Funding Opportunities

*At this time, the Foundation is accepting proposals from current planning grantees only.*

Through Education for American Civic Life, the Foundation seeks to elevate the civic objectives of liberal arts education through faculty-led efforts within the curriculum grounded in the issues that define and challenge American democracy. The Foundation seeks ambitious projects that confront gaps in undergraduates’ civic knowledge and prepare them for the intellectual demands of democratic participation. Successful proposals will seek to promote learning about the formation of the American republic, the crafting of its Constitution, the history of contention over the interpretation of the Constitution, the development of representative political structures, and the principles of democracy.

Explore the Education for American Civic Life opportunity

The G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation provides support for basic science that has potential for translational applications. Examples of current research areas we support include immunology, microbiome, structural biology, cellular physiology, cancer biology, genetics, genomics, microbiology and infectious diseases, stem cell biology, and neuroscience. 

Research areas that will not be considered for support include Covid-19 related research projects, Plant Biology Research, Oceanography, Space Exploration. and Global Warming related research. In addition, medical imaging technology related projects and/or electrical engineering technology development projects will not be considered for support.   The Foundation does not support research conducted in human subjects and will not fund requests for clinical trials or drug discovery. The Foundation will not support research projects which it considers pre-clinical drug development. 

Internal LOIs are due January 2025. If selected to move forward, the sponsor LOI will be due March 14, 2025.

Explore the Research Program - Basic and Translational opportunity

This initative is accepting concept notes in the following areas:

• Information Ecosystems: news gathering and publishing initiatives to enable people to produce and interpret news more effectively.
• Communities and Government: improvements to the  responsiveness of public officials and the effectiveness of public policies and services.
• Confidence in Democracy: proposals to boost political efficacy.

The program is intended to support high-risk theoretical mathematics, physics and computer science projects of exceptional promise and scientific importance on a case-by-case basis.

Explore the Targeted Grants in Mathematics and Physical Sciences opportunity

This award program accepts inquiries throughout the year, and it's three core programs include: Criminal Justice, Youth Justice, and Workers' Rights.

Explore the Justice Grant  opportunity.

The Sustainable Environments Program seeks to support communities of color and low-wealth communities to direct infrastructure and land use investment dollars, drive decision-making processes and design policy solutions because those who are disproportionately impacted by environmental and climate inequity have the most powerful solutions to resolve these inequities. The Foundation focuses on two core areas: environmental and climate justice, and land use through community power.

View the Sustainable Environments opportunity

The Inclusive Economies Program seeks to foster the creation of an inclusive and equitable economy in which people of color can maximize their potential as leaders, creators and innovators across sectors. This program supports business start-up and growth, as well as equitable economic development.

Please note, Surdna is not currently accepting unsolicited LOIs for this program, but expects to in early 2019.

View the Inclusive Economies opportunity

The Sloan Foundation seeks letters of inquiry for collaborative social science research projects led by early- and mid-career scholars examining critical and under-explored questions related to issues of energy insecurity, distributional equity, and just energy system transitions in the United States.

Proposals must demonstrate the following:

• Collaboration among scholars deploying a range of research methodologies and drawn from multiple social science disciplines, either within or across universities. Relevant disciplines and fields could include but are not limited to: political science, public policy, economics, anthropology, sociology, geography, and energy systems analysis, among others.
• Submissions from diverse teams led by Black, Latino/a, and Indigenous researchers and/or women are strongly encouraged.
• Project leadership by early- and mid-career faculty at the Assistant or Associate Professor (or equivalent) levels.
• Undertaking original empirical data collection and analysis, or combining existing datasets in novel, innovative ways.
• Training of students (racial and ethnic diversity in trainees is of special interest)
• Linking research to practice by engaging a wide range of stakeholders in helping to shape the scope and conduct of research and dissemination efforts used to inform decision-making.
• Potential ability to secure additional financial support

Researchers may participate in a maximum of two proposed projects. Senior researchers and non-U.S.-based researchers may participate in proposed projects and can receive funding as research team members, advisors, or collaborators.

