a small research project

Research Grants on Education: Small

Application deadlines:.

Applications Open February 23, 2024

Full Proposal Deadline April 30, 2024 (12:00 noon Central Time)

Program contact: Cynthia Soto [email protected]

The Small Research Grants on Education Program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets up to $50,000 for projects ranging from one to five years. We accept applications three times per year.

This program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, method, or location. Our goal for this program is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in education.

Program Statement

The Small Research Grants on Education Program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets up to $50,000 for projects ranging from one to five years. Eligible investigators may also request additional supplemental funds for a course release. We accept applications three times per year. This program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, or method. Our goal for this program is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in education. We seek to support scholarship that develops new foundational knowledge that may have a lasting impact on educational discourse. 

We recognize that learning occurs across the life course as well as across settings—from the classroom to the workplace, to family and community contexts and even onto the playing field—any of which may, in the right circumstance, provide the basis for rewarding study that makes significant contributions to the field. We value work that fosters creative and open-minded scholarship, engages in deep inquiry, and examines robust questions related to education. To this end, this program supports proposals from multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives, both domestically and internationally, from scholars at various stages in their career. We anticipate that proposals will span a wide range of topics and disciplines that innovatively investigate questions central to education, including for example education, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, law, economics, history, or neuroscience, amongst others.

Moreover, we expect and welcome methodological diversity in answering pressing questions; thus, we are open to projects that utilize a wide array of research methods including quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, ethnographies, computational modeling, design-based research, participatory methods, and historical research, to name a few. We are open to projects that might incorporate data from multiple and varied sources, span a sufficient length of time as to achieve a depth of understanding, or work closely with practitioners or community members over the life of the project.

April 2024 deadline

Eligibility and restrictions.

Eligibility

Proposals to the Small Research Grants on Education program must be for research projects that aim to study education. Proposals for activities other than research are not eligible (e.g., program evaluations, professional development, curriculum development, scholarships, capital projects, software development). Additionally, proposals for research studies focused on areas other than education are not eligible.

Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs applying for a Small Research Grant on Education must have an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field, or appropriate experience in an education research-related profession. While graduate students may be part of the research team, they may not be named the PI or Co-PI on the proposal.

The PI must be affiliated with a non-profit organization or public/governmental institution that is willing to serve as the administering organization if the grant is awarded. The Spencer Foundation does not award grants directly to individuals. Examples include non-profit or public colleges, universities, school districts, and research facilities, as well as other non-profit organizations with a 501(c)(3) determination from the IRS (or equivalent non-profit status if the organization is outside of the United States).

Proposals are accepted from the U.S. and internationally, however, all proposals must be submitted in English and budgets must be proposed in U.S. Dollars.

Restrictions

Proposed budgets for this program are limited to $50,000 total and may not include indirect cost charges per Spencer’s policy . Eligible investigators may also request additional supplemental funds for a course release. See the Optional Supplemental Course Release section for details.

Projects proposed may not be longer than 5 years in duration.

PIs and Co-PIs may only hold one active research grant from the Spencer Foundation at a time. (This restriction does not apply to the administering organization; organizations may submit as many proposals as they like as long as they are for different projects and have different research teams.)

PIs and Co-PIs may not submit more than one research proposal to the Spencer Foundation at a time. This restriction applies to the Small Grants Program, Large Grants Program, Racial Equity Research Grants Program, and Research-Practice Partnership Program. If the PI or any of the Co-PIs currently have a research proposal under consideration in any of these programs, they are required to wait until a final decision has been made on the pending proposal before they can submit a new proposal.

How to Apply

The application process begins with a full proposal; there is no requirement to submit an intent to apply form. Full proposals for a Small Research Grant on Education are due by 12:00pm Noon central time on the deadline date.

Full Proposal Guidelines

Small Grant proposals must be submitted through an online application form following the guidelines below.

Step 1 – Registration

Note: This application is configured for the Principal Investigator (PI) on the project to register and submit the form. If someone other than the PI will be completing the online application (e.g., an administrative assistant), the PI should register as described in Step 1 below, then provide their username and password to the person assisting them with the application.

If you (the PI) have never accessed the Spencer Foundation online portal, you must register and create a profile by going to https://spencer.smartsimple.us and clicking the “Register Here” button. Follow the guidelines on the registration page to create your profile.

If you already have an account, log on to update your profile and access the application.

Step 2 - My Profile

After logging in, follow the directions to complete the information requested on the My Profile page and upload your current CV (10-page limit). The My Profile page is your online account with the Spencer Foundation whether you are applying for a grant, reviewing a proposal, or submitting a grantee report.

Note: If you will have Co-PIs on your project, they must also register and complete their profile information if they wish to be included on the application.

Step 3 – Start a Proposal

To fill out the application, go to your Workbench and click the Apply button for the Small Research Grants on Education. Your draft application can be saved so that you can return to it at a later time and continue working on it. Once you save a draft application, you can find it again on your Draft Proposals list on your Workbench.

Small Grant Proposal Elements

Within the online application, there are detailed guidelines for each section. Below is an overview of the elements you’ll be expected to complete.

Project Personnel - As the person creating the draft application, you will automatically be assigned to the proposal as the Principal Investigator. If there are Co-PIs on the proposal, they can be added to the application in this section.  They must first follow Steps 1 and 2 above before being added to the application.

In this section you are also asked to confirm that neither the PI nor the Co-PIs currently have another research proposal under review at Spencer (see Restrictions).

Proposal Summary – Information about the project is requested, such as the project title, start and end dates, the central research question(s), and a 200-word project summary.

Budget and Budget Justification - The budget form is divided into the following categories and each category has a pulldown menu of the line-item choices listed in parentheses below:

• Salaries (PI, Co-PI, Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Graduate Student, Researcher, Undergraduate Researcher, Other Research Staff, Other Staff, Supplemental PI Course Release, Supplemental Co-PI Course Release)
• Benefits (PI Benefits, Co-PI Benefits, Researcher Benefits, Other Staff Benefits, Tuition/Fees, Supplemental Course Release Benefits)
• Other Collaborator (Independent Consultant, Advisor)
• Travel (Project Travel, Conference or Dissemination Travel)
• Equipment and Software (Equipment, Software)
• Project Expenses (Supplies, Participant Stipends/Costs, Communication, Transcription)
• Other (This should only be used for expenses not covered in the choices above)
• Subcontracts (Information is pulled from the subcontract budget forms – see below)

Each expense for your project should be added and the budget narrative field should be completed, providing a description of that specific expense.  Detailed guidelines are available within the application form.

Subcontracts: If your project will have subcontracts, a separate subcontract budget form will need to be completed for each. The subcontract form has the same categories and line-item choices listed above.

Proposal Narrative - You are expected to upload a proposal narrative pdf that includes the following:

A description of the project, the central research question(s), and the project’s significance.

A rationale for the project. This includes (a) summary of the relevant literature, the relationship of the proposed research to that literature, and the new knowledge or contribution to the improvement of education expected to result from the proposed research; and (b) a summary of the conceptual framework or theory guiding the project and how the project utilizes or builds on this framework of theory.

A description of the proposed research methods, description of participants, data collection instruments, and modes of analysis the project will employ. If applicable to the proposed methods, please include (a) information about the proposed sample/case definition and selection procedures; (b) research design, including when appropriate a description of the context of the study; (c) description of key constructs, measures and data sources; (d) procedures for data collection; and (e) procedures for data analysis.

This narrative may not exceed 1800 words and at the conclusion should include the word count in parentheses. Your reference list should follow your narrative in the same pdf file and will not count toward the 1800-word limit.

The text should be double–spaced and in 12-point font. APA style is preferred.

Note: Tables and other figures can be included in the text of your proposal, where appropriate, provided they are used sparingly. The text contained in any tables and figures will not count towards the word limit. However, it is important that you describe or explain any tables or figures in the narrative portion of your proposal, which will contribute to your word count. Do not assume that tables and other figures are self-explanatory.

Project Timeline - A project timeline should be uploaded as a PDF file and should indicate the proposed start and end dates of the project as well as key project events and milestones. The major activities listed in the project timeline should be reflected in the proposal narrative. The project timeline may not exceed 1 page and the text should be in 12-point font. The proposed project duration can be up to 5 years.

