UCO Mini-Grant Program

UCO Mini-Grant and Affiliates Program FY25

Call for Proposals

Call Release Date: Tuesday, Sept 30th, 2024
Deadline: Monday, December 9, 2024 before 5 PM

The University of California Observatories announces a call for proposals to its 2024-2025 Mini-Grant and Affiliate Faculty program. The Mini-Grant program is designed to support system-wide activities for the course of roughly a year that significantly contribute and advance UCO’s core mission.   The Affiliate Faculty program is a title given to UCO astronomers who plan to contribute in a sustained way to UCO mission over multiple years.   

Scope and Goals:

The primary goal of the Mini-Grant program is to provide funding for instrumentation design, technology development, workshops, educational activities, or significant service activities that directly address the strategic and functional goals of UCO. Examples of activities that may be supported include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Design of new or upgraded instrumentation and capabilities for Keck, TMT, or Lick
• Development of enabling technologies for future UCO instrumentation and telescopes
• Technology prototyping for the above, including potential costs of testing on a telescope
• Workshops or meetings for instrumentation planning or instrument science teams
• Software development for data pipelines or observatory infrastructure
• Purchase of equipment (such as filters or gratings) for UCO instruments
• Purchase of lab equipment to be used for UCO-related instrumentation work
• Support for writing of major external funding proposals for UCO-related instrumentation
• Support for educational activities for UC students using UCO facilities, particularly those that support multiple campuses and/or bring new educational opportunities to student populations not currently served by UCO
• Modeling science capabilities for the Thirty Meter Telescope or future Keck instruments 
• Development of outreach or science communication materials relevant to UCO 

When the funding is for teaching relief or summer salary, this may be better matched to the Faculty Associate program (described below). Examples of this include

• Leadership roles  for a major Lick, Keck or TMT instrument 
• Leadership role in fostering international technological or scientific collaboration or partnerships for UCO facilities or instruments
• Sustained major fundraising activities on behalf of Lick, Keck, or TMT

Special Focus:

This year we are giving extra encouragement to PIs wishing to explore two special focuses:  

• Development of instrumentation for Lick Observatory.    We are interested in concepts for operational scientific instrumentation for the Lick telescopes, either general-purpose or specialized, with a primary emphasis on science rather than technology development. Funding could support a small concept study. UCO could provide a small amount of engineering support from UCO staff to work with a PI at any UC campus. The goal would be to assess a concept’s science reach, technical feasibility, and produce concepts that could advance towards future external full funding. 

• Modeling and exploring TMT science capabilities and science cases.   We wish to encourage UC astronomers to engage with the proposed capabilities of the TMT and its engineering to fulfill science cases of interest.    The grant could support tools which could help the community develop their own science cases, such as exposure time calculators or data simulations, or it could be used to utilize current exposure calculators to explore how the TMT could be applied to a specific “groundbreaking” science application.    We encourage collaborations across TMT partner institutions.  The goal of the proposal is for the UC astronomers to gain familiarity with the TMT’s proposed capabilities, collaboration building and to start building competitive and impactful first science proposals.  This could support a student, postdoc, or summer salary. The plan should include dissemination of the results – through a paper, conference presentation or poster, etc. 

Scope of Funding:

The total amount of funding available for this proposal call is roughly $250K. As a point of reference, the mini-grant requests typically vary between approximately $10,000-$75,000 per proposal. Nevertheless, if a proposal necessitates substantial funding, the opportunity to rationalize larger budget requests is readily available. 

An individual PI may submit more than one proposal if the proposals clearly address distinct topics or activities. Matching with campus-based or external sources of funding is encouraged but not required. Funds are expected to be used over a one-year period, but grantees may submit a request for a one-year no-cost extension at the end of the grant period if the project duration exceeds one year.  

Proposal Budget:

Proposal budgets may be diverse and include equipment, technical staff support, personnel support, student support, travel support, faculty salary and/or teaching release or other support. Funding may not be requested or used to support or subsidize the astronomical research of the PI or Co-Is (e.g., paying for travel to observing runs, support for time spent analyzing Keck or Lick scientific data, etc.). No indirect cost (IDC) is applicable.

If direct faculty salary and/or service teaching release is requested this may be considered a request to serve as an UCO Affiliate Faculty position (see next Section). Standard benefits rates may be included on all salary costs.  The funding request for salary and/or teaching release must be clearly justified in terms of the time required for the project personnel to carry out the proposed UCO related activities. Time freed up from teaching must be used to pursue the UCO-related activities as described in the proposal. Administrative/service teaching/course release rate is based on each campus set rate.  

