Burroughs Wellcome Fund Climate + Health Excellence (CHEX) Centers

Program Summary

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund has announced Climate + Health Excellence (CHEX) Centers awards of up to $10 million (5 years @ $2M/year, maximum) to increase awardees’ capacity for innovation at the interface of climate and health by enhancing research collaborations, training professional students and valuing outward focus/communications. The Centers will facilitate collaboration between fields and organizations that aim to understand and mitigate the impact of climate change on human health. UCI can only submit one application, though individual faculty may also participate in a consortium with other institutions.

In general, this award will support institutions or consortia that are already moving toward establishing themselves as centers of excellence for understanding climate change’s impact on human health and for leadership in climate education OR public communication around climate and health.

Applications from institutions just starting to integrate Climate + Health into their planning will not be competitive.

Internal Application Process

Up to three awards will be made over two rounds of competition. This will be an extremely competitive program. We believe that UCI’s best chance of success is if we have an application that includes faculty from across campus and external partners with already established relationships. We encourage you to apply jointly.

Please apply by Tuesday, May 27th by submitting through the UCI Review site.

Rather than writing an LOI, you will answer Burroughs Wellcome Fund’s detailed questions on

• the theme and structure of your center
• its effect on UCI’s capacity to sustain strategies for improving human health challenges associated with climate change
• including those whose fields have traditionally not been part of science, technology, or health-focused efforts
• its impact in the next 10-20 years
• plus provide an extremely short summary and names/departments/Schools of potential collaborators.

Notification will be made in time for the nominee to meet the August 7 LOI deadline.

Full details of the call can be found here and a summary of the CHEX webinar, the call pdf and additional information are here.

For questions regarding the CHEX program, please contact Heather Fessler in Corporate & Foundation Relations (CFR), and for questions regarding the internal competition review process, please contact Mike Gallo in the Office of Research