Project Team – A document describing the project team should be uploaded in pdf format and should identify the roles, responsibility and knowledge base of the PI, Co-PI(s), and any supporting researcher(s). In the case where your project includes Co-PIs and other supporting researchers, this document should articulate how the team will work together to complete the research project, highlighting what each team member will contribute to the project. Further, a short description of the relationship between the project team and the research site may be included, if appropriate. This document should not exceed 250 words and should be double–spaced in 12-point font. Note: this document will be reviewed along with the CV of the PI and any Co-PIs included on the application.

Optional Supplemental Course Release – The Spencer Foundation recognizes that scholars' course loads vary significantly across the field creating differential contexts and capacities for research projects. To help mitigate these uneven demands on time, the PI or Co-PI may request supplemental course release funds of up to $10,000 over and above the $50,000 Small Grant budget limit, for a total of up to $60,000.

To be eligible, the scholar (PI or Co-PI) must have a course load of 6 or above per academic year. The supplemental funds cannot be used for anything besides a course release for the scholar and should be the standard rate for a course release at their institution. You may only request 1 additional course release per grant. Two things of note: 1) requesting the Supplemental Course Release funds does not guarantee they will be awarded, and 2) if you have a course load that is less than 6, you may still include a course release in your proposal budget, but your budget may not exceed the $50,000 Small Grants limit and you are not required to supply the documents requested below.

To apply for these the Optional Supplemental Course Release Funds, there are 3 additional application pieces needed:

• The amount requested and a brief budget narrative for the Supplemental Course Release should be included in the Proposal Budget section (detailed above). It should be clearly indicated in the Salary section of the budget form by choosing the appropriate Supplemental Course Release line item from the drop-down menu, as well as in the Benefits section as needed.
• A 250-word Course Release Rationale Statement describing how the additional course release will impact the proposed project should be uploaded as a PDF file.
• A Supporting Letter from the scholar's Dean or Chair should be uploaded below as a PDF file. The supporting letter must include the following: (a) confirmation that the scholar's course load is 6 courses or more per academic year, (b) confirmation that the scholar will be released from teaching a course, if awarded the supplemental funds, and (c) confirmation the budgeted amount for the course release is appropriate for their institution.

Optional Appendices A – If you have additional documents focused on scientific instrumentation relevant to the study, for example interview protocols or survey instruments, they can be uploaded in this section of the application as supplemental information.

Optional Appendices B – If you have other supporting documents, such as letters of agreement or collaboration, they can be uploaded in this section of the application. Please see the guidelines in the online application for more information about these types of appendices.

Optional Appendices C - Innovative Approaches to Equity in Research: We recognize that scholars and scholarship have continued to develop innovative approaches to conducting research in ethical and just ways. Scholars have raised that proposals attending to these issues in sophisticated ways often face choices in providing detail in their proposals. Thus, if you so choose , you are invited to upload a one-page appendix in your grant proposal to elaborate on the theoretical, methodological, and partnership structures, or other dimensions you deem as relevant to conducting ethical and just research. For example, if your work engages youth, families, or community-based organizations, you may want to elaborate on how traditional power dynamics will be addressed. Or, if your work engages with Indigenous communities, you may want to elaborate on the project leadership’s histories and engagement with Indigenous communities, any formal agreements (e.g. Tribal IRB or approvals), or the use of Indigenous methodologies in the project. Or, perhaps you are working on new quantitative measures or modeling approaches that would benefit from further explanation. We anticipate and welcome a wide range of other possibilities.

A note about IRB Approval: Proof of Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval is not required at the time of proposal submission.  In the event that IRB approval is needed for this project and it is chosen for funding, the Administering Organization will be responsible for obtaining IRB review and approval in accordance with its institutional policies and applicable law.

Resubmission – If this is a resubmission of a proposal previously submitted to the Spencer Foundation, you are asked to indicate this within the application and upload a 1-page explanation of how the proposal was revised.

Project Data – Within the online application, we ask you to choose the appropriate options with regard to your research project in the following categories: disciplinary perspective, methodologies, topics, geographical scope, contexts, and participants. This information is helpful in determining the appropriate reviewers for your proposal and for internal evaluations of our grant programs.

Signature from Authorized Representative of the Administering Organization – This section of the application details the steps necessary to obtain the authorized signature for your proposal through the Adobe E-sign process.  You are required to provide the Signatory’s name, title, and email address; this is normally an administrative or financial person that has the authority to sign the proposal on behalf of your organization. Note: The signature process must be completed by noon on the deadline date. You, as the applicant, are responsible for making sure your proposal is signed by the deadline.  Please account for the time it takes your organization’s authorized signer to review and sign proposal submissions.  We recommend filling in the online application at least a week ahead of the deadline date. The Spencer Foundation is unable to accept late submissions.

Once you’ve completed all of the elements listed above, click the Submit button at the bottom of the application page and it will be routed to your Signatory for signature and final submission.

Review Process

The Small Research Grants on Education program uses a peer review process for all eligible submissions.  Each proposal will be reviewed by both external panel reviewers and internal staff. The review process for this program takes approximately 6-7 months from the deadline date.

The review panel for this program is made up of scholars in the field of education research with expertise across many disciplines and methodological areas.  Panelist are asked to rate and comment on the following aspects of your proposal:

Significance of the Project: Reviewers will evaluate the centrality of education in the research, the importance of the topic to its field, and the quality of the research question(s) and/or direction of inquiry.

Connection to Research and Theory: Reviewers will evaluate the adequacy of the description of how other researchers have treated the same topic and how well the proposal responds to prior work and theory.

Research Design: Reviewers will evaluate the overall quality, sophistication, and appropriateness of the research design as well as its alignment with the research question(s) and/or conceptual framing.

Budget and Timeline: Reviewers will evaluate the adequacy of the budget and timeline.

Project Team: Reviewers will comment on the potential of the investigator(s) to complete the study as described and share the results or other findings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q : Does this program support research in settings other than K-12 and higher education institutions?

A : Yes, Spencer funds research projects that span the life course (i.e., from early childhood to adult learning) as well as those that focus on contexts outside of school.

Q : Do you have a preference for certain research methodologies?

A : No, we are open to whatever methods make sense for answering the questions at hand. Historically, Spencer has supported research across a range of methods and academic disciplines, and we expect this to continue in this program.

Q : Do you have a preference for research teams vs. individual researchers?

A : No, we do not have a preference. The important thing is to plan the staffing around the aims of the project.

Q : Can a graduate student serve as a Co-PI on a proposal submission?

A : No, the PI and any Co-PIs named on the proposal are expected to have earned doctorate degrees prior to proposal submission.  While graduate students may be included in the budget as research assistants, this program is not meant to support student research projects.

Q : Do you accept proposals from outside the United States?

A : Yes, we accept proposals from outside the U.S. Application materials must be submitted in English and project budgets must be in U.S. dollars.

Q : Do you have a preference for regional, national, or international projects?

A : No, we do not have a preference.

Q : What is the expected duration of projects in this program?

A : We leave the duration of the project up to the PI/research team to determine, but limit it to no more than 5 years.

Q: Can my organization submit more than one proposal at a time?

A: Yes, as long as the proposals are for different projects and the research teams are different, it is fine for an organization to submit multiple applications at one time.

Q : If I (the PI or Co-PI) have a current grant through Spencer, can I apply for a new grant?

A : You may not hold more than one active research grant at a time from the Spencer Foundation. You may apply for a new grant while you have an active grant at Spencer if the active grant will end before the anticipated start date of the new project.

Q : If I am turned down, is it possible to revise my proposal and reapply in a later cycle?

A : Yes, Spencer welcomes proposal resubmissions. However, many factors go into the final decision on each proposal, including our limited budget. Even if you receive feedback on your proposal and are able to address all of the reviewer concerns in the submission, we can offer no guarantees as to the likelihood of funding due to the fact that we currently fund less than 10% of the submissions we receive. Please note, resubmissions are considered among all of the other newly submitted proposals and are not given special status or consideration in the review process.

Q : I have an idea for a project and would like feedback. Is it possible to contact someone?

A : If you have reviewed our program statement and application guidelines and still have questions about whether your idea for a research project falls within this program, feel free to email us at [email protected] for guidance. While we are not able to provide feedback on proposal drafts, we are happy to answer questions by email. Additionally, if helpful please consult the Spencer writing guides .

