Funding Opportunities
Sign In/Sign UpThe mission of the NSF Regional Innovation Engines Program (NSF Engines) is to accelerate the development of sustainable, inclusive, and geographically diverse regional innovation ecosystems that advance key technologies and address pressing regional, national, societal, and/or geostrategic challenges. The program is designed to catalyze thriving place-based innovation ecosystems that function as interdependent networks, characterized by a coalition of stakeholders who benefit from their proximity and intentional coordination within both their topic area and region of service. This is different from a collection of siloed assets co-located within a geographic region. Each NSF Engine must demonstrate a strong commitment to inclusively leverage the full spectrum of diverse talent that society has to offer along several dimensions (e.g., perspectives, geographies, race, ethnicity, gender, types of organizations, and community type). Funding for this program will prioritize funding for regions with less-established innovation ecosystems.
Brain Research Foundation’s Scientific Innovations Award (SIA) Program provides funding for innovative science in both basic and clinical neuroscience. This funding mechanism is designed to support creative, exploratory, cutting edge research in well-established research laboratories, under the direction of established investigators. The objective of the SIA is to support projects that may be too innovative and speculative for traditional funding sources but still have a high likelihood of producing important findings. It is expected that investigations supported by these grants will yield high impact findings and result in major grant applications and significant publications in high impact journals.
The objective of this NOFO is to solicit applications to conduct institutional climate assessments using validated instruments and to develop action plans to create an inclusive and equitable environment in the recruitment, hiring, and advancement of faculty, including those from groups underrepresented in biomedical and behavioral research. These plans for self-studies should lead to institutional culture change by identifying perceptions, attitudes, and concerns, for example, inequities, micro-aggressions, institutional racism, and bias, and provide a foundation for the development of an action plan to enhance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in the hiring and advancement of faculty.
The E-RISE RII program supports the incubation of research teams and products in a scientific topical area that links to research priorities identified in the submitting jurisdiction's approved Science and Technology (S&T) Plan. E-RISE RII invites innovative proposals that will lead to development and implementation of sustainable broad networks of individuals, institutions, and organizations that will transform the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) research capacity and competitiveness in a jurisdiction within the chosen field of research. E-RISE RII projects must be designed to incubate (i) areas of research capacity building within a chosen research topic; (ii) development of a skilled workforce that is relevant to the project and its outcomes; (iii) promotion of diversity, equity, access, and a culture of inclusion of different types of academic institutions (see below) and non-academic sectors (e.g., industry and government); (iv) integration of the research with societal impacts in a timebound manner; and (v) sustainability of a clear pathway towards preserving the resulting research incubator's team and products beyond E-RISE RII funding.
The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas. Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. WTGF recognizes that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as a supportive academic community.
