The Educational and Research Initiative Fund (ERIF) objectives are to provide seed funding to initiate innovative multi-investigator, multidisciplinary research and education programs that will use the results obtained during the project period for developing proposals seeking external funding. Proposals on new research and education concepts that are multidisciplinary in scope are solicited.

Please note the submission guidelines which also include:

Only tenured and tenure-track faculty are eligible.
Maximum funding is $25,000 and each grant will be funded for a maximum of one year.

Note: These Instructions Deviate from OSRP’s Routine Procedures.
Please start a Cayuse routing sheet as early as possible, but do not submit the routing sheet for departmental and college approval until you have uploaded the final proposal document in Step 5 below.
In the “Sponsor” field, search for “ERIF” (and select “ERIF” – Educational and Research Initiative Fund) as the sponsor.
Submit your proposal by uploading the final proposal document in the attachments tab in Cayuse.
Proposals must be uploaded no later than 5 p.m. on March 7.

After the final proposal has been uploaded, please submit the routing sheet for departmental and college approval. The Cayuse timestamp of the file upload, not the timestamp of the departmental approval, will be used to determine if the proposal has been submitted on time.

Please visit ERIF Request for Proposals and Guidelines for Submissions for proposal format instructions, review criteria, and fund further fund information. For questions, contact the Office of Sponsored Research at osrp@iit.edu or extension 7-3035. Proposals are due on March 7 by 5pm.