UMKC Faculty Research and Innovation Excellence Awards - 2025-2026

The UMKC Research Catalyst Award 

• Concept: This award celebrates faculty who secure their first major external research grant as a Principal Investigator (PI) at UMKC. Crucially, it looks beyond federal funding to recognize support from the full spectrum of sponsors.
• Rationale: This award is designed to spark the grant-seeking careers of our faculty, especially those early in their journey at UMKC. By celebrating grants from private foundations, corporations, and state or local governments, we send a clear message: UMKC is committed to building a diverse and resilient funding portfolio. This award marks the essential first step in a career of recognized research excellence, encouraging faculty to jump into the competitive funding arena and stay engaged. Recognition also includes a $1,500 monetary award.
• Award Criteria:
  • Awarded for a faculty member's first external grant as a PI or Co-PI at UMKC, with a value exceeding $500,000 in direct costs.
  • All funding sources are celebrated, including federal agencies, state governments, private foundations, and industry-sponsored research contracts.
  • To encourage broad participation in sponsored research, several Catalyst Awards may be presented each year.

Note: Nominations for this category will be automatically generated by the Office of Research and Innovation in accordance with the award criteria. Eligible nominees will be duly notified.

The Chancellor's Award for Transformative Research Leadership 

• Concept: The Chancellor's Award for Transformative Research Leadership is the premier honor celebrating the remarkable leadership, strategic vision, and collaborative mastery required to assemble and lead a winning team for a large, complex, and often interdisciplinary research grant. This distinguished award recognizes the faculty member who successfully navigates the intense demands of securing major external funding by demonstrating exceptional ability in forming synergistic partnerships that bridge disciplines, institutions, and expertise. It is a direct acknowledgment from the highest office that successful team science is critical to the university's mission.
• Rationale: This award is about more than recognizing a dollar figure; it fundamentally highlights the sophisticated leadership and collaborative spirit essential to securing transformative grants at a top-tier R1 institution. By establishing this award, the university directly champions the strategic goal of pursuing more large, multi-investigator proposals, which are vital for increasing our research enterprise and institutional impact.
  • Elevating Team Science: This award makes a public declaration that building and leading successful research teams is one of the most valuable and difficult contributions a faculty member can make to the university.
  • Driving Strategic Focus: It encourages faculty to target the most complex, societal-scale problems that require interdisciplinary solutions, thus aligning our research portfolio with national priorities and institutional strengths.
  • Faculty Impact and Prestige: Elevated to a Chancellor's-level honor, this recognition provides a powerful, career-defining credential that elevates the awardee's national reputation, validates their expertise as a research leader, and signifies the profound value the university places on their contribution.
  In recognition of this significant achievement, the honored investigator will receive a $2,500 monetary award and be formally recognized at a university-wide event.
• Award Criteria:
  • Honors a PI's first-time success at UMKC in securing a single award of more than $2 million.
  • Nominees must demonstrate their leadership in building and guiding a team that includes multiple investigators, disciplines, or institutions.
  • Proposals that advance UMKC's key research areas—such as national security, artificial intelligence (AI), and translational research—will receive special consideration.

Submit Nomination for The Chancellor's Award for Transformative Research Leadership

The UMKC Innovation & Societal Impact Award 

• Concept: This award is an honor focused on real-world results. It recognizes faculty whose research moves from the lab to the community, creating tangible social or economic benefits that embody UMKC's mission as an urban-serving university.
• Rationale: This award directly encourages faculty to pursue work that enhances the societal impact of university innovations, a key goal of our strategic plan. Instead of just rewarding the first step of filing a patent, it celebrates the more challenging and meaningful achievements: licensing a technology, launching a startup, or putting a research-based solution to work on a pressing community problem. This focus on real-world impact aligns with the most forward-thinking awards at our peer institutions and underscores UMKC's promise that our discoveries will benefit the public. Recognition also includes a $1,500 monetary award in each key area.
• Award Criteria: Honors a faculty member's first major achievement at UMKC in two key areas of impact (separate awards):
  • Commercial Impact: From patent to product—awarded when a foundational patent is licensed to a company or becomes the basis for a new startup.
  • Entrepreneurial Impact: From idea to enterprise—awarded for launching a new startup company based on UMKC intellectual property.