Q: How do I determine my start date and when should I expect payment if my proposal is selected for funding?

A: We recommend proposing a start date that is at least 8 months after the proposal deadline. The review process for this program takes approximately 6-7 months and once notified of the funding decision, it can take an additional 2 months for the official approval process, which entails reviewing the budget, processing award letters, and issuing the grant payment. NOTE: Grant payments are issued on the third week of each month. If Spencer has not received your signed award letters by your start date, your payment will not be issued.

Q: Are budgets expected to include in-kind giving or cost sharing? If not expected, is it allowed?

A: In-kind giving or cost sharing is not expected or required as part of your proposal budget. However, if you plan to include in-kind giving or cost sharing as part of your project budget, you should indicate this in the online budget form in the narrative section. If your proposal is chosen for funding, the grant award may be contingent upon receiving documentation confirming the additional support.

Recent Awardees

The Effects of Special Education on Crime Briana Ballis, Katelyn Heath University of California, Merced

Picturing Resilience: The Visual Narratives of Safety and Joy among Black Collegians Ashley Carpenter Appalachian State University

Precarity and Education: Examining the Experiences of Central American Unaccompanied Youth in California Public Schools Stephany Cuevas, Martha C. Franco Chapman University

Living in Tension: How Faculty and Staff at Evangelical Christian Colleges and Universities Support LGBTQ+ Students Kaitlin Gabriele-Black Salve Regina University

A Critical Race Content Analysis of Diversity in Children’s Books, from 2020-2021 Lorena Camargo Gonzalez Sacramento State Sponsored Research

Resource Inequality Across U.S. Colleges and Universities: New Evidence from Old Data Christopher M. Herrington Virginia Commonwealth University

Focusing on Multiplicative Foundations to Enhance Access to Calculus Andrew Izsak Tufts University

Echoes of Racialization in Danish High Schools:  Teachers’ Creative Negotiations of Policy in Work with Muslim Youth Reva G. Jaffe-Walter, Iram Majeed Khawaja Montclair State University

Understanding the Lives and Teaching of Migrant Teachers with Undocumented Backgrounds through the Lens of Community Cultural Wealth Yeji Kim University of Missouri – Columbia

Reimagining Spaces of Learning and Border Crossing through Narratives and Inquiries on Migration Wan Shun Eva Lam Northwestern University

Interrogating the Alignment of Current Statistical Methods with the Theory of Systemic Racism Michael K. Russell Boston College  

A Mixed Methods Examination of the Impacts of Climate Change Education on Students Sarah Schwartz, McKenna F. Parnes Suffolk University

Affordances of Makerspaces Influencing Biomedical Undergraduate Engineering Students' Design Learning and Curriculum Localization in Uganda and the USA Robert Ssekitoleko, Ann Saterbak Makerere University

The Influence of Anti-Critical Race Theory Legislation on Teacher Candidate’s Job Search Danielle Sutherland Towson University

Youth Writing for Peace in Colombia: A Collaborative Analysis of Teachers’ and Students’ Perspectives Kate Vieira University of Wisconsin-Madison  

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How to design a small research project

• How to design a small…

A common theme on this blog is an attempt to provide guidance on the things that, as academics, we are meant to know how to do, but on which we rarely receive any explicit training. For today’s June Blog I thought I’d write one of these posts, about designing a small research project.

As people become more independent as academics, there’s a lot of small project supervision required.  By small, I’m talking about a project carried out as part of a taught Masters degree, or smaller. The former mostly takes place over about a 4 month period – though initial planning might happen much earlier – with relatively full-time focus available for the last 2.5 months. Smaller projects might include summer placements for visiting students (anything from 4-10 weeks) and undergraduate mini-projects. For example, at my University, medical students do “student selected components” in their 5th year, which last about 16 weeks but involve about 6 full weeks’ worth of dedicated project time. One thing to note is that some small project designs will need to be created for student groups – I’m not going to tackle the specific elements that apply to group work today, that’ll have to wait for another blog.

So let’s assume you have a single student joining you for something like 6-12 weeks of full-time work.  How do you help them design a project and achieve their goals?

Check the course requirements

I’ve supervised students on degree courses in departments of Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Linguistics, Education, Medicine – and if this has taught me anything, it’s to check the course handbook right at the start! Some programmes have specific rules about the kinds of data you need to work with – for example, whether students are expected to compile their own, new data set or not. You’ll also want to think about the perspective of the second marker.  If they are from a different disciplinary background to you, you want to make sure your student is deploying the kind of questions and methods they will expect to see.  So, for example, when supervising medical students I will try to make sure we are examining a question with clear clinical relevance, even though I’m not a medic myself.

Another key factor is to make sure you are informed about the deadlines – not just for the final project report but any interim milestones.  Some departments will have students present a poster about their project plan, or ask supervisors to confirm that they are satisfied with student progress at the project midpoint. Another rule might concern what you are allowed to comment on in terms of the final report.  Some courses only allow supervisors to comment on one full draft (I personally prefer to see a methods section + detailed outline for other report sections, and then a full draft) or to comment on everything except the discussion.  So make sure you are on the right side of all of this info from the outset.

Keep it small

The single biggest threat to a small student project is over-ambition. Students will often approach the work – understandably, and rightly so – as a chance to discover something important in their field.  But the honest truth is that masters projects rarely lead to important discoveries. The purpose of a masters degree is to learn how to do science, which may be slightly different from actually doing science. Yes, students are learning “on the job” and of course there are plenty of important scientific insights to be gained.  But both of these aims – student learning and scientific insight – will be most effectively achieved if the project design is modest in scale. A petite project delivered to a high standard will be a much better investment of your time and your student’s time than a large project full of compromises, delays and anxiety.

What does “reasonable” actually mean?

Well, here’s a few rules of thumb to help, noting that I and my students have broken these rules multiple times…

1. stick to a single methodology.  Mixed methods studies automatically entail more decision-making and are harder to write up. Also, you’re unlikely to have time to carry out each type of data collection sequentially, and so the end results may just contradict, rather than informing each other.

2. if you want to collect new data face-to-face, collect it from undergrads. Collecting data face to face – running experiments and doing IQ tests – takes a lot of time and effort to organise. If you are also trying to reach a specific population when you do this – neurodivergent children, adolescents with depression, carers of people with dementia – you will have many more hurdles to overcome in recruitment, study design and responsible management of data collection.

3. If you want to work with a particular population, keep it low impact for them. If you want to recruit people from a particular group, you are placing a burden on individuals who probably already have a lot going on in their lives, to also engage with your research. In an ideal world, this kind of work is developed gradually and carefully in partnership with stakeholders, and has a plan for implementation of the findings.  These steps are virtually impossible to squeeze in to a small project and so in-person working with any kind of atypical population needs to be as low impact as possible. Think about phone / video interviews, a (short) online survey or maybe an online focus group.

4. The topic matters too. Yes, you might be interested in the intersection of homophobia and ableism, but do consider whether this small student project is the right forum for addressing such a potentially difficult topic. It might be – a lot depends on the life experiences of the student of course – but as a supervisor, don’t shy away from directing your student down a path carries less risks for participants.

5. Ask a question you can actually answer. I’ve had students come to me before wanting to do a project about something like emotion perception and autism. This is a literature that is absolutely rife with contradictory small studies, none of which do much to enlighten, let alone improve the lives of autistic people. Another small study is unlilkely to resolve the complex debates in the field. So instead try to find an area where even a very small amount of new information might add value.

Be Creative

All this is not meant to limit you to a “boring” project.  Instead, try to be creative.  Can your student identify an important and under-studied intersection and gain some insights into something barely understood?  Could interviews with autistic teachers, doctors, nurses or psychologists yield useful insights for practice? What are the experiences of parents of autistic children with visits to the dentist? Another fruitful angle is to explore some routine outputs from your field, and extract insights about dominant theory or language. For example, would a systematic analysis of the last ten years of conference proceedings tell you about shifts in the discourse? What about a content analysis of policy documents relating to your field? This can be a really accessible project to do – with no ethics required, the data freely available and straightforward to code – that also delivers important new knowledge. It might be a great option for a student who is also working part-time or has a health condition that impacts their work, who needs to be able to work flexibly.