Interested scholars should send a letter of inquiry of no more than two pages to energy@sloan.org.

View the Energy and Environment Equity program

• Propose a strong causal research design, which can reliably and validly isolate the treatment effect of a policy, practice, or intervention. Examples of such research designs include difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, instrumental variable, and randomization.
• The policy, practice, or intervention being tested is in the United States.
• Outcomes include measures of real-world behaviors (such as crime rates or criminal justice involvement), as opposed to measures collected in a controlled lab setting or measures of perceptions.

Submissions are welcome across all issues of crime and criminal justice that meet the above criteria

LOIs are accepted on a rolling basis. The median grant size is expected to be $500K.

Explore the Causal Research on Community Safety and the Criminal Justice System opportunity

These grants will support external convenings that bring together academic researchers and practitioners from government, nonprofit, and advocacy groups to “think big” about solutions to pressing criminal justice problems, with the goal of spurring collaborations on proposals for submission to the organization’s Causal Research on Community Safety and the Criminal Justice System RFP. The goal of the Criminal Justice RFP is to build credible evidence on policies, practices, and interventions that can improve crime and justice system outcomes and grow the number of policies and practices rigorously shown to produce improvements in community safety and to make the justice system fairer and more effective. 
 
Funds for the Innovation Days may include, but are not limited to, hosting expenses, travel/lodging, facilitation and transcription services, deliverable production, and personnel time for event planning.

Explore the Innovation Days opportunity

These awards aim to facilitate collaborations between Biohub scientists & engineers and investigators from Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Projects will develop instrumented tissues and their application to inflammation and the related functions of the immune system. Projects will establish proof-of-concept for a variety of instrumented tissues, produce initial data sets showcasing the instrumented tissue approach, and pursue computational methods for further mining and dissemination of data. Any tissue systems relevant to inflammation and immunity can be pursued; a focus on those with direct relevance to human biology is encouraged.

Explore the Spoke Award opportunity

This program has three focus areas.

• Create: Offers funding to nonprofit arts organizations and intermediaries that have the capacity to make direct, sizable grants to individual artists, artist collectives, and small arts organizations for community-based collaborative projects that imagine and practice just systems and structures of the future.
• Clarify: Offers funding to research institutions to implement a national program to study Surdna-funded artist projects.
• Connect: Supports convenings of artists, researchers, and cultural critics together with public policy and social movement leaders to advance shared racial justice outcomes.

Explore the Thriving Cultures opportunity.

This program supports research to help resolve an important emerging or unanswered problem in clinical, biomedical, or public health decision-making, policy, or practice. The program aims to fund projects that promote the Foundation’s vision and mission through innovative bioethics research that will have a real-world, practical impact. 

The Foundation is particularly interested in proposals that address the ethical and policy issues raised by the following priority topics:

• Bias and discrimination against patients or clinicians, which may be based on a broad range of characteristics and which may involve institutional and systemic contributors to bias and racism as well as health disparities or social determinants of health;
• Trust in science, medicine, and public health;
• Public health crises (related to, for example, emerging infectious diseases, climate change, and the opioid epidemic), including their impact on mental health;
• Healthcare access, costs, and resource allocation.

Proposals for projects that address other real-world, practical bioethics problems are also welcome. 

Projects may be empirical, conceptual, or normative. All proposals should explain how they will help address a real-world bioethics dilemma. Projects to analyze the normative implications of already-completed empirical research are encouraged. Successful teams commonly involve a bioethics scholar and persons with on-the-ground experience with the bioethics dilemma, for example, in clinical care; biomedical research; biotechnology, pharmaceutical, big data, and artificial intelligence companies; or public service.

LOIs are due January 2, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due March 10, 2025.

