Research Support: Pre-proposal Submission
MSI funds high-quality research that deals with topics of importance to member companies. Research related to MSI’s Research Priorities is especially encouraged. Results of MSI-supported studies may appear first as MSI working papers and/or as conference presentations, and subsequently as articles in refereed journals.
The pre-proposal itself is a short document (max 1,200 words) that outlines the topics to be studied and the researchers’ preliminary research questions and approach. It is intended to elicit MSI’s reaction to the topic and research concept before the researcher invests substantial time in writing a full proposal. Nevertheless, the more complete the thinking in the pre-proposal, the more likely it is to receive encouragement and constructive comments.
We encourage submissions from faculty (US and international) at academic institutions. PhD students can submit, however a faculty member must be included on pre-proposals.
Pre-proposals are evaluated on a rolling basis; we meet to evaluate funding requests approximately every six weeks. You can expect to hear back from MSI within about eight weeks of initial submission. There is no deadline for pre-proposals.
If you have questions about submitting to either category, please contact research@msi.org.