Science Diversity Leadership Award

Overview

The Science Diversity Leadership Award (SDLA) from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) will support Principal Investigators who are outstanding early- to mid-career biomedical researchers at U.S. universities, medical schools, or nonprofit research institutes who—through their outreach, mentoring, teaching, and leadership—have a record of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their scientific communities. They will have made significant research contributions to the biomedical sciences, show promise for continuing scientific achievement, and demonstrate leadership in efforts to diversify the sciences. CZI is committed to supporting representative science, which ensures universal benefits from scientific advances, such as studies of diseases that adversely affect underserved populations from specific ancestries, and promotes diversity among researchers toward more inclusive and comprehensive outcomes.

Each award consists of a $1.15 million USD grant distributed over five years ($230,000 total costs per year, including 15% for indirect costs) to the institution of selected awardees. The grant is to support the awardee’s research program with reasonable flexibility on how these funds are utilized, provided that funds are used to support the awardee’s overall academic program. CZI will convene a mixture of in-person and virtual meetings for which SDLA grantees are expected to participate.

The Science Diversity Leadership Award RFA application is a two-step application process, detailed below, initiated with a Letter of Intent (LOI). Letters of Intent will be evaluated, and finalists proceeding to the next review stage will be invited to submit full applications.

• All applicants must hold an MD, PhD, ScD, MD/PhD, DDM, DVM, or equivalent degree and have a faculty position or equivalent independent investigator status at a college, university, medical school, or other research facility. Note that non-tenured and tenured faculty are eligible to apply.
• Applicants should have been in their first independent position for at least three years and less than ten years as of the opening of the Letter of Intent application (after 10/03/2014 and before 10/03/2021).
  • Independence in an academic setting is typically demonstrated by a full-time faculty appointment, a tenure-track position, allocated space, a start-up package, and institutional commitment as defined or verified in a letter from a department chair or equivalent. Independence may be defined differently in different types of organizations. Note: an upload of the letter or proof of independence is not required at the time of application.
  • CZI will make exceptions to these criteria in cases of institutionally approved career breaks, e.g., family or medical leave, etc. (if this applies to you, please contact sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com).
• Applicants will perform research related broadly to biomedical sciences. Preference will be given to research programs that align with CZI Science and/or programs with diversity as a research component. Part of the applicant’s evaluation will include their research contributions and current research program. Note: Clinical trials and public health research are out of scope for this award.
• Applications must be submitted by domestic (based in the United States) nonprofit organizations, including public and private institutions, such as colleges, universities, hospitals, laboratories, and governmental agencies. For-profit organizations are not eligible to apply. All grants will be awarded to institutions, not individuals.
• An organization may submit more than one application (i.e., multiple applicants from the same organization may apply).
• Current or former Science Diversity Leadership grantees are not eligible for this RFA.
• Meta employees, including employees of any subsidiary Meta entities and employees of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC, are not permitted to apply.
• CZI reserves the sole right to decide if an applicant and applicant organization meet the eligibility requirements.
• CZI reserves the right to request budget changes prior to award.

CZI suggests that you consult your home institution to determine eligibility to apply for this grant, including your institution’s policy on indirect costs. For questions about eligibility for this award or the application process, please contact us before the proposal deadline at sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com. Deadline extensions will not be granted.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative uses SurveyMonkey Apply (SMApply) as its grants management portal. All applications must be submitted through this portal (https://apply.chanzuckerberg.com). SMApply is configured to work best using the Google Chrome browser. It is recommended that you familiarize yourself with this portal well in advance of any deadlines. Deadline extensions will not be granted.

Application specifics:

• Eligibility: Please refer to the above Eligibility section of the RFA announcement.
• Award period and start date: Awards will be for five years (60 months) in duration with an expected start date of September 1, 2025.
• Budget: $230,000 USD total costs per year (inclusive of up to 15% indirect costs) for five years for a total of $1,150,000 USD total costs. Indirect costs cannot exceed 15 percent of direct costs.
• Institutional sign-off by the applicant institution is required as part of the Full application only.
• CZI suggests that you consult your home institution to determine eligibility to apply for this grant and your institutional policy on indirect costs.

