Goals

The goals of the Healthy Research Teams & Labs Seed Fund are to identify promising initiatives across the institution, to support the development and delivery of grassroots efforts to enhance the experience of working in research teams at U of T, and to help successful initiatives scale for a wider audience. To advance these goals, proposals must align with at least one of the following priority areas, consistent with the Healthy Research Teams & Labs framework:

• Equity and Belonging: fostering a welcoming, respectful, and fair research community
• Group Collaboration: enhancing the collaborative spirit of our research environments
• Leadership: increasing breadth and depth of research leadership and management expertise 
• Professional Development: increasing capacity to meet trainee professional development needs for diverse careers 
• Research Innovation and Integrity: promoting research curiosity, creativity, innovation, openness, honesty, rigour, and professionalism 
• Supervision and Mentorship: supporting positive supervisory and mentoring relationships that foster empowered learners 
• Well-being: prioritizing work-life balance, health and safety in the research environment, sense of belonging, and welfare

We are particularly interested in proposals for activities that benefit under-served groups in our research ecosystem or that can readily serve as promising practice exemplars for replication by others. 

The Seed Fund is not a research grant. However, proposals that include an original research component may be considered on a case-by-case basis. If applicants wish to include a research component, they should make contact first to discuss eligibility and explain why the fund is the best available support. Any proposal involving research must ensure all ethical and other necessary approvals are in place before undertaking any activity.  

Eligibility

We welcome applications from faculty with graduate faculty membership, librarians, graduate students in good academic standing, postdoctoral fellows, and research staff. While solo applicants are allowed, collaborative applications and trainee co-applicants are particularly welcome. 

Funding amounts

The Seed Fund will support up to $50,000 worth of projects on an annual basis. We will normally hold two calls for applications each year. There is no minimum budget – small proposals are welcome. The maximum award will normally be no more than $5000. If an applicant wishes to propose a larger-scale activity, SGS may consider such requests on a case-by-case basis.

• Funds must be spent within 12 months of an award. A report on funded activities will be due at this time.
• Ineligible costs include basic equipment and software costs, faculty/librarian salary support, and routine conference travel to present academic work. 
• Matched funds, in-kind contributions, or access to supplementary funding are not required but may strengthen a proposal.  
• Applicants unsure of the eligibility of a proposed expense should contact cgpd@utoronto.ca to clarify eligibility. 

Evaluation process

Proposals will be evaluated and approved by CGPD staff and members of the SGS decanal team.

Applications will be assessed on:

1. The potential impact of the proposed initiative, specifically the potential to impact the experience of working in research teams at U of T 
2. The feasibility of the proposed initiative
3. Alignment with the Healthy Research Teams & Labs framework

Proposals that are not funded may be invited to resubmit.

Application information

We will post the upcoming deadline when the next call for applications is announced.

All applications require approval from the unit head or chair via email to cgpd@utoronto.ca.

Applications led by graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, or research staff also require approval from a faculty supervisor or faculty co-applicant. 

As a condition of funding, applicants must produce a brief report at the conclusion of funding designed to be instructive for other U of T research teams. Applications should detail additional potential outputs. Where suitable, SGS will also facilitate sharing these outputs.

Funded Initiatives

Below you will find brief summaries of funded projects in previous rounds of the seed fund.

Spring 2026

AI-Enabled Lab Manual Template Tool 
The project will create an AI-enabled tool to help research labs develop clear, comprehensive, and customizable research group manuals. As “living” documents, these manuals will define lab protocols, roles, expectations, safety practices, communication norms, and professional development opportunities, helping to reduce conflict, uncertainty, and inequity while fostering positive relationships and a stronger lab culture. By offering an interactive and user-friendly platform, the project aims to encourage wider use of lab manuals, strengthen accountability and daily operations, and support safe, inclusive, and productive learning environments. The tool is designed to enhance supervision and mentorship, promote equity, belonging, and well-being, support leadership and career development, and uphold research innovation and integrity, with strong potential for adoption across the University of Toronto. 

Collaborative Aesthetic Research and Experimental Study Workshop Series 
The Collaborative Aesthetic Research and Experimental Study (CARES) Workshop Series is a U of T research culture initiative at the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis (CBP), established in 2022 by SA Smythe (Associate Professor of Black Studies & the Archive, Faculty of Information). The CBP is a collaborative hub for transdisciplinary Black Studies research, Black–Indigenous relations, and creative Afro-diasporic cultural practices. It gathers transnational cultural workers, researchers, organizers, artists, technologists, educators, and system-impacted community members to think, make, and study in loving, principled relation. Grounded in Black Studies, transnational feminist thought, and anticolonial aesthetic and archival practices, CARES extends this ethos by cultivating research environments rooted in collective responsibility and collaborative regard. Designed to support graduate students and community-engaged researchers—particularly those navigating structural marginalisation across race, migration, gender, and discipline—CARES treats study as a shared ethico-political practice. Through collaborative workshops, participants develop practical tools for non-extractive, community-oriented research/creative professional practice while building sustainable ways of working across difference. Aligned with U of T’s Healthy Research Teams & Labs priorities, CARES advances a model of rigorous and imaginative scholarship that contributes to CBP’s broader dedication to Black poiēsis as a generative force, and to cultivating spaces where new and ancestral forms of knowledge, practice, and possibility emerge. 

