Stanford C-ShaRP
c-ShARP Community of Shared Advanced Research Platforms .

FY26 C-ShaRP Instrumentation & Enhancement Program

C-ShaRP welcomes proposals for acquisitions, programs, or other enhancements to Shared Facilities that benefit the user community at large. Shared Facilities span SOM, SOE, H&S, and SDSS and are an essential community for researchers; they include nanofabrication and characterization (SNF, SNSF), mass spectrometry (SUMS), NMR, imaging (BioX, cEMc, CNI, CSIF, Lucas Center, Wu Tsai Neuro), life sciences/medicine (ChEM-H, FACS, Functional Genomics, BSL-3), and sustainability (SDSS facilities), among others on campus, as well as shared facilities at SLAC.

C-ShaRP manages three internal funding programs: the C-ShaRP Experiential Learning program, the C-ShaRP Voucher program, and the C-ShaRP Instrumentation and Enhancement Program. Now in its fourth year, the C-ShaRP Instrumentation and Enhancement Program has received 124 proposals requesting $101.3M in funding. Thanks to funding from the VPDoR, Deans and the Provost, nearly half of the submitted proposals have been funded.  

We are excited to announce the proposal call for FY26 C-ShaRP Instrumentation and Enhancement Program. We welcome proposals across all disciplines and all shared facilities. 

Timeline

December 2, 2024: call for proposals released
February 3, 2025: proposals due at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time
June 3, 2025: decisions sent to awardees
September 1, 2025: funds made available

Eligibility

All Stanford faculty and shared facility staff are eligible to apply as the primary applicant. There must be at least one co-applicant who represents the shared facility where the proposed activities will be performed, unless the primary applicant is also the facility representative. See Proposal Format section for further details.

Budget

The total budget request per proposal should not be lower than $50K and not exceed $2M, including all appropriate taxes, shipping, training (both vendor costs and staff costs). We will consider a higher request of up to $4M for exceptional cases. Proposals requesting over $2M should provide thorough justifications in the narrative, clearly stating what will be compromised if the portion above $2M is unavailable and explaining what is feasible if only $2M is awarded. In those cases, we strongly encourage proposers to contact the Program Director prior to proposal submission.   Applicants are strongly encouraged to apply for external funding opportunities when eligible (e.g., NIH S10 or NSF MRI), and may either apply for C-ShaRP funds as institutional support or to support preparation for an external application, or apply in parallel with the understanding that successful external funding will supersede C-ShaRP awards, enabling C-ShaRP funding to benefit other applications. Applying for external grants will not impact the C-ShaRP review process.

Cost Sharing

Cost sharing is not required. However, proposers are encouraged to seek financial support from outside of C-ShaRP, such as the NIH S10 and NSF MRI mechanisms. Such support should be documented in the form of a letter of support and will be reviewed favorably. Support may include matching funds or instrumentation grants; financial support for installation, maintenance, and operation; and other contributions from departments, schools, shared facilities, and Principal Investigators (PIs).

Supported Activities

  • Acquisition of new capabilities
  • Upgrading or replacing aging equipment
  • Expanding instrumentation capacity 
  • Enhancing user experience
  • Short-term staff salary to support new instrument implementation 

Non-Supported Activities

  • Requests that support a single PI laboratory or facilities that are not open-access
  • Instrument service/maintenance plans beyond basic plans offered with instrument purchase (typically 1 year)
  • Staff salaries to maintain instrument operations
  • Graduate student or postdoctoral scholar stipends
  • Payment of shared facility services (proposers should apply to the C-ShaRP Voucher Program)
  • Experiential learning activities for students (proposers should apply to the C-ShaRP Experiential Learning Program)

Letters of Support

Applications may include  letters of support from University faculty and/or leadership describing the impact to their programs or users in their community.

Application Portal

Applications are accepted on Stanford’s Seed Funding website.