Catalyst Program – Ready, Set, Go
The Catalyst Program has been revamped to meet evolving needs and priorities across an increasingly mixed funding and partnership landscape. Success in the most strategic and transformative funding areas often requires strong interdisciplinary teams, cross-sector partnerships, grand ideas, and an intersection of center-like activities that bridge research, scholarship, workforce development, translation to practice, community engagement, and more.
Ready, Set, and Go is an enhanced series of Catalyst programs that strives to foster a more developed pipeline of high-impact interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary teams with increased readiness and competitiveness to secure major funding opportunities that tackle grand societal and scientific challenges.
- Ready will inspire and prime the Catalyst-level vision and collaborative connections of future Catalyst teams.
- Set will prepare nascent teams with strong potential for high-impact, center-level funding to have a developed foundation for pursuing complex and strategic opportunities in a shortened time frame.
- Go will support more mature teams who are both ready and set to fully pursue substantial, Catalyst-level partnerships and funding.
Ready
Ready is the first in this series of programs, aimed at enhancing the research enterprise by inspiring and priming the Catalyst-level vision and collaborative connections of future Catalyst teams.
Ready is intended to prompt transformative teams, or people looking to create transformative teams, to begin thinking big and begin making connections. This phase will include a series of speakers and follow-on sessions with the OVPR’s Research Acceleration Office.
Set
Set is the second program phase, aimed at preparing nascent interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary teams to pursue substantial, high-impact funding opportunities and substantial, multi-sector collaborations under an increasingly broad funding portfolio. The anticipated outcomes of this targeted team development program will be decreased risk and increased readiness levels for teams interested in pursuit of noteworthy, large-scale funding opportunities.
Set will result in better preparation for other OVPR strategic programs, including the next FY26 Go phase of the Catalyst Program (anticipated release in FY26). See below for more information about the Set phase official request for proposals.
Past Cohorts:
Accelerating Translational Aging Research at CSU: Developing an Innovative Comparative Pipeline
This team will establish dogs as key models for age-related human cognitive decline. They will work with cell-based models as well as companion animals, and people to study human aging and diseases. This team is led by Karyn Hamilton, Professor of Health and Exercise Science and Director of the Translational Research on Aging and Chronic Disease Laboratory.
The Soil Carbon Solutions Center: Enhancing livelihoods and mitigating climate change through cutting-edge research, tools, and implementation
The Soil Carbon Solutions Center will develop soil-based solutions as a critical CO2 greenhouse gas removal technology, and a means to improve sustainable food, fiber and bioenergy production, and environmental health. This team is led by Keith Paustian, University Distinguished Professor in Soil and Crop Sciences and Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory.
Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence (CHCC)
The Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence (CHCC) is focused on integrating transformative science, education, and outreach to minimize conflict and facilitate coexistence between humans and carnivores. This team is led by Kevin Crooks, Professor in Fish, Wildlife, & Conservation Biology.
Center for Metabolism of Infectious Diseases (C4MInD) Accelerator
C4MInD represents the first academic center that targets the connection between metabolism and infectious disease. The mission of C4MInD is to enable the development of new treatments, preventions, and diagnostics for infectious diseases by resolving host-vector-pathogen-environment interactions at a metabolic level. This team is led by John Belisle, Professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology and Director of the Rocky Mountain Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease Research.
Virtual Reality for Veterinary Training
The Virtual Reality for Veterinary Training team will develop a virtual reality training program that will provide the current need for remote, hands-on veterinary training tools to educate animal care professionals. Students, veterinarians, nurses, and technicians will use this virtual reality training program to develop their skills in veterinary medicine. This team is led by Pedro Boscan, Professor of Clinical Sciences and Anesthesiologist at the Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital.
The Climate Adaptation Partnership (CAP) for Policy Innovation and Research Coordination
The CAP team will coordinate research and policy outreach to address the grand societal challenge of how social and ecological systems can successfully adapt in the face of climate change. CAP will pursue unique fundraising and research opportunities and train researchers in federal and state policy outreach to increase their impact and fundraising success. This team is led by Courtney Schultz, Associate Professor of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship and Director of the Public Lands Policy Group.
Enriched Environments for the Healthy, Aging Brain: This team will provide one of the only large-scale, transdisciplinary assessments of non-pharmacological intervention in the U.S. for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Rural Wealth Creation: Exploring food systems-led development strategies: The project seeks to understand how food system strategies can contribute to social, cultural, human, political, physical, natural, and financial capital in rural communities.
Securing Life Science Infrastructures: This team will examine the adoption of security policies that protect life-science infrastructures from exposure to biological agents that can compromise human health, food supplies, or natural resources.
TagTeam: New Molecular Tags for In Vivo Imaging and Editing: To better facilitate future basic and applied research that depends on the imaging or editing of specific molecules inside living cells; this team will produce new reliable molecular tools to “click” biomolecules together.
TerraForma: Simulating Reality in Artificial Ecosystems: To understand diseases better, this team will look at creating artificial ecosystems or “worlds-in-a-bottle” to evaluate and control the role of environmental changes in the transmission of animal and plant pathogens.
Coalition for Development and Implementation of Sensor Systems: The mission of this team is to unite researchers focused on designing and developing integrated chemical and biological sensors and sensor networks that address critical needs in prevention, monitoring, and treatment applications including infectious diseases, cancer, water, food safety and energy.
Developing Advanced Polymeric Materials for Grand Challenges: This group will develop and exploit new synergies to solve two grand challenges associated with modern polymers and plastics: development of renewable/ sustainable feed stocks for polymers and designing biocompatible polymers for use in applications such as tissue engineering, vascular grafts and implantable medical devices.
Fort Collins Urban Resiliency: EcoDistricts and Triple-Helix Community Development: As the earth’s population becomes increasingly urban, cities are facing complex economic, social, and environmental challenges that are best met through the collaborative effort of municipalities, private business, and researchers – the triple-helix approach proposed by this team.
Institute for Genome Architecture and Function: Establishing an institute for Genome Architecture and Function will allow this team of researchers to explore the organization of genetic material in the cell which affects the development and progression of a wide range of diseases including cancer.
Innovation Center for Sustainable Agriculture: Through this initiative, the team will advance innovations to feed more people with reduced environmental impacts globally by harnessing the power of soil microbial communities and plant-soil-microbe interactions.
Partnership for Air Quality, Climate, Health: This team will implement a structure and support facility to comprehensively integrate CSU-wide capabilities in air quality, climate, and health, while focusing on communicating scientific findings to stakeholders in innovative ways so as to inform and direct individuals as well as climate policy.
Smart Village Microgrid: The overall goal of this initiative is to establish a trans-disciplinary and cross-cultural team to design, test, and validate energy-based solutions for rural African villages utilizing microgrid technology built on clean energy and hopes to use this effort as a catalyst for comprehensive rural development.