Be Practical

Getting ethical approval is one of the major barriers for a small project because it can take a long time and cause significant delays. For shorter projects then, I would try to stick to analysis of existing data (where permission is already in place), literature review, or analysis of data in the public domain. That said, the process of seeking ethical approval is very useful – it helps you articulate exactly what you propose to do – and so if you don’t decide to collect your own new data, you might still want to think about writing a protocol for what you will do. Remmeber as well that “analysis of existing data” isn’t always as simple as it sounds.  Getting hold of the data, understanding the data, checking quality, dealing with missing data – all of these things can take time and should not be underestimated. Make sure you scope out the data availability at a very early stage.

Another practical dimension to consider is cost.  Lots of students will be unaware that many assessments – questionnaires etc – cost money.  Even if your department can loan them an assessment kit, they may need to pay for record forms for each participant. Make sure you and the student know what budget is available – if any – and make a plan that fits with what you can afford.

And finally

Once you have your plan in place, work with your student to break it down into manageable pieces, and plan for supervisions at the key turning points in the work. In other words, map your supervision onto the project – as far as you can – rather than sticking to a supervision schedule that is the same for everyone. Hopefully this will mean you step in at the right moment to help them make decisions.

If you can keep your student projects modest in scale, hopefully the end result will be a high quality piece of work that they can be proud of. It’s quality, not quantity, that counts.

Author:  Sue Fletcher-Watson

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100 Places to Find Funding For Your Research

• Grants.gov : Though backed by the Department of Health & Human Services, Grants.gov provides a valuable resource for searching for fellowships, grants, and other funding opportunities across multiple disciplines.
• Foundation Center : One of the largest databases of philanthropy in the United States contains information from more than 550 institutions eager to donate their money to creative, technical, medical, scientific, and plenty of other kinds of causes.
• Pivot : Pivot claims it hosts an estimated $44 billion worth of grants, fellowships, awards, and more, accessed by more than three million scholars worldwide.
• The Chronicle of Philanthropy New Grants : Another excellent search engine entirely dedicated to helping the most innovative thinkers obtain the money needed to move forward with their projects.
• Research Professional : Seven thousand opportunities await the driven at the well-loved Research Professional , which serves inclusively as a government-to-nonprofit grant database.
• Council on Foundations : Corporations, nonprofits, and other institutions gather here to talk best practices in philanthropy and where to find what for various projects.
• The Grantsmanship Center : Search for available research funding by state, see what givers prefer, and explore which ones offer up the most moolah.
• GrantSelect : Whether looking for money to advance an educational, nonprofit, artistic, or other worthwhile cause, GrantSelect makes it easy to find that funding.
• The Spencer Foundation : The Spencer Foundation provides research funding to outstanding proposals for intellectually rigorous education research.
• The Fulbright Program : The Fulbright Program offers grants in nearly 140 countries to further areas of education, culture, and science.
• Friends of the Princeton University Library : The Friends of the Princeton University Library offers short-term library research grants to promote scholarly use of the research collections.
• National Endowment for the Arts : The NEA's Office of Research & Analysis will make awards to support research that investigates the value and/or impact of the arts, either as individual components within U.S. arts ecology or as they interact with each other and/or with other domains of American life.
• Amazon Web Services : AWS has two programs to enable customers to move their research or teaching endeavors to the cloud and innovate quickly and at lower cost: The AWS Cloud Credits for Research program (formerly AWS Research Grants) and AWS Educate – a global initiative to provide students and educators with the resources needed to greatly accelerate cloud-related learning endeavors and to help power the entrepreneurs, workforce, and researchers of tomorrow.
• The National Association of State Boards of Accountancy Research Grants : The NASBA will fund and award up to three grants totaling up to $25,000 for one-year research projects, intended for researchers at higher institutions.
• The Tinker Foundation Research Grants : The Tinker Foundation Field Research Grants Program is designed to provide budding scholars with first-hand experience of their region of study, regardless of academic discipline.
• SPIN (Sponsored Programs Information Network) : SPIN is run by InfoEd International and requires an institutional subscription to access its global database for funding opportunities.
• GrantForward : GrantForward is a massive resource, full of grants from more than 9,000 sponsors in the United States. The site leverages data-crawling technology to constantly add new funding opportunities.
• Bush Foundation Fellowship Program : Leadership in its many forms are the main focus of the BFFP, who give money to folks dedicated to improving their communities.

Social and Civil

• National Endowment for Democracy : NGOs dedicated to furthering the cause of peace and democracy are the only ones eligible for grants from this organization.
• William T. Grant Foundation : Research and scholarship funding here goes towards advancing the cause of creating safe, healthy, and character-building environments for young people.
• Russell Sage Foundation : The Russell Sage Foundation focuses on best practices research feeding into equality and social justice initiatives.
• The Pew Charitable Trusts : Public policy is the name of the game here, where funding targets innovators looking to promote environmental, economic, and health programming causes reaching across demographics.
• The John Randolph Haynes Foundation : Based largely in Los Angeles, the John Randolph Haynes Foundation seeks to improve the city through a wide variety of altruistic projects.
• Economic and Social Research Council : This UK-based organization provides grants to researchers concerned with studying the social sciences in a manner that supports humanity's progress.
• The American Political Science Association : Stop here for fellowships, grants, internships, visiting scholars programs, and other chances to pay for political research.
• Social Science Research Council : In the interest of furthering an awareness of integral political issues, the SSRC donates to a wide range of initiatives worldwide.
• Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy : Several grants go out each year through this organization, covering all the social sciences and judged based on how well they fit into policymaking.
• The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation : The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation welcomes proposals from any of the natural and social sciences and the humanities that promise to increase understanding of the causes, manifestations, and control of violence and aggression. Highest priority is given to research that can increase understanding and amelioration of urgent problems of violence and aggression in the modern world.
• The National Endowment for the Humanities : Research grants from TNEH support interpretive humanities research undertaken by a team of two or more scholars. Research must use the knowledge and perspectives of the humanities and historical or philosophical methods to enhance understanding of science, technology, medicine, and the social sciences.
• American Historical Association : The American Historical Association awards several research grants to AHA members with the aim of advancing the study and exploration of history in a diverse number of subject areas. All grants are offered annually and are intended to further research in progress. Preference is given to advanced doctoral students, nontenured faculty, and unaffiliated scholars. Grants may be used for travel to a library or archive, as well as microfilming, photography, or photo copying, paying borrowing or access fees, or similar research expenses.
• The Dirksen Congressional Center : The Dirksen Congressional Center offers individual grants of up to $3500 for individuals with a serious interest in studying Congress. The Center encourages graduate students who have successfully defended their dissertation prospectus to apply, and awards a significant portion of the funds toward dissertation research.
• The Independent Social Research Foundation : The ISRF supports independent-minded researchers pursuing original and interdisciplinary studies for solutions to social problems that are unlikely to be funded by existing funding bodies.
• The David & Lucile Packard Foundation : Nonprofit organizations dedicated to growing education, charities, health, and other social justice causes should consider seeing what funding is available to them through this foundation.
• Volkswagen Stiftung : Volkswagen devotes its grants and other funding opportunities to a diverse portfolio of charities and charity-minded individuals.