The Letter of Intent (LOI) consists of the following sections (called tasks in the application portal): Eligibility, Applicant Details, Equal Opportunity & Diversity (optional), Biosketch, Professional Statement (Service Narrative)

• Eligibility: In an effort to ensure the applicant meets the eligibility requirements to apply, this eligibility questionnaire must be completed first. Once you have completed the questionnaire and confirmed your eligibility, the rest of the application will become available. It is strongly recommended that you complete the eligibility questionnaire well in advance of the submission deadline. No extensions will be granted.
  • Do you hold an MD, PhD, ScD, MD/PhD, DDM, DVM, or equivalent degree, and perform research relevant to biomedical science? [yes/no}
  • Do you lead an independent research laboratory—defined as having control of its budget, grants, and space—in a university, medical school, or nonprofit research institution in the United States? [yes/no]
  • When did you start your first independent laboratory position? [Date]

• Applicant Details: Complete all fields in this task; all fields are required.
  • Name and email (auto-filled): to edit your name or email, click on your name in the upper right corner, then click My Account in the dropdown menu.
  • Department or equivalent
  • Title/Position
  • Organization name
  • Organization’s Tax ID / Employer Identification Number (EIN), as assigned by the Internal Revenue Service in the 9-digit format (XX-XXXXXXX; 10 characters total
  • Organization Website
  • Which degree have you conferred? Check all that apply. [MD, PhD, ScD, DDM, DVM, other]
  • ORCID iD: Enter in format XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. ORCID iDs are unique digital identifiers that distinguish individual scientists and unambiguously connect their contributions to science over time and across changes of name, location, and institutional affiliation. ORCID iDs will be used to streamline reporting in our applications and grant reports to reduce the burden on grantees. For more information, please visit https://orcid.org/register.
• Equal Opportunity & Diversity (optional): CZI Science supports the science and technology that will make it possible to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century. Different communities are affected by or experience disease in different ways. Moreover, due to systemic barriers, the scientific enterprise itself is not a place where all voices and talents thrive. We believe the strongest scientific teams — encompassing ourselves, our grantees, and our partners — incorporate a wide range of backgrounds, lived experiences, and perspectives that guide them to the most important unsolved problems. To enable our work, we incorporate diverse perspectives into our strategy and processes, and we also seek to empower community partners to engage in science. We request demographic information associated with applications submitted to CZI in response to our open calls. This information helps us learn from the RFA process, as well as improve our strategies to help ensure members of underrepresented or marginalized groups in science are aware of and able to apply to CZI opportunities. Please note that answering the questions below is voluntary, and receiving funding is not contingent on providing this information. Demographic information provided may be used in our grant-making process but will not be used as a factor in our grant funding decisions. We may also publish aggregated data in various public forums, such as a website or blog. All responses will be shared only with limited personnel and service providers, who will use that information only for the purposes described in this paragraph. If you have any additional questions about why we ask this, what we do with the data, or to share suggestions for improvement, please reach out to sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com. The information below may be entered for the Applicant. The categories listed below may not capture all possible identities; in the event that the categories do not accurately reflect your identities, please use the space provided to self-describe.
  • What is your race/ethnicity? (optional)
  • What is your gender? (optional)
  • Are you transgender? (optional)
  • Are you a member of the LGBTQIA+ community? (optional)
  • Do you have one or more disabilities? (optional)
• Biosketch: Upload the applicant’s biosketch in PDF format. Maximum of five pages; NIH format or similar. Describe your professional positions, training history, selected publications, significant scientific contributions, and current research program. If your research has aspects of representative science, please note that here.
• Professional Statement (Service Narrative): Upload a single PDF (text must be 11 point or larger, margins must be at least one-half inch, and in US letter size). Include the following components:
  • Service Narrative (maximum of 1000 words; not including references or figures): The purpose of the statement is to characterize your work and experiences with regard to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) across biomedical science through your service and plans for the future. This can include aspects of your research program.
    • Applicants must demonstrate the following:
      • Knowledge about DEIA: To underscore knowledge, the applicant may share their personal challenges in pursuing a career in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM), and/or the applicant demonstrates a scholarly knowledge of the disadvantages that certain people have in pursuing a career in STEM.
      • Track Record in advancing DEIA: To underscore track record, the applicant should illustrate how they have taken an active role to help enhance representation either in their field or broadly in STEM.
      • Strategy for advancing DEIA: To underscore strategy, the applicant should provide a narrative that describes realistic and achievable efforts commensurate with the applicant’s career level that will be undertaken during the funding period. The strategy may be a continuation of work currently underway.
  • References Cited (optional): References cited in your proposal (no word/page limit; Include complete source references)
  • Figures (optional): Limited to one page, including legends. Figure legends do not count toward the word count.

