Grant Overview

The purpose of Ramani Fund seed grants is to support early-career researchers from low-income countries who study the interplay of medicine, technology and behavioral economics with the goal of improving public health. Each grant of up to 3000 USD will support relevant scientific research with clearly defined questions and strong methodology including appropriate statistical analysis.

Who is eligible to apply?

In order to be eligible for this grant, the applicant

1. Must have a strong, formal association such as staff or student of an organization that is legally registered in a current World Bank designated low-income country.

2. Must be resident in the same low-income country as above.

3. Must have graduated from a relevant, accredited bachelor's master’s or PhD program within the past five years.

What do I need to apply?

Please satisfy the following requirements by the RFP deadline.

1. A 2-page online application that succinctly describes the research question you are asking, relevance of the research topic to your community, how you plan to analyze the collected data, timeline of the study, and how you plan to spend the grant money.

2. Proof of strong, formal association between the applicant and an organization that is legally registered in a current World Bank designated low-income country.

3. Proof of residency of the applicant in the same low-income country as above.

4. Proof of graduation from a relevant, accredited bachelor's master’s or PhD program within the past five years.

5. Budget and timeline for the proposed project.

Technical application

1. A short background description (300 words) of the specific problem you are trying to solve. Include your population of interest and how many are affected by the problem. Describe the interplay of medicine, technology and behavioral economics in the problem you have identified. Please indicate in bold the essence of your idea in one or two sentences.

2. A clear, succinct hypothesis (50 words) that you want to test as a solution to the problem described above.

3. Rationale for your hypothesis (100 words).

4. A brief description/methods (200 words) of how you will test your hypothesis.

5. Describe how you plan to do statistical analysis of your data and why you selected those particular techniques (200 words)? Cite two highly-cited publications which used your same statistical techniques to do similar hypothesis testing. Include DOI for these two publications.

6. Explain the public health (100 words) and economic impact (100 words) in your community of interest if your hypothesis is proven to be true by your results.

7. Identify and list three reputable journals indexed in Pubmed where you could publish your study results. Each journal name should be accompanied by the DOI for a similar publication in that journal within the past 5 years.

8. Provide a brief timeline of your study with milestones. Required milestones are

   1. Contract signed between Ramani Fund and institution to receive grant money 

   2. Preparatory work prior to starting data collection or intervention

      1. Create study team/collaborators

      2. Study equipment/tools purchased/developed and tested

      3. Ethics approval (if applicable) obtained

      4. Write background and methods section of manuscript for publication

   3. Start of data collection/intervention

   4. End of data collection/intervention

   5. Data analysis

   6. Writing results and discussion of manuscript for publication

   7. Posting manuscript on preprint server

   8. Close out of Ramani Fund grant

9. One page budget and budget narrative table (a description of each item). All costs must be in US dollars. Budget categories are:

   1. Personnel

   2. Equipment or software

   3. Supplies and consumables

   4. Other