Science and Engineering

• National Science Foundation : For the love of science! Head here when searching for ways to pay for that gargantuan geology or bigtime biology project. Awards are used for everything from undergraduate research grants to small business programs.
• Alexander von Humboldt Foundation : Humboldt fellows embody the spirit of science and leadership alike, and the organization sponsors thinkers in Germany and abroad alike.
• National Academy of Engineering : All of the awards dished out by the NAE celebrate engineering advances, education, and media promotion.
• National Parks Foundation : Americans who want to preserve their country's gorgeous parks and trails pitch projects to this governing body, concerned largely with ecology and accessibility issues.
• American Physical Society : Future Feynmans in search of the sponsorship necessary to test their theories (and explore possible applications) might want to consider applying for the APS' suite of awards.
• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation : Money is available here throughout the year, covering science and engineering as well as causes that overlap with civics, education, and economics.
• American Society for Engineering Education : The Department of Defense, NASA, The National Science Foundation, and other federal agencies sponsor high school and college students who show promise in the engineering sector.
• CRDF Global : Dedicated to peace and prosperity, recipients of CRDF Global grants apply their know-how to bettering social causes.
• Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council : Students and professionals working in the physical sciences as they relate to engineering might find a few options to their liking here.
• The Whitehall Foundation : The Whitehall Foundation, through its program of grants and grants-in-aid, assists scholarly research in the life sciences. It is the Foundation's policy to assist those dynamic areas of basic biological research that are not heavily supported by federal agencies or other foundations with specialized missions.
• Human Frontier Science Program : Research grants from the Human Frontier Science Program are provided for teams of scientists from different countries who wish to combine their expertise in innovative approaches to questions that could not be answered by individual laboratories.
• The U.S. Small Business Administration : The U.S. Small Business Administration offers research grants to small businesses that are engaged in scientific research and development projects that meet federal R&D objectives and have a high potential for commercialization.
• The Geological Society of America : The primary role of the GSA research grants program is to provide partial support of master's and doctoral thesis research in the geological sciences for graduate students enrolled in universities in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America.
• The Welch Foundation : The Welch Foundation provides grants for a minimum of $60,000 in funding to support research in chemistry by a full-time tenured or tenurehttps://leakeyfoundation.org/grants/research-grants/-track faculty member who serves as principal investigator. Applications are restricted to universities, colleges, and other educational institutions located within the state of Texas.
• The Leakey Foundation : The Leakey Foundation offers research grants of up to $25,000 to doctoral and postdoctoral students, as well as senior scientists, for research related specifically to human origins.
• American College of Sports Medicine: The American College of Sports Medicine offers several possible grants to research students in the areas of general and applied science.
• Association of American Geographers : The AAG provides small grants to support research and fieldwork. Grants can be used only for direct expenses of research; salary and overhead costs are not allowed.
• The Alternatives Research & Development Foundation : The Alternatives Research & Development Foundation is a U.S. leader in the funding and promotion of alternatives to the use of laboratory animals in research, testing, and education.
• BD Biosciences : BD Biosciences Research Grants aim to reward and enable important research by providing vital funding to scientists pursuing innovative experiments that advance the scientific understanding of disease. This ongoing program includes grants for immunology and stem cell research, totaling $240,000 annually in BD Biosciences research reagents.
• Sigma Xi : The Sigma Xi program awards grants for research in the areas of science, engineering, astronomy, and vision.
• The United Engineering Foundation : The United Engineering Foundation advances the engineering arts and sciences for the welfare of humanity. It supports engineering and education by, among other means, developing and offering grants.
• Wilson Ornithological Society Research Grants : The Wilson Ornithological Society Research Grants offer up to four grants of $1,500 dollars each for work in any area of ornithology.

• National Institutes of Health : Foreign and American medical professionals hoping to advance their research might want to consider one of these prestigious (and generous) endowments.
• Whitaker International Program : Biomedical engineering's global reach serves as this organization's focus, so applicants here need to open themselves up to international institutions and applications.
• U.S. National Library of Medicine : From tech to small businesses, the USNLM funding programs cover a diverse range of fields that feed into medicine.
• American Heart Association : Most of the AHA's research involves cardiovascular disease and stroke, with funding in these areas available in both the winter and the summer.
• Society for Women's Health Research : Female engineers and scientists are eligible for these grants, meant to support initiatives that improves women's health and education on a global scale.
• Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation : Every cent donated to the DRCRF directly feeds into fellowships and awards bringing humanity closer to cancer cures and improved prevention regimens.
• Burroughs Wellcome Fund : Emerging scientists working in largely underrecognized and underfunded biomedical fields are the main recipients of this private foundation's awards.
• The Foundation for Alcohol Research : As one can probably assume from the name, The Foundation for Alcohol Research contributes to projects studying how alcohol impacts human physical and mental health.
• Alex's Lemonade Stand : These grants go towards doctors, nurses, and medical researchers concerned with curing childhood cancer.
• National Cancer Institute : Thanks to a little help from their friends in Congress, the National Cancer Institute have $4.9 billion to share with medical science researchers.
• Charles Stewart Mott Foundation : Michigan-based thinkers currently developing ways to improve upon serious local and state issues might want to consider checking out what this organization can offer in the way of funding for their ideas.
• American Federation for Aging Research : AFAR provides up to $100,000 for a one-to-two-year award to junior faculty (MDs and PhDs) to conduct research that will serve as the basis for longer term research efforts in the areas of biomedical and clinical research.
• The Muscular Dystrophy Association : The MDA is pursuing the full spectrum of research approaches that are geared toward combating neuromuscular diseases. MDA also helps spread this scientific knowledge and train the next generation of scientific leaders by funding national and international research conferences and career development grants.
• American Nurses Foundation : The ANF Nursing Research Grants Program provides funds to beginner and experienced nurse researchers to conduct studies that contribute toward the advancement of nursing science and the enhancement of patient care.
• The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation : The CF Foundation offers competitive awards for research related to cystic fibrosis. Studies may be carried out at the subcellular, cellular, animal, or patient levels. Two of these funding mechanisms include pilot and feasibility awards and research grants.
• The National Ataxia Foundation : The National Ataxia Foundation (NAF) is committed to funding the best science relevant to hereditary and sporadic types of ataxia in both basic and translational research. NAF invites research applications from USA. and International non-profit and for-profit institutions.
• The March of Dimes : In keeping with its mission, the March of Dimes research portfolio funds many different areas of research on topics related to preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality.
• The American Tinnitus Association : The American Tinnitus Association Research Grant Program financially supports scientific studies investigating tinnitus. Studies must be directly concerned with tinnitus and contribute to ATA's goal of finding a cure.
• American Brain Tumor Association : The American Brain Tumor Association provides multiple grants for scientists doing research in or around the field of brain tumor research.
• American Cancer Society : The American Cancer Society also offers grants that support the clinical and/or research training of health professionals. These Health Professional Training Grants promote excellence in cancer prevention and control by providing incentive and support for highly qualified individuals in outstanding training programs.
• Thrasher Research Fund : The Thrasher Research Fund provides grants for pediatric medical research. The Fund seeks to foster an environment of creativity and discovery aimed at finding solutions to children's health problems. The Fund awards grants for research that offer substantial promise for meaningful advances in prevention and treatment of children's diseases, particularly research that offers broad-based applications.
• Foundation for Physical Therapy : The Foundation supports research projects in any patient care specialty.
• International OCD Foundation : The IOCDF awards grants to investigators whose research focuses on the nature, causes, and treatment of OCD and related disorders.
• Susan G. Komen : Susan G. Komen sustains a strong commitment to supporting research that will identify and deliver cures for breast cancer.
• American Association for Cancer Research : The AACR promotes and supports the highest quality cancer research. The AACR has been designated as an organization with an approved NCI peer review and funding system.
• American Thyroid Foundation : The ATA is committed to supporting research into better ways to diagnose and treat thyroid disease.
• The National Patient Safety Foundation : The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) Research Grants Program seeks to stimulate new, innovative projects directed toward enhancing patient safety in the United States. The program's objective is to promote studies leading to the prevention of human errors, system errors, patient injuries, and the consequences of such adverse events in a healthcare setting.
• The Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research : The FAER provides research grant funding for anesthesiologists and anesthesiology trainees to gain additional training in basic science, clinical and translational, health-services-related, and education research.
• The Alzheimer's Association : The Alzheimer's Association funds a wide variety of investigations by scientists at every stage of their careers. Each grant is designed to meet the needs of the field and to introduce fresh ideas in Alzheimer's research.
• The Arthritis National Research Foundation : The Arthritis National Research Foundation seeks to move arthritis research forward to find new treatments and to cure arthritis.
• Hereditary Disease Foundation : The focus of the Hereditary Disease Foundation is on Huntington's disease. Support will be for research projects that will contribute to identifying and understanding the basic defect in Huntington's disease. Areas of interest include trinucleotide expansions, animal models, gene therapy, neurobiology and development of the basal ganglia, cell survival and death, and intercellular signaling in striatal neurons.
• The Children's Leukemia Research Association : The objective of the CLRA is to direct the funds of the Association into the most promising leukemia research projects, where funding would not duplicate other funding sources.
• The American Parkinson Disease Association : The APDA offers grants of up to $50,000 for Parkinson disease research to scientists affiliated with U.S. research institutions.
• The Mary Kay Foundation : The Mary Kay Foundation offers grants to select doctors and medical scientists for research focusing on curing cancers that affect women. Details for 2017 are forthcoming.
• The Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America : The CCFA is a leading funder of basic and clinical research in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. CCFA supports research that increases understanding of the etiology, pathogenesis, therapy, and prevention of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.
• American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons : ASES provides grants of up to $20,000 for promising shoulder and elbow research projects.
• The International Research Grants Program : The IRGP seeks to promote research that will have a major impact in developing knowledge of Parkinson's disease. An effort is made to promote projects that have little hope of securing traditional funding.
• American Gastroenterological Association : The AGA offers multiple grants for research advancing the science and practice of Gastroenterology.
• The Obesity Society : The Obesity Society offers grants of up to $25,000 dollars to members doing research in areas related to obesity.
• The Sjögren's Syndrome Foundation : The SSF Research Grants Program places a high priority on both clinical and basic scientific research into the cause, prevention, detection, treatment, and cure of Sjögren's.
• The Melanoma Research Foundation : The MRF Research Grant Program emphasizes both basic and clinical research projects that explore innovative approaches to understanding melanoma and its treatment.

