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Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants

Burroughs Wellcome Fund

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund aims to stimulate growth of new connections between thinkers working in largely disconnected fields who might together change the course of climate change’s impact on human health. In the three years between Fall 2023 and Summer 2026, we will dedicate $1M to supporting small, early stage grants of $2,500–$50,000 toward achieving this goal.

We are particularly but not exclusively interested in activities that build connections between basic/early biomedical scientific approaches and ecological, environmental, geological, geographic, and planetary-scale thinking, as well as with population-focused fields including epidemiology and public health, demography, economics, and urban planning. Also of interest is work piloting new approaches or new interactions toward reducing the impact of health-centered activities, for example, developing more sustainable systems for health care, care delivery, and biomedical research systems. Another area of interest is preparation for the impacts of extreme weather and other crises that can drive large scale disruptions that will immediately impact human health and delivery of health care. Public outreach, climate communication, and education efforts focused on the intersection of climate and health are also appropriate for this call.

Work focused on issues like heat, particulates, fire, and f looding is not competitive if it does not pull in substantial thinking about climate. Simply stating that heat, for example, is increasingly viewed as a problem is not enough.

This program supports work conceived through many kinds of creative thinking. Successful applicants include not only academic scientists, physicians, and public health experts, but also community organizations, science outreach centers, non-biomedical academic departments, and more. A list of grant recipients from earlier rounds is available on the program’s web page.

Proposals will be reviewed quarterly from September 2021 through July 2026. After each quarterly review, we will support or decline applications.

AI Based Application Success Predictor

✅ 1. Investigator-first orientation

BWF funds people, not just projects.

Winning profiles show:

self-directed independence

demonstrated creativity

track record of initiative

original intellectual contributions (not extension of PI’s program)

Letters must strongly emphasize leadership potential.

✅ 2. Cross-disciplinary fluency

BWF celebrates hybrid scientists:

physics/CS → biology

engineering → medicine

quantitative → immunology

computational + experimental fluency

Monoculture CVs rarely stand out.

✅ 3. Conceptual originality

Committees respond to:

new paradigms

non-incremental questions

reframing of field assumptions

Being merely technically clever is insufficient.

✅ 4. Strong publication “signal”

Patterns among winners:

first/second-author papers in high-impact journals OR

computational/tool papers with broad adoption

unusually innovative work, even if N < 3 papers

Trajectory matters more than sheer volume.

✅ 5. Intellectual independence from mentors

Winning dossiers demonstrate:

divergently framed hypotheses

distinct research niches

original conceptual architecture

Dependency on mentor’s program → risk flag.

✅ 6. High-risk / high-reward — with mitigation

BWF tolerates conceptual risk only if:

technical fail-safes are present

alternative readouts prepared

endpoint feasibility shown

No contingency = panel anxiety.

✅ 7. Narrative of impact beyond lab

BWF favors scientists who:

build platforms

form communities

democratize methods

translate concepts across silos

They’re investing in future leaders.

✅ 8. Strong mentorship environment

Winning applications consistently:

articulate structured mentorship committees

describe milestone-based guidance

demonstrate institutional support (protected time)

Weak departmental signals reduce confidence.

✅ 9. Infectious enthusiasm & vision

Panelists repeatedly emphasize:

clarity of scientific “why”

storytelling that frames the problem, not just technique

boldness grounded in logic

Dry proposals underperform.

✅ 10. Clear differentiation from funding peers

Applicants who highlight:

what only they can uniquely do

their niche in the ecosystem
score disproportionately well.

🔬 Program-Specific Signals

CASI (Career Awards at the Scientific Interface)

Successful threads:

computational tool development

single-cell analysis frameworks

generative modeling of biological systems

causal network inference

synthetic biology design algorithms

Engineering/quantitative novelty matters.

PATH (Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease)

Patterns:

host–pathogen interaction mechanisms

immune evasion logic

cell-state transitions

pathogen-driven signaling perturbations

Pure descriptive pathogenomics underperforms.

CAMS (Career Awards for Medical Scientists)

Strong signals:

direct patient relevance

bridging clinical and mechanistic work

unmet medical needs

longitudinal sample access

Clinic-based feasibility is scrutinized.

Innovation in Regulatory Science

Funded proposals often:

quantify off-target risk

build predictive toxicity models

develop ML-based safety algorithms

improve regulatory trial design

Policy/analytics hybrids excel.

🚀 Other Strong Predictors

✅ Ability to articulate a 5–10 year trajectory

Where is the field going, and how will you shape it?

✅ Societal relevance (without mission drift)

Ethical, equitable, scalable impact matters.

✅ Demonstrated teaching, mentoring, outreach

“Community builder” signals predict success.

📉 Common Reviewer Critiques (predictors of failure)

✘ Incremental extension of mentor’s science
✘ Too descriptive — weak mechanistic hypothesis
✘ Excessive technical ambition without fallback
✘ Unclear independence trajectory
✘ Vague institutional support
✘ Narrow skillset (no cross-disciplinary element)
✘ No narrative arc linking projects to identity

🎭 Unwritten cultural biases

The applicant is the product.

Conceptual creativity outweighs technical virtuosity.

Leadership potential > publication count.

Interdisciplinarity is not optional.

👥 Awardee Profile Patterns

Funded individuals often show:

one “signature” paper/tool

original pipeline or assay

public resource contribution

conference presence outside home domain

evidence of thought leadership (reviews, workshops)

🧵 Winning Aim Structure (Meta-Model)

Aim 1 — Foundational mechanistic question
Aim 2 — Causal perturbation to test generality
Aim 3 — Computational or technological platform extension
(with contingency fallback)

Two deep aims > three superficial ones.

💰 Budget Success Patterns

Boards like budgets that:

invest in innovation infrastructure

modestly support personnel

avoid large equipment asks

include computational cost clarity

Consumes aligned with risk mitigation are viewed favorably.

⚠️ Reviewer red-flag words

Avoid emphasizing:

incremental improvement

exploratory correlation

feasibility unknown

descriptive profiling

Replace with:

causal testing

model-driven interrogation

generalizable frameworks

🏁 Condensed Success Fingerprint

A competitive BWF candidate:

✅ cross-disciplinary thinker
✅ independently conceptualized research niche
✅ bold, causal questions
✅ fallback strategies for high-risk tasks
✅ strong mentorship ecosystem
✅ trajectory toward scientific leadership
✅ platform or tool projected impact
✅ community-building ethos

Specialties

Clinical Trials

Others

Environmental Health

Eligibility Requirements

Applications must be submitted by non-profit organizations or degree-granting institutions in the United States or Canada. Applicant organizations may submit multiple proposals, but an individual may only serve as a principal investigator/project director on one application during each review period.

This call focuses on developing partnerships. Proposals from single institutions must develop partnerships that do not already occur naturally: for example, institutions proposing to link work already connected by other grants will not be competitive. Proposals from more than one institution are responsive. Academic institutions, professional societies, and advocacy organizations are only a few of the appropriate drivers of proposals. Only non-profit institutions may be supported by BWF’s award, but non-profits may involve for profit organizations in their proposals. This program does not support biomedical research projects proposed by individual investigators, but only by collaborative teams.

Eligible proposals will include rationale/vision for the project, including who it is intended to impact.

Individuals may only serve twice as directors (principal investigators/project directors) for proposals supported over time by this program. Current and past awardees from other BWF programs are eligible to apply.

Sponsor Details

Sponsor Institute/Organizations: Burroughs Wellcome Fund

Sponsor Type: Corporate/Non-Profit

Address: 21 T.W. Alexander Drive Durham, NC 27713-2847 919-991-5100

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