Roger and Debbie West Student Grant Call for Proposals

We are looking for proposals that involve one or more of the research themes represented by ICAT:

Amplifying the Arts

Art and technology continually define and redefine our world. The collision of art, technology, and experimentation drive innovation in all directions. These projects demonstrate how technology can advance artistic practice and how art and design can elevate and improve scientific discovery and output.

Making Big Discoveries with Immersive Technologies

Immersive technologies are changing the research landscape. These projects use visual design, 3D modeling, animation, programming, motion capture integration, and true 360-degree sound to open up entire new worlds of exploration and discovery.

Empowering Data

Pioneering new possibilities with data. Projects explore and present data in some unexpected and surprising ways, introducing new perspectives that can pave the way for life-changing discoveries.

Bridging Physical Distance

With the propagation of the COVID-19 pandemic, what was once a matter of convenience is now a requirement. These projects go far beyond videoconferencing software and include the use of augmented and virtual reality technologies to bring people from around the world together in shared immersive digital spaces to connect, learn, and experience.

Engaging Community

Science should be available to everyone. Research shouldn’t be hidden in labs and buried on computer hard drives. Interactive technology brings data to life and tells the stories of researchers and their work, while sculptures and other works of art show data and computational processes in unexpected, captivating, and often very accessible ways.

Reimagining Education

These projects create educational environments that prepare students to confidently enter a world requiring creativity, adaptability, and collaboration. This work is changing where students learn, what students learn, and how students learn.

Designing a More Sustainable World

Creativity that spurs change. This work supports our ecological and cultural resilience.

Creating the Future of Work

Advances in technology are changing the ways we work. From the aesthetics, functionality, and even physical locations of our workplaces to the ways we collaborate with our co-workers and communicate with our clients, these projects focus on efficiency, productivity, and value.

Current students at Virginia Tech are invited to submit an application and lead a project team. The project lead must be enrolled at Virginia Tech in good standing as a graduate or undergraduate student.

In keeping with Virginia Tech’s Principles of Community (http://www.inclusive.vt.edu/), ICAT recognizes the critical importance of diverse teams of scholars. ICAT seeks to diversify its research teams along multiple dimensions. ICAT is dedicated to InclusiveVT — serving in the spirit of community, diversity, and excellence to create a community that nurtures learning and growth for all of its members.

Faculty Advisor: One faculty advisor is required per team, however teams map opt to have more than one team advisor. Please submit the Name, Department, and VT PID of the Team Advisor(s).

• Submission Due Dates: September 29, 2023
• Award Announcement: October 9, 2023
• ICAT Creativity + Innovation Day : May 6, 2024. Funded projects must participate.
• Teams retain right of ownership to their project, however teams agree to submit final documentation of  their project, which ICAT may use for publication purposes.
• Mid-point Pecha Kucha Presentation: January 26, 2024

Submissions will be limited to pages (8 1/2”X 11”), in PDF format, 3MB or under, including all text and images, excluding cover page with signatures. No video or audio files, please.

Please address each section in your proposal using Times New Roman 12 point font. Proposal should be limited to 5 pages including images. 

Complete team information 

• Project lead Information: name, college, major, email, and home department
• Team Member Information: names, college, major, emails, and home departments
• Faculty Advisor(s) Information: name, department, and email

Statement of Need/Project Description

• Statement of innovation
• Linkage to ICAT focal areas – see first page
• Where project work will happen and if technical resources from ICAT are needed

Methods and Strategies

• Describe the activities that will be conducted as part of your project

Goals and Objectives

• Describe the overall outcome your project aims to achieve
• Describe project outputs
• Describe plans for future funding, exhibition, etc

Plan for Evaluating Project Success

• Describe how you will evaluate if your project has been successful
• Describe anticipated outcomes and deliverables

Timeline

• Timeline should begin after October 27, 2023 and end by May 3, 2023. Please specify if a longer timeline is required.
• Budget and Budget Justification
  • Total budget request
  • Budget justification and amounts requested for:
  1. Equipment
     
  2. Materials and supplies

• Cover sheet to include:
  • Signatures of all team members
  • Signatures of faculty advisor
• Proposal Document (PDF submission to Melissa Wyers)

• Funds will be awarded to the project leads home department unless otherwise authorized by ICAT. All project expenses must be posted to Banner within 30 days of the project’s end date.
• Unspent funds must be transferred back to ICAT within 4 days of the project’s end date.
• Funds will not be awarded for conference travel, food, outside artist fees, or honorariums.
• Funds may be used for equipment, software, and materials. 

The proposals will be reviewed by ICAT members as well as a panel of student reviewers and then evaluated based on the following criteria: 

1. Intellectual merit and innovation
2. Interdisciplinary nature of the team
3. Correlation to the mission of ICAT and its studios
4. Broader impact of the project
5. Timeline
6. Clear outcome and deliverables
7. Alignment with project categories and/or themes