Additionally, the awards ceremony will recognize all faculty members who have been issued a patent or have licensed an invention.

Submit Nomination for The UMKC Innovation and Societal Impact Award 

The N.T. Veatch Award for Community Impact 

• Concept: This prestigious award honors a faculty member whose distinguished research, scholarly, or creative work has been successfully translated into a tangible and positive impact on the community. It recognizes the vital role of university scholarship in addressing critical community needs and improving public well-being.
• Rationale: By linking the esteemed N.T. Veatch name with community-focused outcomes, this award elevates and incentivizes the practice of engaged scholarship, directly fulfilling UMKC's mission as an urban-serving institution. Recognition also includes a $3,500 monetary award.
• Award Criteria: This award recognizes a faculty member for the development and implementation of a research-based program, policy, or creative work with a demonstrable and documented positive impact on a community, social issue, or public policy. Nominees should demonstrate sustained leadership and innovation in extending university knowledge for the public benefit.

Submit Nomination for The N.T. Veatch Award for Community Impact 

The UMKC Trustees' Faculty Scholar Award/A Rising Star Award

• Concept: This award serves as the university's premier "Rising Star" recognition, honoring early-career faculty who show exceptional promise and are on a clear trajectory toward becoming leaders in their fields of research, scholarship, or creative work. 
• Rationale: This award provides a crucial milestone of recognition for pre-tenured and early-career faculty, incentivizing the ambitious work that leads to a successful research career. By celebrating emerging leaders, the university can better retain top talent and motivate junior faculty by showing a clear path to institutional acknowledgment, directly supporting the strategic goal of increasing the number of faculty submitting competitive grant proposals. Recognition also includes a $2,500 monetary award for each category.
• Award Criteria:
  • Eligible nominees are typically tenure-track faculty who have demonstrated a strong record of early research or creative accomplishments and a clear, ambitious agenda for future work.
  • To ensure equitable recognition across the breadth of the university's scholarly activity, nominations will be solicited and awarded in two distinct categories: STEM and non-STEM disciplines (including arts, humanities, and social sciences).
  • Nominations should provide evidence of a growing national or international reputation and the potential for significant future impact in the nominee's field.

Submit Nomination for The UMKC Trustees' Faculty Scholar Award (A Rising Star Award) 

The UMKC Trustees' Faculty Fellowship Award 

• Concept: As the university's honor for a senior faculty member, this award recognizes an established scholar whose sustained body of work has earned significant international recognition and impact. It celebrates the pinnacle of a research career and acknowledges those who elevate UMKC's profile on the world stage.
• Rationale: This capstone award is vital to UMKC's vision as a 21st-century global urban research university. It provides a mechanism to reward the highest levels of excellence, particularly in fields where success is measured by international prestige, seminal publications, and prestigious fellowships rather than solely by grant funding. Recipients serve as role models and mentors, inspiring colleagues and students by embodying the highest standards of academic excellence. Recognition also includes a $7,500 monetary award.
• Award Criteria:
  • Eligible nominees must be full-time, regular faculty who have been at UMKC for a minimum of three years and have a sustained, internationally recognized record of research or creative accomplishments.
  • The nomination must demonstrate exceptional achievement that has garnered significant international acclaim, evidenced through avenues such as:
    • Receiving a highly prestigious international award or fellowship (e.g., Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright Senior Scholar, membership in a national academy).
    • Publishing a seminal work (a book or series of articles) that is recognized as having transformed its field, as shown by significant international citations, reviews, and awards.
    • Leading a major international research collaboration, artistic endeavor, or scholarly society that brings significant distinction to the university.

Submit Nomination for The UMKC Trustees' Faculty Fellowship Award