Wildfire risk across the Pacific Northwest is escalating, threatening infrastructure, communities, natural resources, and grid reliability. Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) and Washington State University (WSU) propose an exploratory effort to establish the strategic foundation for a long-term, multi-partner wildfire resilience consortium.
This grant opportunity is requesting planning grant proposals that will help define and focus prospective regional wildfire research areas between academia, industry, and government in the next 10 years.
Planning grant proposals should focus on articulating pressing regional, wildfire-related knowledge gaps and issues, and mapping out broad set of initiatives or work that would need to be done to address these challenges. Proposals should be interdisciplinary in nature to the extent possible and be able to articulate research plans for addressing significant direct or indirect negative impacts wildfire will have on Washington’s industries, environment, and communities. Proposals that support collaboration with non-academic partners are strongly encouraged.
Planning grants can be submitted by individuals (up to $15,000) or groups (up to $30,000) with funds expected to be spent between October 6-December 31, 2026.
Eligibility
This funding opportunity is open to all faculty, including affiliate faculty. Postdoctoral scholars are eligible to participate and may apply with an eligible faculty mentor or Principal Investigator.
Purpose and Objectives
The purpose of this project is to establish the strategic and intellectual foundation for a wildfire resilience consortium.
Key objectives include:
- Develop credible, industry-aligned research concepts.
- Align institutional capabilities with partner needs and priorities.
- Prepare for targeted industry and stakeholder engagement.
- Establish pathways for long-term funding, event presentations, and consortium growth.
Partner responsibilities:
| Washington State University (WSU) | Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) |
| WSU will conduct targeted research synthesis, translate capabilities into industry-aligned opportunity areas, and develop the consortium design framework, including structure, governance, and value proposition. | SEL will provide industry perspective, use cases, and problem framing, and advise on operational constraints and considerations related to grid resilience and wildfire risk. |
| WSU will design and administer an internal seed funding program to define potential research projects for future actions. | SEL will advise and review potential projects, assist with evaluation and provide feedback on resulting concepts. |
| WSU will produce all deliverables, including the executive report, technical synthesis, conceptual vignettes, consortium framework, and research briefs, and will integrate findings into a decision-ready foundation. | SEL will review and provide feedback on deliverables and consortium design, and will help validate value proposition, engagement strategy, and target partner profile. |
Deadlines
| October 1 | Concept Paper due |
| October 5 | Award notification |
| October 6 | Award begin date |
| December 31 | Award termination date |
| March 1 | Final Report due |
Instructions
Only one Concept Paper per PI is allowed. All applications are submitted through the InfoReady site.
The concept paper will ask for the following:
- PI Name
- Department, College, Campus
- Certified budget person’s name and email
- Title/Rank
- Emphasis Area (choose one): Agriculture Sciences, Engineering, Environment, Health/Life Sciences, Social Sciences
- Title of Concept Paper
- Answer four questions, with each answer limited to a maximum of 300 words:
- What interdisciplinary wildfire challenge are you proposing to explore?
- Explain the regional knowledge gap this addresses and why it warrants research investment now.
- Describe your approach for addressing this challenge.
- State your research question, what activities / work you will do, and how this fits into the Oct-Dec timeline.
- How will it address regional or cross-sector/cross-discipline issues? Who would be key partners in this planning grant?
- Articulate which sectors/fields/communities your work would focus on and who will participate in your grant.
- What outcomes, impacts, or future work could result from your proposed activities?
- Describe what anticipated deliverables or products you will produce to guide future work.
- What interdisciplinary wildfire challenge are you proposing to explore?
Review Process
The Office of Research oversees the review process. Concept papers undergo preliminary review by the program coordinators. Incomplete concept papers will be returned to the PI without further consideration. Completed concept papers are assigned to the appropriate review panel for evaluation. Concept papers then undergo a three-step review process which includes each review panel making preliminary funding recommendations to the program coordinators, who then review and give their funding recommendations to the Vice President for Research, who determines the final awards.
Each concept paper is assigned to one of the following emphasis areas based on both the emphasis area indicated in the concept paper and the review panel which best reflects the proposed work, and not the particular discipline or college: Agriculture Sciences, Engineering, Environment, Health/Life Sciences, Social Sciences. Depending upon the number of applicants, similar emphasis areas may be combined to provide an equal distribution of applicants across review panels. Every effort will be made to ensure that each concept paper is placed in an appropriate panel. Reviewers are comprised of a diverse group that may not be experts in your discipline.
As such, using clear non-discipline specific language is essential to ensuring your concept paper is competitive.
Review Criteria
The review panels’ recommendations are based on how well these four questions were answered:
- What wildfire resilience challenge are you proposing to address, and why is it important?
- Describe your research approach.
- How does your concept align with industry and/ or community needs?
- What outcomes, impacts, and future opportunities could result from this work?
Reviewers will be looking for originality, creativity, scholarly and/or research significance of the proposed activities; its feasibility; availability of adequate facilities; appropriateness of the proposed project to the competition’s purpose; appropriateness of the budget; and a theme of future funding strategy throughout the concept paper.
Overall, reviewers are seeking concept papers that have been judged to represent the beginning of a sound, significant, and long-term project, and have solid potential for generating external funding or portfolio development.
Notification
Awards will be announced by October 5th. Reviewers’ comments for both awarded and denied concept papers will be sent to applicants along with the notifications.
Award Terms and Conditions
- Protocols for human subjects (IRB), animals (IACUC) and/or biosafety activities (IBC) do not need to be approved before the submission date, but must be reviewed, approved, and sent to ORAP before the grant funds are released. Funds are not released until all appropriate protocols have been approved.
- Before the grant start date, PIs must attend a mandatory information session regarding the expectations of the grant.
- The awards are for a 3-month period beginning October 6th through December 31st.
- Awardee must present results to SEL and WSU.
- If the PI leaves the university before the grant is completed, the remaining funds are returned to the Office of Research.
- Any remaining funds after the grant’s termination date are to be returned to the Office of Research.
- Acknowledgement of the Wildfire Consortium Grant support must be included in any published work or presentations directly resulting from this award, including Showcase posters.
- A proposal directly related to the seed grant project must be submitted to an external funding source no more than three (3) months after the award period ends. If the proposal cannot be submitted by this time, the PI needs to contact the program coordinator to discuss alternative timelines for meeting this award condition.
- By accepting this award, the PI agrees to submit a final report to the Office of Research. This report will allow the university to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. The final report deadline is March 31st. The report will document any publications, presentations, exhibitions, media coverage, sales or marketing, projects, papers, proposals/awards, or other accomplishments that resulted from the Wildfire Consortium’s original support.
Questions
If you have any questions concerning the guidelines, concept paper or review process, please contact us at or.orap.servicedesk@wsu.edu.