In this call, grants will be supported with a maximum budget of $10,000,000 (CLP) per project funded by the School of Engineering. This funding scheme requires a commitment from partner institutions to provide an equivalent amount of ≅$11,000 (USD at current exchange rate) as a 1:1 matching contribution from the foreign team. Proposals must be focused on advancing engineering research and/or education with innovative approaches, considering a maximum duration of 18 months. Funds can be used to pay for consumables; online training; support for postdocs, graduate or undergraduate students; mobility of researchers and students; and organization of seminars and workshops.

Suitable outcomes of this program include the submission of joint research proposals (basic, applied, and innovation projects), joint publications, educational products (e.g. online courses, internationally relevant project-based learning courses, etc.), and co-supervision of undergraduate or graduate research projects. Awardees will be asked to complete a yearly report of the main outcomes of the project, including networking activities (e.g. researchers and students involved, number of online meetings, seminar and workshops), as well as scientific research outputs (joint publications, conference presentations, theses, intellectual property, proposal submissions, resources obtained, etc.). Furthermore, these reports may include multimedia materials of these activities for communicational purposes.

Open Seed Fund applicants must complete our online application form, where they can upload supplementary materials such as CVs, relevant publications, references, and a pledge agreement signed by an authorized representative of the partner institution that provides matching funds. The application form available here includes the proposal formulation, expected outcomes of collaborative research and/or educational products developed with the collaborating group, a detailed budget, training and collaboration plans, and students who will be co-advised by the UC and international faculties.

• Applications to this program will be reviewed by peers selected by the DII at the School of Engineering and evaluated based on the following criteria: research trajectory and CV of the applicants (local and foreign) and the involvement of students and early career researchers in the project; quality of the proposal; and potential for synergistic (e.g. interdisciplinary) and sustainable future work. These criteria will be scored and weighed according to the following points:

  • Research team (30%)

    CVs and experience of research team. Involvement of students and early career researchers in the project.

  • Quality of the Proposal (35%)

    Content, work plan, expected outcomes, etc.

  • Potential for Future Work (35%)

    Future grants, joint publications.

  This peer evaluation (PE) represents 80% of the final score. The remaining 20% will be determined through a ranking score for partner institutions (IR), as follows:

  Institutional ranking score (IR):

  The institutional ranking score (IR) for academic partners will be assigned based on the proposal’s specific discipline within the subject “Engineering & Technology” of the QS University Rankings 2023. If a proposal cannot be assigned to a specific discipline, the global “Engineering & Technology” QS ranking 2023 will be used instead. For research institutions other than universities (government agencies, NGOs, private research institutes), the SCImago Research and Innovation ranking 2023 will be considered using the same disciplinary criteria as QS rankings. The position of each institution in these rankings will be scored as follows:

  • QS or SCImago ranking top 10: 5 pts
  • QS or SCImago ranking top 11-50: 4 pts
  • QS or SCImago ranking top 51-100: 3.5 pts
  • QS or SCImago ranking >100: 3 pts
   

  In addition, this final score will be supplemented (S) with the fractional points indicated in parenthesis for the following foreign institutions, which have been defined of strategic interest by the School of Engineering:

  • University of Notre Dame, USA (0.2 pt).
  • University College London (UCL), UK (0.2 pt).
  • University of Edinburgh, UK (0.2 pt).
  • University of Technology Sidney, Australia (0.2 pt).
  • Politecnico di Milano (0.2 pt).
  • National University of Singapore, Singapore (0.2 pt).
  • Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia (0.2 pt).
  • University of New South Wales, Australia (0.2 pt).
  • Inria, France (0.2 pt)*.
   

  * Supplementary score applies to members of ongoing Inria Associated Teams initiating new collaborations. Funding from the respective Associated Team Call can be declared as matching funds.

  Previous Seed Fund recipients

  To prioritize first-time applicants to this call, those who have not receive funding in recent calls, or previous recipients that have applied successfully to external funding as a result of their Seed Fund collaborations, fractional bonus points (B) will be assigned with the following criteria:

  1) Seed Fund recipients that have successfully applied for external funding with their collaborators. This bonus cannot be accumulated with any other criteria below (0.5 pt).

  2) First-time applicants or Seed Fund recipients in the 2021 call or earlier (0.5 pt).

  3) Seed Fund recipients in the 2022 call (0.2 pt).

  4) Seed Fund recipients in the 2023 call (0.1 pt).

  The final score will be calculated using the formula:

  Final score = (PE) x 0.8 + (IR) x 0.2 + S + B

  In the event of a tie in score, priority will be given to proposals submitted by female faculty from the UC School of Engineering or those including a female PI from the collaborating institution.

• Academics with an ordinary or special ≥22-hour appointment with the School of Engineering are eligible for this call.
• Academics from the Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering, the Institute for Mathematical and Computational Engineering, or the School of Government UC may apply to this call by including a formal commitment from the respective Director of their interdisciplinary unit to provide 50% of the local funding (up to CLP$5.000.000) for each successful proposal.
• Previous recipients of an Open Seed Fund grant are not eligible to apply to extend an ongoing collaboration.
• Research groups with a track record of significant collaborative work in the last 5 years, shown as joint publications, grant applications, etc. are not eligible to apply.