Education During Coronavirus

A Smithsonian magazine special report

Science | June 15, 2020

Seventy-Five Scientific Research Projects You Can Contribute to Online

From astrophysicists to entomologists, many researchers need the help of citizen scientists to sift through immense data collections

Rachael Lallensack

Former Assistant Editor, Science and Innovation

If you find yourself tired of streaming services, reading the news or video-chatting with friends, maybe you should consider becoming a citizen scientist. Though it’s true that many field research projects are paused , hundreds of scientists need your help sifting through wildlife camera footage and images of galaxies far, far away, or reading through diaries and field notes from the past.

Plenty of these tools are free and easy enough for children to use. You can look around for projects yourself on Smithsonian Institution’s citizen science volunteer page , National Geographic ’s list of projects and CitizenScience.gov ’s catalog of options. Zooniverse is a platform for online-exclusive projects , and Scistarter allows you to restrict your search with parameters, including projects you can do “on a walk,” “at night” or “on a lunch break.”

To save you some time, Smithsonian magazine has compiled a collection of dozens of projects you can take part in from home.

American Wildlife

If being home has given you more time to look at wildlife in your own backyard, whether you live in the city or the country, consider expanding your view, by helping scientists identify creatures photographed by camera traps. Improved battery life, motion sensors, high-resolution and small lenses have made camera traps indispensable tools for conservation.These cameras capture thousands of images that provide researchers with more data about ecosystems than ever before.

Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s eMammal platform , for example, asks users to identify animals for conservation projects around the country. Currently, eMammal is being used by the Woodland Park Zoo ’s Seattle Urban Carnivore Project, which studies how coyotes, foxes, raccoons, bobcats and other animals coexist with people, and the Washington Wolverine Project, an effort to monitor wolverines in the face of climate change. Identify urban wildlife for the Chicago Wildlife Watch , or contribute to wilderness projects documenting North American biodiversity with The Wilds' Wildlife Watch in Ohio , Cedar Creek: Eyes on the Wild in Minnesota , Michigan ZoomIN , Western Montana Wildlife and Snapshot Wisconsin .

"Spend your time at home virtually exploring the Minnesota backwoods,” writes the lead researcher of the Cedar Creek: Eyes on the Wild project. “Help us understand deer dynamics, possum populations, bear behavior, and keep your eyes peeled for elusive wolves!"

If being cooped up at home has you daydreaming about traveling, Snapshot Safari has six active animal identification projects. Try eyeing lions, leopards, cheetahs, wild dogs, elephants, giraffes, baobab trees and over 400 bird species from camera trap photos taken in South African nature reserves, including De Hoop Nature Reserve and Madikwe Game Reserve .

With South Sudan DiversityCam , researchers are using camera traps to study biodiversity in the dense tropical forests of southwestern South Sudan. Part of the Serenegeti Lion Project, Snapshot Serengeti needs the help of citizen scientists to classify millions of camera trap images of species traveling with the wildebeest migration.

Classify all kinds of monkeys with Chimp&See . Count, identify and track giraffes in northern Kenya . Watering holes host all kinds of wildlife, but that makes the locales hotspots for parasite transmission; Parasite Safari needs volunteers to help figure out which animals come in contact with each other and during what time of year.

Mount Taranaki in New Zealand is a volcanic peak rich in native vegetation, but native wildlife, like the North Island brown kiwi, whio/blue duck and seabirds, are now rare—driven out by introduced predators like wild goats, weasels, stoats, possums and rats. Estimate predator species compared to native wildlife with Taranaki Mounga by spotting species on camera trap images.

The Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) Instant Wild app has a dozen projects showcasing live images and videos of wildlife around the world. Look for bears, wolves and lynx in Croatia ; wildcats in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula ; otters in Hampshire, England ; and both black and white rhinos in the Lewa-Borana landscape in Kenya.

Under the Sea

Researchers use a variety of technologies to learn about marine life and inform conservation efforts. Take, for example, Beluga Bits , a research project focused on determining the sex, age and pod size of beluga whales visiting the Churchill River in northern Manitoba, Canada. With a bit of training, volunteers can learn how to differentiate between a calf, a subadult (grey) or an adult (white)—and even identify individuals using scars or unique pigmentation—in underwater videos and images. Beluga Bits uses a “ beluga boat ,” which travels around the Churchill River estuary with a camera underneath it, to capture the footage and collect GPS data about the whales’ locations.

Many of these online projects are visual, but Manatee Chat needs citizen scientists who can train their ear to decipher manatee vocalizations. Researchers are hoping to learn what calls the marine mammals make and when—with enough practice you might even be able to recognize the distinct calls of individual animals.

Several groups are using drone footage to monitor seal populations. Seals spend most of their time in the water, but come ashore to breed. One group, Seal Watch , is analyzing time-lapse photography and drone images of seals in the British territory of South Georgia in the South Atlantic. A team in Antarctica captured images of Weddell seals every ten minutes while the seals were on land in spring to have their pups. The Weddell Seal Count project aims to find out what threats—like fishing and climate change—the seals face by monitoring changes in their population size. Likewise, the Año Nuevo Island - Animal Count asks volunteers to count elephant seals, sea lions, cormorants and more species on a remote research island off the coast of California.

With Floating Forests , you’ll sift through 40 years of satellite images of the ocean surface identifying kelp forests, which are foundational for marine ecosystems, providing shelter for shrimp, fish and sea urchins. A project based in southwest England, Seagrass Explorer , is investigating the decline of seagrass beds. Researchers are using baited cameras to spot commercial fish in these habitats as well as looking out for algae to study the health of these threatened ecosystems. Search for large sponges, starfish and cold-water corals on the deep seafloor in Sweden’s first marine park with the Koster seafloor observatory project.

The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center needs your help spotting invasive species with Invader ID . Train your eye to spot groups of organisms, known as fouling communities, that live under docks and ship hulls, in an effort to clean up marine ecosystems.

If art history is more your speed, two Dutch art museums need volunteers to start “ fishing in the past ” by analyzing a collection of paintings dating from 1500 to 1700. Each painting features at least one fish, and an interdisciplinary research team of biologists and art historians wants you to identify the species of fish to make a clearer picture of the “role of ichthyology in the past.”

Interesting Insects

Notes from Nature is a digitization effort to make the vast resources in museums’ archives of plants and insects more accessible. Similarly, page through the University of California Berkeley’s butterfly collection on CalBug to help researchers classify these beautiful critters. The University of Michigan Museum of Zoology has already digitized about 300,000 records, but their collection exceeds 4 million bugs. You can hop in now and transcribe their grasshopper archives from the last century . Parasitic arthropods, like mosquitos and ticks, are known disease vectors; to better locate these critters, the Terrestrial Parasite Tracker project is working with 22 collections and institutions to digitize over 1.2 million specimens—and they’re 95 percent done . If you can tolerate mosquito buzzing for a prolonged period of time, the HumBug project needs volunteers to train its algorithm and develop real-time mosquito detection using acoustic monitoring devices. It’s for the greater good!

