The Office of Corporate Engagement and Foundation Relations (CEFR) works with Brown faculty and administrators to foster support for the University’s mission of research and service.
The Office of Corporate Engagement and Foundation Relations (CEFR) works with Brown faculty and administrators to foster support for the University’s mission of research and service.
Our team manages key institutional relationships and collaborates with corporations and foundations to advance research and other initiatives that make a positive impact on campus and in the world.
Members of Brown’s faculty and administration are invited to contact CEFR for help in identifying and developing an approach to foundation and corporate funding prospects, developing proposals, coordinating campus visits, navigating the submission process, and stewarding awards.
Tiny Blue Dot Foundation (TBD) seeks to fund rigorous, empirical, statistically valid, and sound research on the neural, experiential, and psychological factors related to a concept called the Perception Box. By Perception Box, we mean the mental models humans walk around inside that filter and distort everything we see. These mental models are constructed from the material of our beliefs, biases, education, values, genes, physiology, and unconscious patterns; our life experiences and encounters (whether we remember them or not); our traumas and, critically, the meaning we made out of those traumas.
Within this broader context, we have a particular interest in children ages 5–8 because this period offers an opportunity to study the Perception Box as it is being formed. We are eager to understand the degree to which self-beliefs, expectations, attunement - or lack thereof - with caregivers, and various environmental factors shape our sense of self, our ability to relate to others, and how we move through the world.
That said, our focus is not limited to children. We also welcome research on adolescents and adults that can help us understand how the Perception Box evolves across the lifespan.
The aim of the Simons Collaborations in MPS program is to stimulate progress on fundamental scientific questions of major importance in mathematics, theoretical physics and theoretical computer science.
A Simons Collaboration in MPS should address a mathematical or theoretical topic of fundamental scientific importance, where a significant, new development creates a novel area for exploration or provides a new direction for progress in an established field. The questions addressed by the collaboration may be concrete or conceptual, but there should be little doubt that answering them would constitute a major scientific milestone. The project should have clearly defined initial activities and goals by which progress and success can be measured. The support from the foundation should be seen as critical for the objectives of the project.
The project should involve outstanding researchers in a range of career stages. Excellence of the scientific leadership is one of the main criteria in the selection process. The project should be organized and managed in a manner engendering a high level of collaboration.