The Office of Foundation Relations is pleased to share three open calls for funding from the PhRMA Foundation.
- UCSC Contact: Amut Wolf | awolf2@ucsc.edu
- Funder: PhRMA Foundation
- Opportunity: Faculty Starter Grants
Overview
1. Faculty Starter Grant in Drug Discovery
Drug discovery involves the innovative application and integration of multiple scientific disciplines to create efficacious, safe, and differentiated treatment options for patients. The PhRMA Foundation seeks to fund novel, early-stage, drug discovery research with a clear potential for translation to humans.
2. Faculty Starter Grant in Drug Delivery
Delivering today’s increasingly complex drugs to patients demands novel approaches in technology development, formulation, manufacturing, as well as prediction and demonstration of in vivo performance. The PhRMA Foundation seeks to fund therapeutically relevant research that optimizes drug composition, dosage, and delivery to make treatments clinically viable, safer, more effective, and/or easier to manage for patients.
3. Faculty Starter Grant in Translational Medicine
Translational medicine aims to bring scientific research and technological advancements from the laboratory to the clinic, where they can enhance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. This includes adapting hypothesis-driven basic research discoveries in cells, tissues, and animals for application in humans and then taking the knowledge of what did and didn’t work in the clinic back to the bench. The PhRMA Foundation seeks research proposals that focus on identifying unmet clinical needs and developing new diagnostic, therapeutic, and computational approaches and technologies to improve patient care.
Eligibility:
- Applicants (U.S. and non-U.S. citizens) must be full-time, promotion-eligible, research-intensive faculty at a PhD and/or MS degree-granting accredited U.S. university by the time of LOI submission.
- Applicants are ineligible if their faculty status began before January 1, 2025.
- Applicants are ineligible if their last terminal degree was conferred before January 1, 2017.
- Applicants must be eligible to apply for independent external research funding by their university.
- Applicants should not have other substantial sources of research funding, excluding intramural funding or startup funding from their university. Preference will be given to applicants with startup funding less than $750,000.
- Applicants are ineligible if they are the principal investigator (PI) of an R or K series award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, or other substantial financial award from any grant-making institution. Generally, funding over $250,000 a year is considered substantial.
- Applicants are ineligible if they do not have at least three first author publications.
Award Amount & Terms
- $100,000 for one year.
- Funds may be budgeted to include salary support for the awardee but should not exceed 25% of the budget.
- Funding is conditional upon the awardee’s continued employment with the university, with the understanding the university will administer the funds.
- Funds may not be used to provide fringe benefits or indirect costs.
See here for a list of previous grantees.
Timeline – Drug Discovery & Drug Delivery
- April 15, 2026 9:00 am PT LOI due
- July 1, 2026 Invitation to Submit Full Application
- August 26, 2026 Full Application Deadline
- December 15, 2026 Award Winner Notification
Timeline – Translational Medicine
- May 27, 2026 9:00 am PT LOI due
- September 23, 2026 Invitation to Submit Full Application
- November 18, 2026 Full Application Deadline
- March 2027 Award Winner Notification
Special Instructions
Please notify the Office of Foundation Relations if you are interested in applying to this opportunity (fr@ucsc.edu). For support developing your proposal, please send a request to the Office of Research Development, resdev@ucsc.edu.
Call Sent: March 5, 2026
The Office of Foundation Relations is a unit of University Advancement. The FR team creates and maintains mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with private organizations, matching grant initiatives with educational and research programs and centers. FR supports faculty and staff to identify and approach these and other private foundations for funding, to assist in strategic positioning of the grant application, and to facilitate funder campus visits. For a list of recent funding opportunities, please visit the FR website: FR Calls for Funding.