Research grants often come with rules. Researchers may receive hundreds of thousands of dollars to support a project, however, those funds are tied to the specific work outlined in the grant. They cannot always be used to address an unexpected expense, support a new research direction, or fill a gap in a team member’s salary.
For those purposes, the University of Colorado Anschutz Department of Medicine’s Research Investment in the Scientific Enterprise, or RISE, program has helped researchers when needs arise.
Launched in 2024, RISE provides flexible research funding to Department of Medicine faculty who secure qualifying extramural funding. Depending on their level of eligible funding, investigators can receive $20,000, $40,000, or even $50,000 annually through the Department of Medicine. The funds can be used for a range of research needs, including salaries, data collection, statistical analysis, publication costs, research supplies, and other expenses.
For Janine Higgins, PhD, vice chair for research in the Department of Medicine, the program was designed to address a simple problem: Researchers need flexibility to keep their work moving forward. “It allows us to pursue new ideas that we wouldn't be able to do under an existing grant,” Higgins says. “We can start a small pilot version” rather than wait a year or two for another grant.
That flexibility can make a difference at every stage of research, from supporting a research assistant to generating preliminary data for a new grant.
For Amy Keller, PhD, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes, RISE funding helped her laboratory add research expertise and move several projects forward.
Keller studies the early pathology of cardiovascular disease in the context of diabetes. Her research includes investigating plant compounds that may support cardiovascular health and studying the relationship between adipose tissue and blood vessels.
When Keller received RISE funding, she used part of it to support an additional research assistant who brought expertise in RNA sequencing, a technique that can generate large amounts of information about gene activity.
The additional support allowed her team to analyze data that Keller did not have the capacity to explore on her own. “That kind of expertise and the time for someone to be dedicated to it really took us forward,” Keller says.
The investment helped advance two projects, contributed to publications, and helped Keller move toward a new research grant. Without RISE funding, Keller says, her research would have fallen behind. “I would definitely be behind,” she says. “I feel like I'm in a really good position with several different avenues of research that were taken forward in really meaningful ways.”
Sachin Wani, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Katy O and Paul M Rady Endowed Chair in Esophageal Cancer Research has used RISE funding to support specialized research expertise. Wani and his collaborators used RISE funds to support computer scientists developing and validating a machine-learning model to predict the risk and timing of recurrence of Barrett’s esophagus-related dysplasia and cancer after endoscopic eradication therapy.
The multicenter project used prospective data from more than 1,000 patients and was conducted in collaboration with the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University and participating medical centers. The resulting model showed strong performance and could eventually help personalize surveillance strategies for patients.
“Flexible, research funding means a great deal to me as a principal investigator,” Wani says. He explains that RISE funding can support preliminary data for future grant applications, help researchers pursue hypothesis-generating ideas, and provide resources to complete projects that have lost funding.
A grant may provide the resources needed to conduct a specific study, but the results can lead to new questions, unexpected findings or promising directions that were not part of the original proposal. RISE gives investigators another source of support to follow those opportunities.
The need for flexible research funding becomes even more apparent when research funding itself is uncertain. Eric Campbell, PhD, professor of medicine in the Division of Internal Medicine and director of research at the CU Anschutz Center for Bioethics and Humanities, said the current research environment has created significant challenges for investigators seeking federal funding.
“RISE is, to me, the exemplar of the commitment of an organization to its researchers,” Campbell says.
Campbell and his colleagues have used RISE funding in a variety of ways, including helping cover salary gaps for faculty and research staff and supporting junior investigators whose grants did not provide full salary coverage.
He also plans to use RISE funding to build expertise in bioethics and artificial intelligence within his research group. The flexibility is important because research teams do not always fit neatly into the boundaries of individual grants.
“I don't know what would have happened to the research (without RISE funding), but we would have had to have either cut people's salaries or let them go,” he says.
Wani has also used RISE funding to maintain research personnel and equipment and sustain his research team’s infrastructure.
For Campbell, the value of RISE is not simply the amount of money. It is the ability to put resources where they are needed at a particular moment. “It's just a little bit of money at the right time to do the right thing,” he says.
RISE was created to provide a clearer and more equitable approach to supporting faculty who bring extramural research funding to the Department of Medicine. Rather than tying the benefit solely to salary or the percentage of salary supported by a grant, RISE provides defined funding levels based on eligible extramural awards. That structure gives investigators at different career stages access to the same funding levels when they meet the program's criteria.
For Higgins, that is an important part of the program's design. “We wanted to be transparent and equitable,” she says.
The program also reflects a broader commitment to the people behind the research. “It says we value our investigators and the hard work they do every day,” she says. “And their desire to keep pushing the boundaries and being innovative and having new lines of research.”
More than 100 Department of Medicine faculty have participated in RISE since its launch, demonstrating the breadth of research the program can support. The program is available across the research spectrum, including basic, translational, clinical, outcomes, implementation and health services research.
For researchers such as Keller, Campbell and Wani, that flexibility can mean supporting the people doing the work, generating data for the next grant, or pursuing an idea that might otherwise have to wait (or not get done at all).
And sometimes, that is what research needs most: the ability to keep moving forward.