Strengthen Early-Career Faculty Funding Success

Early-career faculty are expected to build externally fundedresearch programs quickly. Yet much of the funding process—from identifying the right opportunities to engaging program officers and interpreting sponsorfeedback—is still learned through trial and error.

Wise Investigator’s Early-Career Funding Accelerator gives faculty sustained, expert support across that process, helping them build both near-term funding momentum and skills they can use throughout their careers.

Complement Your Existing Research Development Support

Universities already provide valuable resources through research offices, senior faculty mentoring, proposal review, workshops, and other programs.

The Accelerator complements those resources by providing something that can be difficult to offer internally: sustained, hands-on support for individual faculty across the full funding process.

Participants receive guidance not only on proposal development, but also on where to focus their efforts, how and when to engage sponsors, how to get feedback on ideas before investing heavily in a proposal, and how to respond strategically to the signals they receive.

This helps faculty make better funding decisions—not simply write more proposals.

A Structured Process That Builds Over Time

The Accelerator is not a collection of disconnected workshops.

Each participant progresses through eight sequenced modules and applied assignments, with each stage building on the work completed before it. Faculty pair this structured curriculum with extensive one-on-one coaching tailored to their research area, target sponsors, and career goals.

Across the program, participants learn to:

✅ Identify and prioritize the right funding pathways and opportunities
✅ Engage funders and build productive relationships
✅ Test research ideas with funders before investing heavily in a proposal
✅ Interpret sponsor feedback and decide what to do next
✅ Develop stronger, strategically positioned proposals

The typical engagement lasts approximately 12–20 weeks and includes 10+ hours of one-on-one coaching, multiple rounds of substantive proposal review, and final language editing by a STEM-PhD editor.

More Than Proposal Development

The strength of a research idea is critical to funding success, but so is understanding how funding organizations work, how decisions are made, and how to position research with the right sponsor at the right time.

Participants receive practical support with sponsor outreach, program officer conversations, white papers, research menus, quad charts, pre-proposals, proposal positioning, and interpretation of sponsor feedback.

Each faculty member completes the Accelerator with a submission-ready proposal targeted to a strategically selected opportunity and a repeatable funding strategy they can continue using beyond the program.

Designed to Support Institutional Priorities

Universities can use the Accelerator in a variety of ways, including:

• Supporting new faculty as they begin building externally funded research programs
• Helping assistant professors gain stronger funding momentum
• Providing targeted support to faculty who have submitted repeatedly without success
• Expanding faculty participation in federal funding programs
• Strengthening engagement with sponsors such as DoD/W, NSF, DOE, NIH, and foundations
• Complementing existing faculty-development, mentoring, and research-development     initiatives

The Accelerator can support individual faculty members, multiple participants across departments or colleges, or customized institutional cohorts.

It can also be incorporated into new-faculty onboarding, startup support, retention efforts, or targeted research-development initiatives.

Why Wise Investigator

Wise Investigator was founded by Julia Barzyk, PhD, a former U.S. Army Research Office program manager who spent more than a decade managing basic research portfolios and working with investigators throughout the federal funding process.

Today, Wise Investigator brings together former federal program managers, experienced research-development professionals, and STEM-PhD editors with expertise across DoD, NSF, DOE, NIH, foundations, and other sponsors.

Our approach is informed by the funder side of the process: how opportunities are developed, how program officers think about fit, how proposals are evaluated, and what investigators need to do before and after the proposal stage of the process.

That perspective allows us to help universities strengthen research competitiveness through focused investment in faculty development.

Demonstrated Results

The majority of our clients secure funding within 18 months.

Average single-investigator award: $450,000

Wise Investigator clients have secured competitive awards from DoD, NSF, DOE, DOT, foundations, and other sponsors across a widerange of STEM disciplines.

Our results reflect more than proposal development alone. Clients build stronger funding strategies, expand sponsor relationships, and learn how to identify and pursue opportunities where their research is well positioned to compete.

Flexible Institutional Engagements

Institutions do not need to commit to a large cohort to work with Wise Investigator.

Universities may sponsor:

• A single faculty participant
• Several faculty members progressing independently
• A customized cohort aligned with a department, college, or institutional initiative

Because each faculty member progresses through the Accelerator based on their own research area and  target sponsors, institutions can support multiple faculty members without forcing everyone into the same proposal deadline or funding pathway.

For larger engagements, Wise Investigator can also develop institution-specific programming that complements the individualized Accelerator experience, as appropriate to the university’s goals.

Help Your Faculty Build Stronger Funding Programs

Faculty who understand where to focus their efforts, how to engage sponsors, and how to interpret feedback are better positioned to build sustained funding momentum over time.

The Early-Career Funding Accelerator provides the structure, expert guidance, and hands-on support to help them develop those capabilities while working toward a strategically positioned proposal.

Contact Julia Barzyk, PhD, to discuss how the Early-Career Funding Accelerator could support your faculty and institutional research goals.