Faculty Fellows/Professorships

Eligibility: Full-time University faculty members
Deadline: June 30, 2025

The SSRI Expedited Bridge Funding is a limited-term funding mechanism intended to address changes in the research funding environment that may impact Penn State social and behavioral science researchers. This includes immediate terminations of funding, elimination of specific funding mechanisms, and shifts in priority research areas that lead to delays in the review and funding decisions of non-competitive renewal awards.

Eligibility: Full-time University faculty members, employees, post-doctoral scholars, and fellows, and/or full-time graduate students or medical students enrolled at the University.
Financial support range: based on the available endowment income

We seek proposals for novel research focused on important health issues facing mankind. The Lloyd Prize is funded by an endowment established by Dr. Tom Lloyd who served on the faculty of the College of Medicine for 46 years.

Eligibility: Full-time University faculty members, employees, post-doctoral scholars, and fellows, and/or full-time graduate students or nursing students enrolled at the University. This competitive prize rotates through the following colleges at the University, with the Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing taking place in 2025. Subsequent years will be the College of Health and Human Development, Eberly College of Science, College of Engineering, College of Information Sciences and Technology, College of the Liberal Arts, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, and College of Medicine. The recipient of the award must plan to be employed/enrolled at Penn State for the duration of the research project.

Funding: The selected recipient will receive a prize based on the available endowment income. Sixty percent (60%) of the available funds can be provided either through payroll or placed in a protected research account. An additional thirty percent (30%) of available endowment income will be placed in a protected research account.

The Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) is thrilled to announce Jennifer Kowalkowski is the winner of the 2025 Lloyd Prize for Innovative Health Research.

2025 Loyd Prize for Innovative Health Research - Jennifer Kowalkowski

Kowalkowski is an assistant professor of nursing at the Penn State Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing. She is also an affiliate faculty member with the Tressa Nese and Helen Diskevich Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence, the Population Research Institute, and the Rock Ethics Institute. Her project, “Developing a Conceptual Model to Describe How Farmers Experience Occupational Stress”, will build on her previous work of addressing mental health and well-being among rural and agricultural populations. Read more here .

2024 Loyd Prize for Innovative Health Research - Guodong Liu

Liu is a professor of public health sciences in the division of health services and behavioral research with joint appointments as professor of neurology, pediatrics, psychiatry and behavioral health at the Penn State College of Medicine. He is also the director of the Center for Applied Studies in Health Economics (CASHE). His project "Psychometric Assessments via an AI-Powered Conversational Journal: Transforming Measurement-Based Care for Mood and Anxiety Disorders" aims to develop a framework of continuous mental health assessment that leverages generative artificial intelligence (AI) to collect and derive patients' mental health status more frequently and conveniently than traditional methods. Read more here .

Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) call for the inaugural SJRC Equity Fellows for the 2025/2026 Academic Year
Eligibility: All Penn State faculty are eligible regardless of appointment type (tenure-line, teaching, clinical, research, etc.), rank, or campus location.

The Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) is seeking applications for inaugural SJRC Equity Fellows during the 2025/2026 Academic Year. SJRC Equity Fellows are expected to engage in work, together or individually, that aligns with the mission of SSRI or CTSI.

The purpose of this fellowship is to help support SJRC efforts to foster change in policies and practices towards a culture of inclusive excellence across the University. SJRC Equity Fellows will engage in cross-cutting work that aligns with our Penn State values, strategic plan, and aligns with the mission of the institutes. This work can take various forms, shaped by the goals and background of the Fellow.

Course releases for mentored, new interdisciplinary projects to build a novel line of sustainable research
Eligibility: PSU social and behavioral science faculty
Financial support range: Up to 16,000

The SSRI Mentored Faculty Fellows Program supports the career development of Penn State early career faculty to train in a new area of research and/or to develop new interdisciplinary collaborations aimed at building sustainable research and securing external funding.

Professorship focused on developing research focused on relationships between the human brain and human behavior (psychological and brain science)
Eligibility: Penn State faculty who are within 10 years of having completed the Ph.D. at the start of the award period
Financial support range: up to $20,000 per year for 3 years

This Professorship will allow expenditures related to salary supplementation of the PI (to include course release for the PI during a semester of grant writing),  education and travel expense, research and support services expense and support for students who are assisting the PI.