Challenge Grants Program

The Water Center provides a limited number of research or technology transfer challenge grants of up to $10,000 to faculty at ALL Virginia universities.

The goal of the Challenge Grants program is to promote research partnerships between private sector, local and state government agencies, and Virginia’s universities.

Under this program, the Water Center will match on a 1:2 (Water Center : Sponsor) basis funds from private sector, local and state government agencies for water resource related studies. Funding from federal sources and federal pass through programs, salaries, departmental or college operating monies are not considered an appropriate match.

The proposed partnership is expected to be a new affiliation and not a continuation of an existing project or cooperative work.

Requests for challenge grants will be reviewed on a continual basis until available funds at the Water Center are committed. Initial inquiries can be made in the form of submitting a one-page preproposal to be followed by a discussion with the Water Center staff.

  • For more information, please email Dr. Kevin McGuire at kevin.mcguire@vt.edu or call (540) 231-6017.

The pre-proposal should include:

  • a brief summary of the proposed research,
  • a statement of the research contributions and relevancy,
  • the agency that would provide the matching funds,
  • documentation or certificate that shows the evidence of a new affiliation, and
  • the amount of funds that will be requested from the VWRRC and any other sponsor(s).

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