On Aug. 31, 2020, the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) announced it had launched a new internal funding program to support researchers at all of UConn’s campuses who were using their expertise in fields as diverse as wastewater and chemosensory testing to find novel solutions to help the nation and the world address this crisis. The program will award up to $50,000 to recipients. The OVPR anticipated making up to three awards.

The UConn COVID-19 Rapid Start Funding Program (COVID-RSF) follows the example of several federal funding agencies that are providing emergency support to address key scientific problems related to the detection, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of Coronavirus.

The program aims to fund high-impact projects that will be ready to launch in a short period of time in areas that have been identified by funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health as high priority. These include, but are not limited to, wastewater detection of SARS-COV-2, novel biosensing from skin and mouth, surveillance methods for high risk populations, automatic detection and tracing, use of artificial intelligence, and data management.