UConn's JEDI Initiative

Michael A. Invernale, PhD
Senior Licensing Manager
University of Connecticut


With the ever-changing world in which we live, it’s important to remember that we are all in this together. This June, the AUTM SCI Committee would like to celebrate and highlight an initiative at the University of Connecticut (UConn) that aims to bring together faculty, students, researchers, and STEAM careers of all kinds by stimulating research, conversations, and the work necessary to effect positive change across the globe with their JEDI Initiative. This program, highlighted in the university’s newsletter,  aims to support innovative research, scholarship, and creative work in topic areas related to fairness, access, inclusion, and representation among the STEAM community and beyond.
 
UConn intends to seed projects that have the potential to make significant contributions to ongoing scholarly, scientific, artistic, and related conversations in these vitally important domains. Improving competitiveness for emerging external funding opportunities related to access, representation, fairness, or inclusion, and novel interdisciplinary collaborations are particularly encouraged, involving as many research minds as possible to tackle this difficult facet of innovation. Proposals from all disciplines are invited, not limiting themselves to only one dimension of the overall intellectual property space.
 
Just under 8% of the FY25 research budget provided internally by UConn was allocated to this program. According to the Office of the Vice President for Research at UConn, “Our internal funding mechanisms are designed to competitively identify projects that fit our key funding criteria–projects that meet the highest disciplinary standards for excellence and are at a ‘tipping point’ where specific work can lead to breakthroughs, external funding, and/or significant recognition.” 
 
There are numerous opportunities, summarized here:

• Scholarship Facilitation Fund: open to applicants of all disciplines looking to further projects in “research, scholarship and creative endeavors”
• The UConn OVPR’s JEDI grant: open to researchers looking to further initiatives regarding inclusivity in any field, with three phases of increasing funding opportunities available
• The Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF): recipients are allotted a grant to pursue a creative or research endeavor of their proposal
• UConn IDEA grants: open to students with an interest in “creative endeavors, community service initiatives, entrepreneurial ventures, research projects, and other original and innovative projects”

Programs like these at UConn embody AUTM’s mission, as we seek to embolden, empower, and embrace innovation from all walks of life and all perspectives, bringing us the full picture of the elephant, so to speak, and not just its distinct and uniquely misleading constituent parts.
 
The SCI Committee would like to echo support for these initiatives, as well as provide examples for others who might be capable of launching and championing similar efforts across the academic community and at research institutions, at large.