For the Birders

Birdwatching is one of the most common forms of citizen science . Seeing birds in the wilderness is certainly awe-inspiring, but you can birdwatch from your backyard or while walking down the sidewalk in big cities, too. With Cornell University’s eBird app , you can contribute to bird science at any time, anywhere. (Just be sure to remain a safe distance from wildlife—and other humans, while we social distance ). If you have safe access to outdoor space—a backyard, perhaps—Cornell also has a NestWatch program for people to report observations of bird nests. Smithsonian’s Migratory Bird Center has a similar Neighborhood Nest Watch program as well.

Birdwatching is easy enough to do from any window, if you’re sheltering at home, but in case you lack a clear view, consider these online-only projects. Nest Quest currently has a robin database that needs volunteer transcribers to digitize their nest record cards.

You can also pitch in on a variety of efforts to categorize wildlife camera images of burrowing owls , pelicans , penguins (new data coming soon!), and sea birds . Watch nest cam footage of the northern bald ibis or greylag geese on NestCams to help researchers learn about breeding behavior.

Or record the coloration of gorgeous feathers across bird species for researchers at London’s Natural History Museum with Project Plumage .

Pretty Plants

If you’re out on a walk wondering what kind of plants are around you, consider downloading Leafsnap , an electronic field guide app developed by Columbia University, the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Institution. The app has several functions. First, it can be used to identify plants with its visual recognition software. Secondly, scientists can learn about the “ the ebb and flow of flora ” from geotagged images taken by app users.

What is older than the dinosaurs, survived three mass extinctions and still has a living relative today? Ginko trees! Researchers at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History are studying ginko trees and fossils to understand millions of years of plant evolution and climate change with the Fossil Atmospheres project . Using Zooniverse, volunteers will be trained to identify and count stomata, which are holes on a leaf’s surface where carbon dioxide passes through. By counting these holes, or quantifying the stomatal index, scientists can learn how the plants adapted to changing levels of carbon dioxide. These results will inform a field experiment conducted on living trees in which a scientist is adjusting the level of carbon dioxide for different groups.

Help digitize and categorize millions of botanical specimens from natural history museums, research institutions and herbaria across the country with the Notes from Nature Project . Did you know North America is home to a variety of beautiful orchid species? Lend botanists a handby typing handwritten labels on pressed specimens or recording their geographic and historic origins for the New York Botanical Garden’s archives. Likewise, the Southeastern U.S. Biodiversity project needs assistance labeling pressed poppies, sedums, valerians, violets and more. Groups in California , Arkansas , Florida , Texas and Oklahoma all invite citizen scientists to partake in similar tasks.

Historic Women in Astronomy

Become a transcriber for Project PHaEDRA and help researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics preserve the work of Harvard’s women “computers” who revolutionized astronomy in the 20th century. These women contributed more than 130 years of work documenting the night sky, cataloging stars, interpreting stellar spectra, counting galaxies, and measuring distances in space, according to the project description .

More than 2,500 notebooks need transcription on Project PhaEDRA - Star Notes . You could start with Annie Jump Cannon , for example. In 1901, Cannon designed a stellar classification system that astronomers still use today. Cecilia Payne discovered that stars are made primarily of hydrogen and helium and can be categorized by temperature. Two notebooks from Henrietta Swan Leavitt are currently in need of transcription. Leavitt, who was deaf, discovered the link between period and luminosity in Cepheid variables, or pulsating stars, which “led directly to the discovery that the Universe is expanding,” according to her bio on Star Notes .

Volunteers are also needed to transcribe some of these women computers’ notebooks that contain references to photographic glass plates . These plates were used to study space from the 1880s to the 1990s. For example, in 1890, Williamina Flemming discovered the Horsehead Nebula on one of these plates . With Star Notes, you can help bridge the gap between “modern scientific literature and 100 years of astronomical observations,” according to the project description . Star Notes also features the work of Cannon, Leavitt and Dorrit Hoffleit , who authored the fifth edition of the Bright Star Catalog, which features 9,110 of the brightest stars in the sky.

Microscopic Musings

Electron microscopes have super-high resolution and magnification powers—and now, many can process images automatically, allowing teams to collect an immense amount of data. Francis Crick Institute’s Etch A Cell - Powerhouse Hunt project trains volunteers to spot and trace each cell’s mitochondria, a process called manual segmentation. Manual segmentation is a major bottleneck to completing biological research because using computer systems to complete the work is still fraught with errors and, without enough volunteers, doing this work takes a really long time.

For the Monkey Health Explorer project, researchers studying the social behavior of rhesus monkeys on the tiny island Cayo Santiago off the southeastern coast of Puerto Rico need volunteers to analyze the monkeys’ blood samples. Doing so will help the team understand which monkeys are sick and which are healthy, and how the animals’ health influences behavioral changes.

Using the Zooniverse’s app on a phone or tablet, you can become a “ Science Scribbler ” and assist researchers studying how Huntington disease may change a cell’s organelles. The team at the United Kingdom's national synchrotron , which is essentially a giant microscope that harnesses the power of electrons, has taken highly detailed X-ray images of the cells of Huntington’s patients and needs help identifying organelles, in an effort to see how the disease changes their structure.

Oxford University’s Comprehensive Resistance Prediction for Tuberculosis: an International Consortium—or CRyPTIC Project , for short, is seeking the aid of citizen scientists to study over 20,000 TB infection samples from around the world. CRyPTIC’s citizen science platform is called Bash the Bug . On the platform, volunteers will be trained to evaluate the effectiveness of antibiotics on a given sample. Each evaluation will be checked by a scientist for accuracy and then used to train a computer program, which may one day make this process much faster and less labor intensive.

Out of This World

If you’re interested in contributing to astronomy research from the comfort and safety of your sidewalk or backyard, check out Globe at Night . The project monitors light pollution by asking users to try spotting constellations in the night sky at designated times of the year . (For example, Northern Hemisphere dwellers should look for the Bootes and Hercules constellations from June 13 through June 22 and record the visibility in Globe at Night’s app or desktop report page .)

For the amateur astrophysicists out there, the opportunities to contribute to science are vast. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission is asking for volunteers to search for new objects at the edges of our solar system with the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project .

Galaxy Zoo on Zooniverse and its mobile app has operated online citizen science projects for the past decade. According to the project description, there are roughly one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. Surprisingly, identifying different types of galaxies by their shape is rather easy. “If you're quick, you may even be the first person to see the galaxies you're asked to classify,” the team writes.

With Radio Galaxy Zoo: LOFAR , volunteers can help identify supermassive blackholes and star-forming galaxies. Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout asks users to look for young, “clumpy” looking galaxies, which help astronomers understand galaxy evolution.

If current events on Earth have you looking to Mars, perhaps you’d be interested in checking out Planet Four and Planet Four: Terrains —both of which task users with searching and categorizing landscape formations on Mars’ southern hemisphere. You’ll scroll through images of the Martian surface looking for terrain types informally called “spiders,” “baby spiders,” “channel networks” and “swiss cheese.”

Gravitational waves are telltale ripples in spacetime, but they are notoriously difficult to measure. With Gravity Spy , citizen scientists sift through data from Laser Interferometer Gravitational­-Wave Observatory, or LIGO , detectors. When lasers beamed down 2.5-mile-long “arms” at these facilities in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington are interrupted, a gravitational wave is detected. But the detectors are sensitive to “glitches” that, in models, look similar to the astrophysical signals scientists are looking for. Gravity Spy teaches citizen scientists how to identify fakes so researchers can get a better view of the real deal. This work will, in turn, train computer algorithms to do the same.

Similarly, the project Supernova Hunters needs volunteers to clear out the “bogus detections of supernovae,” allowing researchers to track the progression of actual supernovae. In Hubble Space Telescope images, you can search for asteroid tails with Hubble Asteroid Hunter . And with Planet Hunters TESS , which teaches users to identify planetary formations, you just “might be the first person to discover a planet around a nearby star in the Milky Way,” according to the project description.

Help astronomers refine prediction models for solar storms, which kick up dust that impacts spacecraft orbiting the sun, with Solar Stormwatch II. Thanks to the first iteration of the project, astronomers were able to publish seven papers with their findings.

With Mapping Historic Skies , identify constellations on gorgeous celestial maps of the sky covering a span of 600 years from the Adler Planetarium collection in Chicago. Similarly, help fill in the gaps of historic astronomy with Astronomy Rewind , a project that aims to “make a holistic map of images of the sky.”