UCO Affiliate Faculty Status

PIs who wish to take a more active and sustained role within UCO can apply for the UCO Affiliate Faculty status.  The UCO Affiliate Faculty designation is a recently established status for tenure-track faculty members who play a substantial role in UCO activities encompassing service, instrumentation development, and/or technology maturation, that directly benefit UCO Observatories facilities and community (see Scope and Goals Section). In addition to their primary role (ie. the subject of the proposal), Affiliate Faculty may be expected to serve on ad-hoc committees or working groups convened by the Director, and participate in 1-2 zoom UCO faculty meetings per year.    

UCO Affiliate Faculty status recognizes the UC system-wide service and contributions that UC faculty are conducting to both UCO and their home campus. Please indicate and justify in your mini-grant proposal that you wish to serve as UCO Affiliate Faculty. UCO Affiliate Faculty serve for a 1 to 3-year cycle based on specific service functions or projects, as proposed in this mini-grant call, and may be renewed by applying the next mini-grant cycle or by UCO Director.  The nominal term for UCO Affiliate Faculty status for this proposal call would be FY 2025 through up to FY2027. 

As a point of reference, the UCO service Chair positions appointed by the UCO Director’s office are automatically granted UCO Affiliate Faculty status, i.e., UC Co-chair of the Keck Science Steering Committee, UCOAC chair, UCO TMT board member (if filled by a UC faculty member), TMT SAC chair (if filled by a UC faculty member), UCSC Laboratory Director and UCLA IRlab Director. It is strongly recommended that people interested in this discuss their proposed role with the UCO Director or Deputy Director. 

The level of commitment is expected to be at the level of one class worth of teaching load spread over a  year for 1-3 years.    Applications will be accepted for proposed activities that may or may not require funding, ie. for those seeking the title but not requiring funding.    Budgets may include support for students, travel support, direct faculty salary and/or teaching release.  Before requesting a teaching release, the faculty should verify with their department Chair to confirm that the reduced teaching is allowed and determine the administrative/service rate for the proposed budget. 

Who May Apply:

The criteria for eligibility to submit proposals as PI are the same as the to apply for UC Lick observing time as PI without mentorship: this includes UC ladder rank faculty and ladder rank emeritus faculty, staff, UC research scientists, and postdocs.   This program is not intended for UCO employees.   

Proposal Content:

The proposal should be a maximum of 6 pages in length. It should contain a descriptive title, brief abstract, and a list of the names and campus affiliations of the PI and any Co-Is. Text should use a font size of 11 points or larger; single-spaced. The proposal should include the following sections:

• • Project Justification (3 pages) should include two pages of supporting program text with up to one additional page for figures and references. The Project Justification should include a description of the project goals, methods to be employed or activities undertaken, roles for personnel involved in the project, and equipment justification. 
  • Budget and Deliverables (2 pages) should include a specific budget request broken down by major items with justification, a timeline of the proposed activities, and specific proposed deliverables. Since funding will be allocated from UCO, administrative overhead (F&A) should not be included in the proposal budget. Costs for equipment and supplies should be based on actual vendor quotes whenever possible, and must include sales tax. Travel should be based upon reasonable airfare, mileage, meal and lodging per diem for potential destination(s). If the proposal includes in-kind contributions from UCO staff, this must be reflected in the budget. Please contact Matthew Shetrone (mshetrone@ucolick.org)  who will provide the recharge rate for UCO staff.
  •  Status of Outstanding Minigrants (1 page) should include the current status of outcomes and funds from previous requests.   For any completed projects please indicate if a final report was submitted to the Director’s Office.   Please only include results from the last 5 years. 
• Proposed external reviewers: Please include a list of 1-3 external reviewers who may be able to provide objective recommendations on the proposed activity.   This may be of particular importance for outreach programs, or innovative technology development where the UCOAC may not have the necessary skill set for a careful evaluation.   

Proposal Submission:

Proposals should be submitted via SPG proposal submission system (the platform used for UC Keck and Lick proposals) by Monday December 9, 2024.   A summary of the submission process can be found on the UCO mini-grant web page: https://www.ucobservatories.org/observers/uco-mini-grant-program/

Any questions about the proposal or submission please contact Matthew Shetrone (mshetrone@ucolick.org) and UCOAC Chair, Paul Robertson (probert1@uci.edu).

Proposal Evaluation and Selection:

Proposals will be evaluated and ranked by the UC Observatories Advisory Committee (UCOAC). The final decision on funding will be made by the UCO Director. Criteria for selection will include relevance to UCO goals for instrumentation and technology development, impact on education or outreach across UC, support of the capabilities of the Keck, Lick, and TMT Observatories, timeliness and feasibility of the proposed work, and benefit to the UC astronomical community as a whole. Following the proposal selection, PI’s of successful proposals will be asked to provide the contact information of a financial officer at their campus to coordinate the transfer of funds. UCO will provide reviewer comments to all PIs after the selection process has been completed.

