Harvard-UAI Collaborative Research Grants

Priority will be given to: 

• Proposals with clear and innovative research goals.
• Proposals that have a public dissemination component, such as a public lecture, workshop or public-oriented article to discuss the impact of the proposed research. 
• Interdisciplinary proposals engaging faculty from more than one department or school.
• Projects with meaningful Harvard and UAI student participation.
• Proposals with meaningful Chile-based research.
• Projects with budgets detailing and justifying the activities to be funded by the Grant, and that align to the guidelines on the appropriate use of funds (see below). 
• We strongly encourage applications from faculty members who have not previously received a Harvard-UAI Collaborative Research Grant. We accept proposals from returning applicants who present new projects.  

Two grants of maximum $30,000 each will be awarded to support collaborative research activities between Harvard Faculty and UAI faculty. The performance period of the grant will be from January to December 2026. At the end of the grant period, awardees will be expected to present their research findings at a public event organized by Harvard and UAI. They will also be required to present a short report in writing.  

• Proposals must present research activities directly carried out by the faculty co-PIs from Harvard and UAI who submit the application.  
• The program will accept only one proposal per faculty applicant at Harvard and UAI per year.  
• The program will not fund multiple or repeat applications for the same project from faculty members. 
• The Harvard faculty co-PI must be an Assistant, Associate or full Professor employed full-time by Harvard University in any Harvard Department or School. Applicants from the Harvard Medical School must be an Assistant, Associate or full Professor actively teaching Harvard students at the time of application (undergraduates, GSAS-enrolled PhD students or students enrolled in the two HMS MD programs) and employed by Harvard University.  
• The UAI faculty co-PI must also be an Assistant, Associate or full Professor employed full-time in any UAI Department or School, with a declared 135 research hours commitment.  
• Final decisions about eligibility will be determined during the review process.  

Faculty applicants must submit the application form and all supporting documents before the deadline, October 15, 2025. 

In preparing a proposal, the applicant should remember that DRCLAS is a University-wide center and therefore reviewers will need brief background information to fully appreciate the proposed research questions and proposed impact of the research. 

• Fill out an application survey (currently closed).

The application form will ask you to upload the following documents: 

• Abstract. Up to 350 words describing succinctly the justification, research goals, intended impact and activities of the project.
• Proposal. Up to 1,000 words that succinctly describe the research questions, significance of the project, expected impacts and the activities that it entails. The proposal should also explain the nature of the collaboration between the research teams at Harvard and UAI. Up to two pages of additional materials may be included, if necessary.
• Detailed Budget. The budget must be detailed to reflect activities and their associated costs. It must also reflect other sources of funding, either secured or requested, that will contribute to the feasibility of the project.
• Curriculum Vitae. 5 pages max. for each co-PI (Harvard and UAI) and additional collaborators.
• Letter of support. Letter verifying collaboration from other collaborating institutions, when applicable.
• IRB-Approved Work Plan. For proposals involving human subjects or work with vertebrate animals, the applicant must obtain institutional review board approval prior to submission. The IRB-approved work plan must be submitted with the application. 

• Funds may be applied to travel-related expenses to conduct research in the field, including airfare, lodging, meals, transportation, visa fees, and vaccines; research materials, including data, images, or software to which the awardee does not have free access; monthly fees for electronic devices required for data collection; stipends and fees for research-related support services such as translation and interpretation services.  
• In exceptional circumstances, funds may be used to hire Harvard or UAI undergraduates or postgraduate students as research assistants. 
• Extensions to the performance period of awarded grants are not allowed. If the totality of the funds awarded is not used by the end of the performance period, the unspent funds will go back to DRCLAS. 
• Awards may not be used for salary support, research staff salary, student tuition or stipends, administrative and indirect costs, speaker honoraria, computer hardware, or office-related equipment, and cannot be used to replace existing sources of funding. 
• Applicants are strongly discouraged from allocating disproportionately large portions of their budgets for expenses with equipment, third party services, or research assistants.  
• Requests for hardware purchases for data collection are discouraged but may be taken into consideration with adequate justification. 
• At the end of the grant, faculty awardees from Harvard and UAI will have to present a short report presenting a summary of findings and impacts from the project, and any audiovisual material they would like to share. More guidelines on this report will be shared with awardees at the end of the grant’s performance period.  
• Additional restrictions may apply at the discretion of the Faculty Grants Committee. 

The two recipients of the 2024 Harvard-UAI Collaborative Research Grant are Pablo Pérez Ramos, an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, who will collaborate with Professor Tomás Folch from the Design Lab at UAI, and Missy Holbrook, the Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, who will work alongside Bio-engineer Professor Jacques Dumais, of the Faculty of Engineering and Sciences at UAI. 

Ecological Dynamics in the Atacama Desert: A Century of Vegetation Succession Following the Afforestation of Pampa del Tamarugal: Pablo Pérez Ramos and Tomas Folch will explore the long-term evolution and resilience of afforestation initiatives in harsh, dry conditions. The study will examine the Pampa del Tamarugal, a pioneering afforestation initiative that planted 20,000 hectares of tamarugos in the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile. Drawing on field surveys, drone imagery and extensive documentation of agricultural techniques and soil properties, Pérez Ramos and Folch will provide insights on global desert restoration efforts, demonstrating how sustainable afforestation practices can be adapted to arid landscapes and contribute to climate change mitigation and ecosystem recovery. 

A Systematic Experimental Method to Identify Specialized Foliar Water Uptake Mechanisms: Professors Holbrook and Dumais will examine the strategy of ‘foliar water uptake’ through which plants absorb the atmospheric water in contact with their leaves to supplement their hydration. The researchers will test a new protocol to measure foliar water uptake under two contrasting environments – the Atacama Desert and the Valvidian Rainforest of Chile. If successful, the standardized protocol would provide a reliable way to study how Chilean plants access water under extreme environmental conditions, aiding in their conversation and contributing to the development of bioinspired technologies for water harvesting.