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Rachael Lallensack | READ MORE

Rachael Lallensack is the former assistant web editor for science and innovation at Smithsonian .

Small Grant

Main navigation.

Small Grants support smaller independent student-driven projects, and can also be used to enable a particular phase of a larger-scale effort.

Application Cycles:  Autumn 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024 Next Application Deadline:  Friday, April 12, 2024, 11:59 PM (PST)  Faculty Mentor Letter Deadline:  Friday, April 19, 2024, 11:59 (PST) Project Execution:  23-24 Academic Year (Note: Undergraduate Research does *not* award retroactive funding) Stipend:  Up to $1,500

• Autumn deadline: Friday, October 6, 2023
• Winter deadline: Friday, January 19, 2024
• Spring deadline: Friday, April 12, 2024
• Decisions are typically made within 6 weeks, and funding is disbursed approximately 3 weeks from award announcements

Where to Start

• Students interested in applying for a Small Grant should connect with their Faculty Mentor regarding their proposed project -  Faculty Mentors should meet eligibility criteria
• Students should  schedule a meeting with their Undergraduate Advising Director  to further discuss project development and the application process

Application Guidelines

• The proposal summary, reference list, and appendices do not count toward the word count.
• Read through the  Writing a Project Proposal  site for specific guidelines on how to write a grant proposal. 
• Click here to read more about the Human Subjects requirement.
• Not sure if your project needs IRB review?  Contact Stanford’s IRB at  [email protected]  to consult with them. 
• Animal Subjects Research - one-paragraph appendix: If your research involves animal subjects of any kind (vertebrate or invertebrate), you must include an Animal Subjects Research Appendix in your application. Federal law and Stanford University policy require APLAC/IACUC approval before animal subjects research can begin.  Click here to read more about the Animal Subjects requirement .
• Date of correspondence
• Indicates access to a research resource and clearly states what that resource is
• Contact information of your primary contact
• Students with multiple field contacts: Only one letter is required, but note that the Review Committee may request additional letters at the time of review
• International Travel Safety Plan:  A project or conference that involves international travel is required to have an International Travel Safety Plan. It must be included as an appendix in the grant proposal. For instructions on completing the travel plan, go to our International Travel webpage .
• Requesting a Faculty Letter of Support
• Writing a Project Proposal
• Constructing a Budget

Small Grant Policies & Eligibility

• * *In addition to the below criteria specific to the Small Grant, all undergraduate students must meet our  general eligibility requirements .** 
• Time commitment:  Students enrolled in classes full time (at least 12 units) are eligible for Small Grants, as long as projects take no more than 10 hours per week (equivalent to a 3-unit course)
• Participation in a part-time project by an unenrolled student does not make them eligible to live on campus
• Students may not receive both academic units and a stipend for any single project activity.
• Co-terms who have not conferred their undergraduate degree may apply if the project fits into their undergraduate academic trajectory, e.g., honors thesis, capstone project, etc. Students paying graduate tuition are ineligible.

Fundamental Standard

• Please note violations of Undergraduate Research policies are also violations of the  Fundamental Standard  and may be referred to the Office of Community Standards
• Students who fail to abide by the policies as set forth by Undergraduate Research, The Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, and Stanford University will have low priority for future Undergraduate Research funding opportunities
• Undergraduate Research reserves the right to rescind funding at any given point and time should they be apprised of any policy violations as outlined above or as listed on the  Eligibility Requirements webpage

Did you meet all the eligibility requirements? If so:

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 113 great research paper topics.

General Education

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

• Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
• Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
• How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
• How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
• How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
• How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

• What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
• How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
• How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
• Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
• What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
• What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
• How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
• How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
• How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
• What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
• What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
• What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
• Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies  (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
• Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
• Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
• Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
• Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
• Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
• How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
• Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
• What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
• How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
• What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
• Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
• Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
• Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
• How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
• Should graduate students be able to form unions?

• What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
• How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
• Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
• Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
• How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
• How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
• Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
• Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
• Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
• Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
• Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
• Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
• Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
• Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
• Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
• How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
• How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
• What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
• What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
• Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
• What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
• What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
• Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
• Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
• How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
• Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
• What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
• How does stress affect the body?
• Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
• What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
• Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
• How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
• What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
• What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
• Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
• What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
• What were the causes of the Civil War?
• How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
• Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
• What caused Hitler's rise to power?
• Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
• What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
• How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
• What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

• Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
• Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
• How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
• How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
• What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
• What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
• How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

• How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
• How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
• Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
• Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
• How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
• How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
• What are the pros and cons of fracking?
• What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
• What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
• How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
• Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
• Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
• What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
• What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
• How are black holes created?
• Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
• How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
• Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
• How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
• Has social media made people more or less connected?
• What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
• Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
• What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
• How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
• When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
• Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

What's Next?

Are you also learning about dynamic equilibrium in your science class? We break this sometimes tricky concept down so it's easy to understand in our complete guide to dynamic equilibrium .

Thinking about becoming a nurse practitioner? Nurse practitioners have one of the fastest growing careers in the country, and we have all the information you need to know about what to expect from nurse practitioner school .

Want to know the fastest and easiest ways to convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius? We've got you covered! Check out our guide to the best ways to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit (or vice versa).

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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Transport Research Arena 2024: advancing sustainable and inclusive mobility

Europe’s biggest transport research event brought together around 4,000 delegates to explore a smarter and greener mobility future.

The Transport Research Arena (TRA) took place 15 – 18 April in Dublin. TRA is one of the key European transport events, focusing on research and technology. The event covers all modes – road, rail, waterborne and air – and all aspects of mobility. Hosted by the Irish Department of Transport and co-organised by the European Commission, this year’s event welcomed around 4,000 visitors from Europe and beyond.

Under the theme “Transport Transitions: Advancing Sustainable and Inclusive Mobility” , discussions focused on innovations for more sustainable, as well as safer and more accessible, transport systems, prioritising the needs of all users.

Transformative times

The packed programme featured contributions from policymakers, entrepreneurs, industry leaders, researchers, and academics. Over four days, delegates had the opportunity to hear about the cutting-edge technology and ideas that will be central to how people and goods are moved in the years to come.

Addressing the opening session by video message, EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture Education and Youth, Illiana Ivanova , spoke of the importance of innovation and research for shaping our future mobility.

“Our transport systems are on the brink of a transformative era…The EU, through programmes such as Horizon Europe, is leading the way towards a more connected, efficient, safe and environmentally friendly world.”

Several sessions were organised by the European Commission and the European Climate, Infrastructure, and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA), covering a broad range of topics from sustainable urban mobility and transport resilience to waterborne decarbonisation and green ports and airports .

As keynote speaker in a session on “ Synergies to Deploy EU R&I”, CINEA Director, Paloma Aba Garrote  underlined the critical role of EU funding programmes for transport, not only for research but also deployment:

"Green innovation and investment is in our DNA. We are uniquely positioned to help leverage the complementarities between EU transport funding from research to deployment, and also, to advise beneficiaries on how to take their solutions from inception to market implementation."

Projects and results on show

#TRA2004 also hosted an important exhibition area with both static and live demonstrations on the latest transport technologies and innovations. The joint European Commission stand, bringing together CINEA and several Commission departments – DG Research and Innovation (DG RTD), DG Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE), and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) – drew great interest.

Hundreds of people, including a VIP tour from Irish Minister for Transport, Eamon Ryan and Director General of DG MOVE, Magda Kopczyńska, visited the projects on display ranging from an urban e-cargo trike to a self-charging drone. CINEA hosted two lunchtime sessions at the stand with project presentations on zero-emission vehicles and digital twins .

The research presented at TRA 2024 will serve as a catalyst, influencing policy decisions, supporting economic growth, shaping social development and technological advancements for carbon-free, accessible, and sustainable transport across all modes.

“Small keys can open big doors”

This ambition recalled the powerful speech at the opening session by Jack Kavanagh, a director of the Irish National Disability Authority , who was paralysed following a spinal cord injury while swimming on holiday in Portugal in 2012.

“I realised very quickly that the world was not flat, and it was full of barriers to entry,” he said. “The only important thing about design is how it relates to people...The environments around us make us and shape us; they enable or disable us.”

Addressing delegates, he said they had small keys that could be used to open big doors for those with disabilities by deploying a universal design approach, where “the normals are all of us”.

Event website

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