PPE for All: Inclusive and Safe Personal Protective Equipment for Research Spaces
The project seeks to advance inclusion and belonging in health science research environments through sourcing and pilot testing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that is geared towards diverse needs. The project aims to address fit, function, and identity compatibility for religious headwear, disability-related needs, and maternity and broader sizing across a range of PPE categories. Inclusive PPE has a positive effect on workplace culture and belonging. When team members see that equipment is available for their unique needs, whether that’s a lab coat fitting over a pregnant belly, fire-resistant hijabs, masking solutions that respect religious beards, or safety goggles that don’t slide off a smaller nose bridge, it sends a message that “you are valued and expected here”. Through a needs assessment and feedback survey of diverse research staff and students, the project will produce a list of inclusive PPE items for routine stocking and a selection guide for research and clinical contexts, which will enhance safety adherence and foster a sense of belonging. The project will measure comfort, task interference, perceived inclusion, and willingness-to-use if available, leading to actionable adoption recommendations for improved inclusion and safety. 

Women and All Genders in Scientific Careers: Challenges and Allyship
This initiative is led by student members of the WIDE Committee within the Department of Biochemistry. We seek to organize a symposium entitled “Women and All Genders in Scientific Careers: Challenges and Allyship”, designed as a panel-based event for undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows within the Department of Biochemistry. The goal of this symposium is to highlight the experiences of individuals who identify as women or other underrepresented gender identities in academic careers, with the aim of empowering current learners by increasing visibility, sharing lived experiences, and offering concrete strategies to navigate and overcome structural and cultural challenges in academia. In parallel, the event seeks to foster a constructive dialogue around allyship, emphasizing how members of the academic community can actively contribute to more inclusive and supportive environments.  

The Research Lab Readiness and Accountability Program 
The Research Lab Readiness and Accountability Program will increase equitable access to research opportunities for Black students while transforming research lab cultures to be more inclusive, accountable, and supportive. Rather than placing the burden on Black students to “fit in,” the program reduces the barriers to lab entry and increases sustained participation, belonging, and success. The program has a dual focus design that targets both student preparedness and lab accountability. The embedding of accountability tools into lab operations is a distinct feature of the program. Increasing Black leadership, peer support, and visibility will increase Black community trust within research settings. 

Translational Biology & Engineering Program – Sustainable Science 
The Translational Biology & Engineering Program (TBEP) is located on the 14th floor of the MaRS West Tower and brings together 10 laboratories from multiple departments, all focused on advancing cardiovascular research. While our work aims to decipher the genetic, molecular, and cellular mechanisms that underpin heart failure, we also recognize the significant environmental impact of lab research. In response, we are committed to long-term sustainability initiatives that reduce our collective footprint. This includes investing in program-wide green lab certifications through coordinated efforts to shift lab practices and improve lab infrastructure. We are also empowering leaders from each lab and leveraging our collaborative community to champion environmentally conscious science and encourage sustainable activity beyond the lab (walking groups, step challenges, etc.). Our goal is to build a healthy and lasting culture of sustainability that extends beyond just our labs and program, all while improving heart health for all! 

Spring 2025

Mobilizing Quality Improvement Opportunities in Research Teams through Microlearning
Integration of quality improvement (QI) training and consistent reinforcement of QI knowledge, skills, and attitude throughout graduate school experience is crucial to nurturing a continuous quality improvement mindset for students’ subsequent career development and advancement. This initiative aims to create a series of asynchronous bite-sized educational modules (i.e., microlearning) that graduate students can easily access in order to learn at their own pace. The modules focus on how to define a QI initiative and then how to plan and conduct a QI project that could be executed within a single lab, a research team, or across multiple teams.

Graduate Department of Art History – Kitchen Table Conversation Series
As a global and transhistorical discipline, art history benefits from team collaboration in various forms: from the development of research questions and the honing of writing practices to the reimagining of pedagogical strategies and the establishment of scholarly values. However, because art history is defined by subfields (time period, geographic area, medium, and methodology), such collaborations are often disincentivized. Indeed, the most common structures that encourage academic collaboration–working groups, symposia, or lecture series–often serve to further entrench these sub-disciplinary divisions.  

As we seek to encourage group collaboration within the Art History department, graduate students and the EDI committee are building a Kitchen Table Conversation Series. This series will provide a consistent interdisciplinary space where faculty, staff, fellows, and invited specialists can collaborate and converse on equal footing around shared issues, creative research strategies, and dissemination methods. The goal of this non-hierarchical format is to foster a departmental culture that is inclusive and equitable and that can harness a diversity of personal experiences, viewpoints, and methodological approaches within our discipline and the wider art world. This initiative will thus promote awareness of the potential for collaborative research teams, provide ongoing professional development (via practical and intellectual conversations with working professionals), and support student well-being by holding space for candid conversation and the more personal, emotional side of our work and its challenges. 

Department of Biological Sciences Graduate Student Seminar Series 
The Department of Biological Sciences at UTSC is planning to re-establish a Graduate Student Seminar Series. We believe that solutions to great challenges often blossom in places where everyone is both relaxed and excited about great science. This seminar series offers an opportunity for students from diverse scientific and cultural backgrounds to come together. Our seminar series will provide graduate students and postdocs with the opportunity to share their research findings with others in the department. These presentations will not only showcase their work but will also foster group collaborations between the trainees and other labs or teams in our department. The seminar series also encourages trainees to ask questions in an informal setting, helping them develop this skill and build self-confidence. Bringing students and faculty together and discussing great science will create a collegial atmosphere for multidisciplinary research team collaborations to develop. 

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