University of South Florida (Tampa)
ER-18: Sustainability Research Incentives

Graduate Student Challenge Grants: Building Research Partnerships Across Disciplines. Awards are up to $5000 per research team and are made available through the USF Graduate School and the Office of Research & Innovation. These are one-year projects and are available to both master’s and doctoral students. Each proposal must be submitted by a team of four students, where at least two of the students are from two different colleges. The more departments and colleges involved the better. The proposals must be submitted in one of the signature research areas of the university, which includes sustainability of populations and/or the environment, and global research. In addition, through the student green energy fund, students, faculty and staff are encouraged to submit energy efficient and renewable energy research proposals for funding. The fund requires that the research should be implementable. There has been a number of proposals that were funded through this program.(http://psgs.usf.edu/usf-office-of-sustainability/green-energy-fund/sgef-funded-projects/)

USF established a Research Incentive Program on July 1, 2003, with the purpose to recognize, reward, and encourage those Faculty who successfully compete for the award of research grants which contribute to the recognition of USF as a Research University. A portion of the salary savings from the grant is used for the incentive payment. The continued support of innovative research has more recently added the Revenue Incentive Program for inventors: "On October 8, 2013 The University of South Florida in Tampa announced a ground-breaking Revenue Incentive Patent Cost Sharing Program for their university inventors. The Revenue Incentive program, one of the first of its kind among U.S. universities, provides a way for USF innovators to invest in the future of the inventions resulting from their research." Please see http://www.research.usf.edu/dpl/revenue-incentive.asp