Applicants will be notified by email if they have been invited to submit a full application by February 11, 2025.

To submit a Full Application (if invited):

1. Go to https://apply.chanzuckerberg.com.
2. Log in.
3. Click on the My Applications link in the upper right corner.
4. Click the green Start button on your application.
5. Complete the sections below and submit them by April 8, 2025, at 5 p.m. Pacific Time.

The Full Application consists of the following sections (called “tasks” in the grants portal): Organization Details, Biosketch, Program Details, Program Proposal, Budget

• Organization Details: Complete all fields in this task; all fields are required.
  • Organization name/Street address/City/State/Country/Website.
  • Type of Organization (Academic, Other Non-profit, Government, Other).
  • Tax ID: Enter your organization’s Employer Identification Number (EIN), as assigned by the Internal Revenue Service in the 9-digit format (XX-XXXXXXX; 10 characters total).
  • Organizational/Administrative Contact: List the name and contact information for the administrative contact to discuss additional information needed if selected for award.
    • First name, Last name, Title/Position, Email.
  • Signing Official: List the name and contact information of the person authorized to sign on behalf of your organization.
    • First name, Last name, Title/Position, Email.
  • Press Contact / Public Relations Official: List the name and contact information for the person to discuss press releases and media.
    • First name, Last name, Title/Position, Email.
  • Institutional Approval Form: Upload as a single PDF. This form should be reviewed and signed by a person authorized to sign on behalf of your institution agreeing to the stated institutional and investigator requirements and commitments on data, resource sharing, and publication policies, as well as endorsing/verifying your application materials and confirming their ability to receive funding for the proposal. These policies are non-negotiable so this form should only be signed if the organization is able to comply with the terms as stated. Note: digital signatures are permitted as long as the document is not encrypted or password-protected.
• Biosketch: Upload the applicant’s biosketch in PDF format. Maximum of five pages; NIH format or similar. Applicants may upload the same biosketch provided for the LOI or an updated version.
• Program Details: Complete all fields in this task; all fields are required.
  • Program Title: (maximum of 60 characters, including spaces) Auto-filled from LOI information. This is not an editable section.
  • Program Overview: (maximum of 200 characters including spaces) Brief description of your program.
  • Abstract/Summary: (maximum 250 words) Describe your program (Research & Service). Please use a third-person voice (example).
• Program Proposal: Upload as a single PDF (text must be 11 point or larger, margins must be at least one-half inch, and in US letter size). Include the following components:
  • Section 1 – Research Narrative/Proposal (maximum of 1500 words, not including references): A description of your independent research program and a proposal for work that will be supported by this award. Key areas to address include, but are not limited to:
    • Describe three key publications that represent your research program.
    • Give a summary of the overall research projects currently active in your group.
    • Describe the proposed research project(s) you plan to conduct if funded by this grant.
    • If appropriate, include a description of how your research contributes to representative science.
  • Section 2 – Professional Statement/Service Narrative (maximum of 1000 words, not including references): Detail service work, such as programs and projects, that have been planned or are currently active in which the applicant is a major contributor. Key areas to address include, but are not limited to:
    • Describe your experiences and motivations for interest in diversity, inclusion, and equity in the biomedical sciences.
    • Describe your engagement with underserved, marginalized, and/or underrepresented communities.
    • Describe the project(s) you plan to engage in during the five years of this grant.
  • Reference Cited: References cited in your proposal (no word/page limit; Include complete source references)
  • Figures (optional): Limited to one page, including legends. Figure legends do not count toward the word count.
• Budget (one-page maximum): Upload as a single PDF (text must be 11 points or larger, margins must be at least one-half inch, and in US letter size). Provide a detailed description of the costs to be funded by this grant at a high level and in tabular form, outlining costs for personnel, supplies, equipment, travel, meetings/hackathons/sprints, subcontracts, other costs, and up to 15 percent indirect costs (excluding equipment and subcontracts).
  • The Science Diversity Leadership Award grantee will receive $230,000 per year for 5 years ($1,150,000 USD total costs).
  • Institutional indirect costs are set at a maximum of 15 percent of the direct costs. Indirect costs may not be assessed on capital equipment or subcontracts, but subcontractors may include up to 15 percent of indirect costs of their award amount.
  • Funds from this award are intended to support research activities. Grants are made to organizations to support the work of the named Principal Investigator, and reasonable flexibility on how these funds are utilized is allowed, provided that funds are used to support the awardee’s overall academic program. Upon award, any budget changes must be approved by CZI.