Explore the Making a Difference in Real-World Bioethics Dilemmas opportunity

•  Focus on important and emerging areas of research
• Have potential to develop breakthrough technologies, instrumentation, or methodologies
• Are innovative, distinctive, and interdisciplinary
• Demonstrate a high level of risk due to unconventional approaches or challenge the prevailing
  paradigm
• Have potential for transformative impact such as the founding of a new field of research,
  enabling of new observations, or altering perception of a previously intractable problem
• Fall outside the mission of public funding agencies
• Demonstrate that W. M. Keck Foundation support is essential to the project’s success

One-page concept papers are due January 6, 2025. If selected as the nominee, the Phase I application will be due May 1, 2025.

Please contact Michael Kelley if you are interested in applying for this opportunity.

This funding opportunity supports Research that analyzes the most probable ways in which AI technology could cause an existential catastrophe. This program focuses on technical research which could, if successful, assist humanity in reducing the existential risk posed by highly impactful AI technology to extremely low levels. Applicants must identify a mentor, and awardees are expected to participate in annual workshops and other activities that will be organized to help them interact and network with other researchers in the field.

Explore the  AI Existential Safety  opportunity.

The goals of this program are to:

• identify and develop innovative research proposals and results that could lead to the development of breakthrough treatment solutions for patients,
• support academic research and the career development of promising young and mid-career scientists, and
• build strong relationships within the community in order to lead to transformative research aligned with Ono Initiative's interest.

For this cycle, only proposals for scientific research projects addressing Chemical Biology Research will be considered. Chemical Biology Research is defined as research that deals with the interface between chemistry and biology. Eligible applicants must have 15 years or less experience in an independent academic position.

 Internal proposals are due January 6, 2025. The sponsor deadline for Letters of Intent will be due February 14, 2025.

Explore the Breakthrough Science Initiative opportunity.

The American Sleep Medicine Foundation (ASMF) “Bridge to Success” awards are designed to provide ‘bridge’ funding to promising early-career sleep scientists who have applied for a career development award such as a K-award grant from the NIH, a Career Development Award from the VA, or an equivalent career development grant from another federal or non-federal entity. Individuals who previously submitted an application for review, but whose applications are unlikely to be within the funding range, are eligible to apply.

Explore the Bridge to Success opportunity

The Bridge to Success for Mid-Career/Senior Investigators awards are targeted to mid-level and senior investigators in sleep and biological rhythms who need ‘bridge’ funding while re-applying for research support.

The Bridge to Success for Mid-Career/Senior Investigators Award is designed to assist established sleep investigators who have been independently supported by the NIH or other government research grants for at least five years, but whose recent grant proposals are unlikely to be funded. A Bridge to Success Mid-Career/Senior Investigator Award will provide support for one year to help an independent investigator stay in the field of sleep and circadian research while reapplying for external funding.

Explore the Bridge to Success opportunity

The W. T. Grant Foundation funds research that increases our understanding of the programs, policies, and practices that reduce inequality in youth outcomes, and strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit youth. The funder encourages studies from a range of disciplines, fields, and methods, and we encourage investigations into various youth-serving systems, including justice, housing, child welfare, mental health, and education.

Explore the Research Grants to Reduce Inequality and Improve the Use of Research Evidence opportunities

The Bridge to Independence award program engages talented early-career scientists from diverse and/or historically underrepresented backgrounds to pursue research in autism and facilitates their transition into independent faculty positions at research institutions within or outside the U.S.

The program is aimed at Ph.D. and/or M.D.-holding scientists from diverse and/or historically underrepresented groups in science who are currently in a non-independent, mentored training position at an institution within or outside the U.S. and who will be actively seeking and applying to tenure-track faculty positions between September 2024–May 2025. 

The program seeks to support the next generation of top autism researchers. The BTI Award program welcomes applications that span the breadth of science that SFARI supports, including genetics, molecular mechanisms, circuits and systems, and clinical science. 

