The Murdock Trust Commercialization Initiation Program is designed to help “bring smart ideas off the bench,” supporting scientists as they pivot their work from research to a an application that can be brought to market.

This program offers support to supplement start-up costs for the establishment of new faculty positions in the natural sciences at private educational institutions. Grants are primarily targeted at undergraduate colleges and universities in the Trust’s five-state region.

This program is designed to support research in the natural sciences at private, predominantly undergraduate colleges and universities in the Trust’s funding region. Eligible institutions must offer a bachelor’s degree, but not a doctoral degree, in the sciences. Principal investigators must hold a faculty appointment in a natural science department. The program was introduced in 1997 for supporting the life sciences and expanded in 2014 to include the natural sciences.

The goal of the MCSRP — designed exclusively for private four-year liberal arts colleges in the Trust’s funding region — is to strengthen these institutions’ faculty and undergraduate student research efforts in the natural sciences. We award grants to colleges and universities with the capacity for developing division-wide faculty-student research programs that can be sustained with institutional resources and external funding.

When high school science faculty can grow their skills and experience by participating in advanced research, their students and schools will benefit. The Murdock Trust supports the Partners in Science Program to give these teachers this valuable learning opportunity.

RAISE will enable research-active natural science faculty from mainly private predominantly undergraduate institutions and small group of research-active public undergraduate universities, to collaborate and pursue synergistic, cutting-edge projects at a higher level of sophistication and scope than each group would pursue on their own.

These two awards are part of the Trust’s vision to “Support the Future of Undergraduate Research at Predominantly Undergraduate Institutions in the Pacific Northwest.” The Lynwood W. Swanson Scientific Research Award is intended to recognize a senior faculty exemplar with an established, productive, and nationally recognized research program, while the Lynwood W. Swanson Promise for Scientific Research Award is aimed at recognizing a junior faculty who has demonstrated an exceptional potential in establishing an exemplary, productive, and sustainable research program. The latter award is intended to honor a junior professor with less than 10 years of experience as a faculty member.