The formatting and component requirements, including word and page limits indicated above, will be enforced by the review team. Any submitted materials that exceed the word and page limits or do not follow the requirements will not be considered during the application review process.

QUESTIONS?

For administrative and programmatic inquiries pertaining to this RFA, please contact sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com. For technical assistance with SMApply, please contact support@smapply.io or while logged into SMApply, click on the information ”i” link in the upper right corner and submit a help request ticket.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative adheres to our core values in proposal selection and progress evaluation. CZI will evaluate all applications for scientific merit and seek independent expert review. ​Final decisions will be made by CZI staff in consultation with our scientific advisors. There is no expectation of any specific number of awards, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative reserves the sole right not to recommend funding any applications. CZI does not provide feedback on decisions for unfunded proposals.

Reporting & Progress: The delivery of intermediate outputs demonstrating progress serves as a mechanism by which CZI evaluates the progress and impact of the award. Annual reports must be submitted and approved to ensure continued delivery of funds. Based on a template, reports will describe the awardee’s progress in their research program and DEI efforts during the preceding year. Awardees are expected to attend at least one CZI-held meeting per year.

• Funds from this award are intended to support research activities. Grants are made to organizations to support the research of the named Principal Investigator, with reasonable flexibility on how these funds are utilized, provided that funds are used to support the awardee’s overall academic program. If invited, a detailed budget is required at the time of the full application.
• For each award, financial statements and progress reports will be due after each grant year and occasionally more frequently. Specific deliverable requirements will be outlined in the award notification. Awardees will be required to participate in regular meetings, including annual SDLA meetings (which may be in person or virtual). Travel support for these meetings will be provided by CZI separately from the requested grant funds.
• Grantees may obtain funds for their research from other funding sources, provided that there is no conflict with meeting the terms of the CZI award.
• Unused research funds may be carried over to the following year, and requests for no-cost extensions will be considered at the end of the overall program period and upon receipt of an annual report.
• Indirect costs cannot exceed 15 percent of direct costs. Indirect costs may not be assessed on capital equipment or subcontracts, but subcontractors may include up to 15 percent of indirect costs of their direct costs.
• Ethical conduct: CZI advocates the highest standards for the ethical conduct of research. In addition to the governmental requirements, grantees must adopt procedures for the use of animals in research and the ethical treatment of human subjects and tissue donors, including obtaining their or their appropriate proxy’s written informed consent. CZI regards the policies of the National Institutes of Health as a strong model for such procedures.
• Data, publication, and dissemination policies:​ To accelerate scientific discovery and collaboration, CZI supports a consent, sharing, and publication policy for open and rapid dissemination of proposal results, including methods, data, and reagents, and a policy for software development that maximizes accessibility, reuse, and shared development. Under rare circumstances, exceptions to the above may be considered where there are specific situations that make meeting these goals impossible or counterproductive to the project.
  • Software code: CZI requires sharing of software code developed by its grantees generally to be made publicly available on GitHub (or a similar public service). All new code must be released under a permissive open-source license (MIT, BSD 2-Clause, BSD 3-Clause, or Apache v2.0). All pre-existing and derivative codes must be licensed under the most permissive license possible, given the licensing terms of the pre-existing code. All analysis packages must be released through the appropriate language-specific package manager (e.g., PyPi for Python, Bioconductor, and CRAN for R) with documentation, example data, and interactive demos (e.g., Jupyter notebooks), and the use of Docker or similar container technologies to ensure portability and reproducibility. Software code supported by CZI should be archived for long-term digital preservation and citability, when applicable.