Explore the Autism Research Initiative - Bridge to Independence opportunity

SCGB’s TTI Award program engages talented early-career scientists from diverse and/or historically underrepresented backgrounds to pursue research in systems and computational neuroscience and facilitates their transition into independent faculty positions at research institutions within or outside the U.S.

The program is aimed at Ph.D. and/or M.D.-holding scientists from diverse and/or historically underrepresented groups in science who are currently in a non-independent, mentored training position at an institution within or outside the U.S. and who will be actively seeking and applying to tenure-track faculty positions between September 2024–May 2025. Independence Fellows are expected to apply, secure and transition to a tenure-track faculty position at a research institution within or outside the U.S. by the end of the 2025–2026 academic year.

Explore the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain - Transition to Independence opportunity

SCPAB’s Transition to Independence (TTI) Award engages talented early-career scientists from diverse and/or historically underrepresented backgrounds to pursue research in cognitive aging and facilitates their transition into independent faculty positions at research institutions within or outside the U.S.

The program is aimed at Ph.D. and/or M.D.-holding scientists from diverse and/or historically underrepresented groups in science who are currently in a non-independent, mentored training position at an institution within or outside the U.S. and who will be actively seeking and applying to tenure-track faculty positions between September 2024–May 2025. Independence Fellows are expected to apply, secure and transition to a tenure-track faculty position at a research institution within or outside the U.S. by the end of the 2025–2026 academic year.

Explore the Simons Collaboration on Plasticity and the Aging Brain - Transition to Independence opportunity

The mission of the Leakey Foundation is to increase scientific knowledge, education, and public understanding of human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival. Current funding priorities include 1) paleoanthropology of the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene; and 2) primates (old and new world), including evolution, behavior, morphology, ecology, endocrinology, genetics, isotope studies, and modern hunter-gatherer groups.

Most grants range between $3,000-$15,000. Proposals of up to $30,000 will be considered.

Applications are accepted on January 10 and July 15 annually.

Explore the Research Grants on Human Origins opportunity

The purpose of the Physician Scientist Fellowship (PSF) program is to: 1) support physician scientists in subspecialty training to lead and conduct an outstanding clinical research project; 2) ensure research time protection to enable development of research skills; and 3) facilitate strong mentorship relations. The PSF award aims to support research during final years of subspecialty fellowship and aid in the transition into a research faculty appointment.

A clinical research project, defined as the scientific investigation of the etiology, prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of human disease using human subjects, human populations or materials of human origin, must be proposed in any disease area. Included in the definition are studies that utilize tissues or pathogens only if they can be linked to a patient.

Explore the Physician Scientist Fellowship opportunity

 The McKnight Scholar Awards encourage neuroscientists in the early stages of their careers to focus on disorders of learning and memory. The Scholar Awards support young scientists who: hold an M.D. and/or Ph.D. degree; have completed formal postdoctoral training; and demonstrate a commitment to neuroscience. The Endowment Fund especially seeks applicants working on problems that, if solved at the basic level, would have immediate and significant impact on clinically relevant issues.

Explore the Neuroscience Scholar Awards opportunity

The Large Research Grants on Education Program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets ranging from $125,000 up through $500,000 for projects ranging from one to five years. This program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, or method.

The Intent to Apply form must be completed by January 14, 2025. The full proposal is due February 11, 2025. 

Explore the Research Grants on Education - Large opportunity

The Fellows-to-Faculty award program engages talented early-career scientists whose future research program advances research in the areas of science supported by the Simons Foundation’s Autism and Neuroscience.

The program is aimed at Ph.D. and/or M.D.-holding scientists from diverse and/or historically underrepresented groups in science who are currently in a non-independent, mentored training position at an institution within or outside the U.S. and who will be actively seeking and applying to tenure-track faculty positions between September 2025–May 2026. 

The program seeks to support scientists whose scientific vision for their future independent laboratory contributes to the mission of discovering mechanisms of resilience and functional maintenance in the aging brain and/or autism research aligned with the SRAFI Scientific Perspectives.