Reporting Requirements:

At the conclusion of the roughly one-year funding period, the PI will be required to submit a report describing the work undertaken and results obtained as a result of the grant (2 pages maximum; 11 point font or larger; single spaced). The grant report should describe the activities, outcomes, and expenditures from your UCO allocation for this program. The report will be read by the UCOAC and the UCO Director, and will help the UCOAC to evaluate the efficacy of the Mini-Grant program as a whole. 

If the program/PI is requesting additional funding in a subsequent Mini-grant proposal, the grant report will be used in that year’s proposal evaluation process, requests for no-cost extensions must be accompanied by a progress report on expenditures and progress to date. Please submit all reports and requests for extensions to Matthew Shetrone (mshetrone@ucolick.org) and cc’d the UCOAC Chair, Paul Robertson (probert1@uci.edu). Please write “UCO Mini-Grant Reporting” in the email subject line. Grant reports should be submitted before or on the subsequent deadline of FY25 Mini-grant program.

Proposals for the mini-grant program will be submitted online in a process very similar to that used for UC Keck proposals.

Submitting an application is a two-step process: on-line creation of a proposal cover sheet and uploading a pdf-format file with the Justification, Budget and other support materials.

Step 1: Create a proposal cover sheet and be assigned a Proposal ID#. Go to the web page below, enter the information required for the form, submit the form and note the assigned proposal ID#, which is required in Step 2.

https://spg.ucolick.org/cgi-bin/time_apps/MiniGrant/

Step 2: Prepare a pdf Proposal.

The proposal should be a maximum of 5 pages in length. It should contain a descriptive title, brief abstract, and a list of the names and campus affiliations of the PI and any Co-Is. Text should use a font size of 11 points or larger; single-spaced. The proposal should include the following sections:

1. Project Justification (3-page limit),
2. Budget and Deliverables (2-page limit),

Create a pdf-format of this document and upload it at the submission web page:

https://spg.ucolick.org/cgi-bin/MiniGrant/login.cgi

2021-2022 funded UCO Instrumentation and Service Mini-Grants (FY21)

LIGER Project Management & Documentation – Shelley Wright, UCSD
Adaptive Optics for Keck and Beyond – Jessica Lu, UCB
UV Fused-Silica Etched Gratings: Performance Testing – Renate Kupke, UCSC
KRAKENS Prime: A Cutting Edge IFS and Wideband – Ben Mazin, UCSB
Advancing AO Science with OSIRIS – Tuan Do, UCLA
Upgrading Keck NIRES – Joseph Hennawi, UCSB
PI Activities for the Development of Keck/SCALES – Andy Skemer, UCSC
Facilitating the Development of TMS/PSI – Mike Fitzgerald, UCLA

Service Mini-Grants

UCOAC Chair – Shelley Wright (UCSD)
Co-Chair of TMT SSC – Tomasso Treu (UCLA)
Co-Chair of Keck SSC – Aaron Barth (UCI)
TMT (Board) – Michael Bolte

2020-2021 funded UCO Instrumentation and Service Mini-Grants (FY21)

Completing a focal plane wavefront sensor conceptual design for SCALES – Rebecca Jensen-Clem, UCSC
Science and Simulations for Keck/HISPEC and TMT/MODHIS – Quinn Konopacky, UCSD
Visible Light Diraction-Limited Polarimetric Imaging at Lick – Max Millar-Blanchaer, UCSB
Adaptive Optics for Keck and Beyond – Jessica Lu, UCB
LIGER FINAL DESIGN PHASE: PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS A AND OPTO-MECHANICAL DESIGN – Shelley Wright, UCSD
Facilitating the Development of TMT/PSI: Progress Report and 2020-2021 Request – Mike Fitzgerald, UCLA
Service Mini-Grants

UCOAC Chair – Shelley Wright (UCSD)
Co-Chair of TMT SSC – Tomasso Treu (UCLA)
Co-Chair of Keck SSC – Aaron Barth (UCI)
TMT (Board) – Michael Bolte

2019-2020 funded UCO Instrumentation and Service Mini-Grants (FY20)

A new Keck AO Precision Calibration Unit for Astrometry – Jessica Lu, UCB
Evaluating HiPIMS Process for Robust Protected-Ag Coatings – Andrew Phillips, UCSC
Upgrading the UC Davis Lick/Keck Remote Observing Room – Chris Fassnacht, UCD
Facilitating the Development of TMT/PSI – Chris Fassnacht, UCD
Testing a 10 μm detector for TMT’s Planetary Systems Imager – Andy Skemer, UCSC
Fundraising Activities for Lick Observatory – Alex Filippenko, UCB
PypeIt: A Data Reduction Pipeline for UCO and WMKO – Hennawi, Joseph, UCSB