  • Content and data sharing: ​CZI is committed to developing and using platforms that disseminate data openly and freely. Any datasets either curated or generated through the proposal must be made publicly available and easily accessible through an appropriate data repository as legally permissible, when applicable, under an Open Definition conformant license. Ideally, data sets would not include personally identifiable information, but if they do, consent to sharing the data must be obtained. Metadata, documentation, and intended use cases, as appropriate, must be made available under an Open Definition conformant license, preferably CC0 or CC BY/CC BY SA for content that requires explicit attribution.
  • Publications: To encourage rapid dissemination of results, any publications related to this funded work must be submitted to a preprint server (such as bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, or any appropriate preprint repository), at or before the first submission to a journal. Experimental protocols must be made publicly available through a protocol-sharing service, such as protocols.io. Scientific publications, preprints, and presentations that result from this award should acknowledge support from this funding.
  • Reagent sharing: Resources and reagents developed with this funding support must be available for rapid dissemination to the community, where possible, in an accessible community repository, such as Addgene (for plasmids/DNA reagents/viruses) and Jackson Labs (for model systems lines), etc. This requirement applies to cell lines, transgenic organisms, plasmids/clones, antibodies, and other reagents.
  • Consent: All human tissues must be adequately and fully consented to permit maximal sharing of the resulting data and any resulting tools, subject to applicable laws, regulations, or institutional ethical requirements. Any desired exceptions to this policy must be identified at the time of application, and such requests may affect the application’s chance of success. We are aware that there may be circumstances where broad consent may be challenging, and in some cases, consent may be subject to alteration or revocation; we encourage investigators to discuss these cases with CZI scientific staff. As a reference, the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) community has developed ethics guidelines and a tool kit with template consent forms.
  • Intellectual property rights: CZI does not require the assignment of ownership to any data, published results, or any other intellectual property that results from the work funded by these grants but will have the same rights generally granted to others. CZI supports and promotes policies that enable results and technologies to have the broadest reach and impact. To this end, all newly developed software must be made available through permissive open source licenses as described more fully above. Other technology and intellectual property rights (such as patents) must be made freely available for all academic and non-commercial use, and where intellectual property rights are commercialized, they must generally be subject to non-exclusive commercial licenses that enable broad availability and dissemination.
• Applications selected through this process will either be funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Foundation (CZIF) or recommended for funding through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Donor-Advised Fund (CZI DAF) at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF).

All submitted applications that are not selected by CZI for funding will be kept confidential, except (1) as necessary for our evaluation or to comply with any applicable laws; and (2) to the extent that the application is made public or available to others without a duty of confidentiality through no fault of CZI. Notwithstanding the foregoing, certain information, including brief summaries of the proposed program, project metrics, and types of organizations that have applied for funding, may be made publicly available in aggregate form. Proposals that are selected by CZI for funding may be made publicly available and/or shared with other grantees or collaborators. Application materials will not be returned to applicants.