Explore the Fellows-to-Faculty opportunity

This program seeks to fund clinical testing on personalized approaches for understanding, assessing and improving gait in Parkinson’s disease (PD) to address the wide variances of gait challenges across the continuum of the disease. Successful proposals will identify: clearer definitions, sensitive measures, and better treatments. Priority will be given to studies that are: multi-centric with a competitive approach, cross disciplinary with collaborators from different areas of expertise, and willing to share data. This program will not support pre-clinical/small model studies.

Pre-proposals are due January 14, 2025. If invited, full proposals will be May 6, 2025.

Explore the Personalized Approaches for Understanding, Assessing and Improving Gait in Parkinson’s Disease Research opportunity.

The Whitehall Foundation supports scholarly research in the life sciences. The Foundation is currently interested in basic research in neurobiology.

LOIs are due January 15, 2025. If invited, full proposals will be due June 1, 2025.

Explore the Life Science Research Grants opportunity

The Foundation supports scholarly research in the life sciences. The program is designed for researchers at the assistant professor level who experience difficulty in competing for research funds because they have not yet become firmly established. 

Explore the Life Science Grants-in-Aid opportunity

This program provides support for career development activities for underrepresented minority postdoctoral fellows for stellar careers in biomedical or medical research.

Explore the Biomedical Postdoctoral Diversity Enrichment Program opportunity

This RFP is interested in supporting research studies that can address important unanswered questions related to the organizational well-being of arts organizations of color. An additional aim of this program to support early career scholars of color through their inclusion as part of the research teams. Research-practice partnerships eligible for funding will be collaborative research (such as participatory design research, social design research, and action research) that represents an approach to knowledge building that is rooted in questions that are meaningful to both practitioners and researchers.

Explore the  Research-Practice Partnerships opportunity.

The Washington Center for Equitable Growth seeks to invest in early career scholars whose research agendas are policy relevant, related to how inequality affects economic growth, and who are interested in engaging with nonacademic audiences. The organization is interested in research that will generate actionable insights. This includes research that illuminates the policies that help or hinder more equitable growth in the United States, as well as research that illuminates the need for a policy response. Equitable Growth takes an expansive view of policy, encompassing legislation, investments, regulations, standards, and oversight, among others. The research can take a macro perspective and focus on aggregate outcomes, or a micro perspective and focus on outcomes for individuals, families, or businesses. The development of policy proposals will also be considered but should be grounded in empirical research.

Broad areas of interest include:

• Macroeconomic growth
• Fiscal policy
• Human capital & well-being
• Economic mobility
• Labor market
• Market structure

Explore the Research Grants for Early Career Scholars opportunity

The spring 2025 funding cycle will support organizations and projects that advance the Foundation's Innovation and Proven Professional Development strategies and will support the following types of projects:

• Development, piloting, and refinement of new approaches for improving knowledge, skills, or practices or growing and sustaining a thriving workforce of early childhood professionals.
• Expansion or modifications to a clearly defined, proven professional development model enabling future expansion or implementation in a new childhood setting.

This cycle, the Foundation is exclusively interested in approaches and models designed to 1) build the capacity of early childhood leaders, coaches, or mentor teachers to deliver or support instructional coaching and/or 2) support early childhood professionals in building the skills necessary to support children’s social-emotional health and effectively address challenging behaviors and/or 3) grow the pipeline of high-quality, well-trained early childhood leaders and teachers.

LOIs are due January 21, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due March 21, 2025.

Explore the Early Childhood Education opportunity

The purpose of these awards is to help launch the careers of outstanding investigators in the fields of microbial ecology and evolution in marine or natural freshwater systems, who will advance our understanding through experiments, modeling or theory. Investigators must be currently active in basic research addressing fundamental questions in microbial ecology and/or evolution in natural aquatic systems, excluding research focusing on the microbiomes of animals or plants, problems related to pollution and paleoceanography and/or geobiology.

