Award includes two subprograms that are described below. All acquisition funds will be awarded after the completion of a competitive scientific peer review and a programmatic review.

Nomination Submission

Nominations must be submitted via our Grant Portal.
For additional information or inquiries, please contact us at rii@usc.edu.

Previous Awardees