Service Mini-Grants
TMT Int’l science collaboration – Treu, Tommaso (UCLA)
Co-Chair of Keck SSC -Treu, Tommaso (UCLA)

2018-2019 funded UCO Instrumentation and Service Mini-Grants (FY19)

Supplement to Keck White Paper Funding for the SCALES Design – Andy Skemer, UCSC
Facilitating the Development of TMT/PSI – Mike Fitzgerald, UCLA
An On-Sky Demonstration of Fiber Observation with Keck – Kevin Bundy, UC Observatories
CUBEpy: a PYTHON-based Package for the Extraction of Point Source Spectra from KCWI Data Cubes – Dan Weisz, Berkeley
Pypelt: A Data Reduction Pipeline for UCO and WMKO – Xavier Prochaska, UCSC

Service Mini-Grants
Fundraising Activities for Lick Observatory – Alex Filippenko, UCB
Foster TMT International Science Collaboration – Alex Filippenko, UCB
TMT Board – Michael Bolte, UCSC
Co-Chair of Keck SSC – Jean Brodie, UCSC
Chair UCOAC – Gillian Wilson, UCR

2017-2018 funded UCO Instrumentation and Service Mini-Grants (FY18)

Enhancing Multi-Object Spectroscopy with Ground-Layer Adaptive Optics at Keck – Jessica Lu, UC Berkeley
Modeling Fiber Performance for Ultra-Faint Spectroscopy – Kevin Bundy, UCO
APF 2.0: Stabilization of the Automated Planet Finder for a New Discovery Landscape – Courtney Dressing, UC Berkeley
PYPIT: A Data Reduction Pipeline for UCO and WMKO – J. Xavier Prochaska, UCSC
A MKID-based Multi-Object High Resolution Spectrograph – Ben Mazin, UCSB
Preparing for Solar System Science with TMT and IRIS – Michael H. Wong, UC Berkeley
Hardware Upgrades for the UC San Diego Remote Observing Facilities – Quinn Konopacky, UCSD
Upgrade to Mainland-Only Remote Observing Facility at UCR – Brian Siana, UCR

Service Mini-Grants
Continuing to foster the TMT International Science Collaboration – Tommaso Treu, UCLA
Working Toward New UCO Funding & Partnerships – Andrea Ghez, UCLA
Fundraising activities for Lick Observatory – Alex Filippenko, UC Berkeley

2016-2017 funded UCO Instrumentation and Service Mini-Grants (FY17)

Enhancing Multi-Object Spectroscopy with Ground-Layer Adaptive Optics at Keck – Jessica Lu, UC Berkeley
A Wide-Field AO-Fed Integral Field Spectrograph for Keck – James Larkin & Michael Fitzgerald, UCLA
A Mini-IFU for Keck-AO/NIRSPEC – Andy Skemer, UCSC & Michael Fitzgerald, UCLA
FOBOS: A Fiber-Fed MOS for Keck – David Schlegel, LBNL
A MKID-based Multi-Object High Resolution Spectrograph – Ben Mazin, UCSB
Next-generation hardware for Remote Observing at UC Facilities – Graeme Smith and Jason X. Prochaska, UCSC
Replacement UPS for UCLA Remote Observing Site – Ian McLean, UCLA
Fostering the TMT international science collaboration – Tommaso Treu, UCLA
Working Toward New UCO Funding & Partnerships – Andrea Ghez, UCLA
Fundraising activities for Lick Observatory – Alex Filippenko, UC Berkeley
2015-2016 funded UCO Instrumentation Mini-Grants (FY16)

Public Release of the MOSDEF Data Reduction Package for the MOSFIRE spectrograph on Keck I – Mariska Kriek, UC Berkeley
Proposal Preparation and Team Building for the TMT Coronagraph, a Second Generation Instrument – Michael Fitzgerald, UCLA
A Workshop to Develop the Science Case for FOBOS, a Proposed New Optical Multi-Object Spectrograph for Keck – David Schlegel, LBNL
Preparations for KRAKENS, a Proposed MKID-Based Imager for Keck – Ben Mazin, UCSB
Upgrade to UC Santa Barbara Remote Observing Site – Crystal Martin, UCSB

2015-2016 funded Service Support (FY16)

(Formal Service Mini-Grants did not exist at this time)

Working Toward New UCO Funding & Partnerships – Andrea Ghez, UCLA
Fundraising activities for Lick Observatory – Alex Filippenko, UC Berkeley