Applicants must currently hold a tenure-track, tenured or, for institutions with no tenure track, an equivalent independent position in an institution in the U.S. or Canada (in a campus within these countries) and have carried out research in such a position for at least one year and no more than five years (start date of first independent position must be between November 2018 and January 2023). 

Letters of intent are due January 23, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due May 5, 2025.

Explore the Marine Microbial Ecology and Evolution Awards opportunity

ANRF seeks applications focused on studying arthritis and related autoimmune diseases including, but not limited to osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile arthritis, lupus, psoriatic arthritis, gout, scleroderma, fibromyalgia and ankylosing spondylitis.

Explore the Arthritis Research Grants opportunity

In a collaborative effort, the Arthritis National Research Foundation (ANRF) and the National Psoriasis Foundation (NPF) are seeking grant applications that focus on studying psoriatic arthritis.

Explore the Psoriatic Arthritis Grant opportunity

The David & Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowships for Science and Engineering provide the nation’s most promising early career scientists and engineers with flexible funding and the freedom to take risks and explore new frontiers in their fields of study. Packard Fellows must be faculty members within the first three years of their faculty career who are eligible to serve as principal investigators engaged in research in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, astronomy, computer science, earth science, ocean science, and all branches of engineering. Recipients will receive individual grants of $875,000 distributed over five years.

This is a limited submission opportunity. Internal letters of intent are due January 27, 2025. If selected to move forward, the sponsor proposal will be due April 20, 2025.

Explore the Fellowships for Science and Engineering opportunity

With this grant program, the Teiger Foundation aims to support curator-led initiatives in contemporary visual art. Funding may be used to support group exhibitions, single-artist surveys, participatory and community-engaged art projects, digital exhibitions, live and virtual performance in the context of the visual arts, as well as new and innovative curatorial forms that involve contemporary visual art and artists. This program is open to supporting the development of new projects, and the expansion of existing projects.

Explore the Contemporary Visual Art Grants opportunity.

The goal of this program is to enhance quality of life for individuals and their families living with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) through grants to support innovative programs/projects that improve participation and independence. Areas of focus include: assistive technology, education, employment, independent living, rehabilitation, and arts, sports and recreation.

LOIs are due January 29, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due April 19, 2024.

Explore the Creating Opportunity & Independence Grants opportunity 

Supported work will contribute to large databases of information that can be shared and widely used, as well as identify possible mechanisms of intervention. The Foundation encourages applicants to develop collaborative proposals involving 2-3 labs. Grants will be up to $250,000 per year per PI for a period up to 3 years.

View the Simons Collaboration on Plasticity and the Aging Brain - Targeted Collaborative Awards opportunity

This grant is intended to stimulate collaboration in the field primarily through the funding of travel and related expenditures.

Explore the Travel Support for Mathematicians opportunity

The Jane Coffin Childs (JCC) Memorial Fund for Medical Research supports research into the causes and treatment of cancer. The Fund has taken a broad approach to the study of cell growth and development, emphasizing the study of the basic biology and chemistry of the underlying processes. Applicants in general should not have more than one year of postdoctoral experience, PhDs must not have been conferred 18 months prior to the deadline date, and MDs should not have been conferred more than three years prior to the date the application is due. 

Explore the Medical Research Fellowship opportunity

The Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood supports promising research and development projects that appear likely to improve the welfare of young children, from infancy through 7 years, in the United States. Welfare is broadly defined to include physical and mental health, safety, nutrition, education, play, familial support, acculturation, societal integration and childcare.

Grants are only made if a successful project outcome will likely be of significant interest to other professionals, within the grantee's field of endeavor, and would have a direct benefit and potential national application. The Foundation's goal is to provide seed money to implement those imaginative proposals that exhibit the greatest chance of improving the lives of young children, on a national scale.

Grants are made in the areas of:

• early childhood welfare
• early childhood education and play
• parenting education

Grants typically range between $50,000 and $60,000. LOIs are due January 31, 2025.

