Sustaining Illinois Seed Grants

Sustaining Illinois Seed Grants

Supports collaborative research across Illinois universities in education, economic development, health, and innovation.

⚠ This may reflect a past cycle — verify the current call on the funder's site.

The Sustaining Illinois Seed Grant program is the flagship seed funding instrument of the Illinois Innovation Network (IIN), a 12-campus University of Illinois System initiative. The 2025 cycle offered awards of up to $40,000 per project for one-year collaborative research projects, with a submission deadline of February 21, 2025 administered through the UIUC Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation (OVCRI). Since its launch in 2020, the program has funded 52 early-stage research concepts, supported 161 investigators across member campuses, and generated more than $547,000 in follow-on funding. The program has run on an annual cycle with competition windows in spring 2022, fall 2022, spring 2024, and spring 2025.

Eligible applicants must be researchers employed at one of the 12 IIN member institutions: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois Chicago, University of Illinois Springfield, Northern Illinois University, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Illinois State University, Eastern Illinois University, Governors State University, Chicago State University, Northeastern Illinois University, or Western Illinois University. Every proposal must include principal investigators from at least two different IIN member hubs — single-campus teams are ineligible. Projects must be completed within one year of award. For-profit companies, nonprofits unaffiliated with IIN member institutions, and individual applicants outside the system cannot apply.

Sustaining Illinois targets five priority research areas: education and workforce development, economic development, business formation and entrepreneurship, health and wellness, and water, food, and agriculture, alongside computing and data including artificial intelligence and big data as cross-cutting enabling technologies. The 2025 deadline has passed and no 2026 call had been announced as of May 2026; interested researchers at IIN member institutions should monitor the IIN website and the OVCRI RFP page at their home campus for announcement of the next annual cycle. UIUC PIs apply through research.illinois.edu; researchers at other campuses follow their own institution's internal pre-award process.