Explore the Early Childhood Grants opportunity

The JA Community Foundation invests in solutions that meet the needs, interests, and concerns of the Japanese American and broader Asian American communities. The upcoming grant cycle will accept LOIs for programs that focus on senior health and services, history, arts and culture, and youth.

Letter of Inquiries can be submitted from January 1, 2024 to January 31, 2024. If invited, full proposals will be due March 31, 2025.

Explore the  JA Community Grants opportunity.

Through these grants, the Foundation seeks to encourage the expansion of contemplative practices and their benefits beyond the individual and into the community. Proposals will be encouraged across broad domains, including civic engagement, climate action, economic empowerment, education, physical and mental health, and social inclusion. The Foundation hopes to support those seeking to integrate contemplative approaches into their work as a means of building resilience and agency for their community. “Contemplative practice” includes various forms of meditation, mindfulness, compassion, loving-kindness, gratitude, introspection and awareness of mind-body states, reflective writing, contemplative prayer, and embodied or movement-based practices such as yoga, qi-gong, and other indigenous and traditional practices from various contexts and cultures that may include dancing, drumming, and more.

Priority will be given to projects led by emerging contemplative leaders (18–30 years of age) and those who identify as belonging to marginalized groups. Priority will also be given to projects that serve traditionally underserved and underrepresented groups in contexts and spaces where the projects are taking place, such as countries and communities in the global South.

Explore the Contemplative Changemaking opportunity

The Ruth K. Broad Foundation seeks applications focused on advancing understanding of neurodegenerative disorders, with particular interest in the potential relationship to Alzheimer’s disease.

Explore the Award for Advancing Understanding of Neurodegenerative Disorders opportunity

These awards are presented to highly promising, early career scientists and are aimed at advancing cutting-edge investigations in basic or clinical research that may lead to a better understanding of neurological and psychiatric disorders. The fellowship awards promote higher risk projects.

Explore the Fellowship Awards in Neuroscience opportunity

• Advocacy: Achieving enduring social change around issues that affect older Americans
• Direct Service: Improve availability and quality of community-based and residential long-term services and supports
• Professional Education and Training: Increase the competency of professionals and paraprofessionals who serve older adults
• Research: Seek causes and solutions to significant problems for older adults

LOIs are due February 1 annually. Invited full proposals will be due May 5.

Explore the Responsive Grants opportunity

The ADDF offers funding to researchers for Alzheimer's drug discovery, clinical trials, and biomarker development research. Core request for proposals include:

• Neuroimaging and CSF Biomarker Development, award amount: up to $600,000
• Prevention Pipeline, award amount: up to $5,000,000
• Drug Development, award amount: up to $5,000,000 

LOIs are due February 5, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due April 8, 2024.

Explore the Core Requests for Proposals opportunity

The Jacobs Foundation Research Fellowship Program is a globally competitive fellowship program for early- and mid-career researchers whose work is dedicated to improving the learning and development of children and youth worldwide. Relevant disciplines include, but are not limited to, education sciences, psychology, economics, sociology, behavioral science, computer science, pedagogy, linguistics, neurosciences, and science of learning. Applicants should have received their PhDs within the past 10 years.

The total award is CHF 165'000 (approximately $175,000 USD).

Explore the Research Fellowship opportunity

This program seeks to provide grants to organizations and communities that are actively working to reimagine land use and zoning as tools for advancing healthy, thriving, and equitable communities. To address and repair the continued harm and discrimination embedded in underlying community development and land use systems in the U.S., communities need to reimagine land use and zoning regulations—and the processes used to create them—as tools for reducing segregation; improving economic opportunity; increasing community-driven land uses; and ultimately protecting and improving the health and well-being of all residents. Among other selection criteria, projects should be forward-looking and solutions-oriented, and move beyond documenting disparities and toward actively addressing, repairing, or reimagining the land use systems that contributed to inequities; there is preference for projects that are in the demonstration, implementation, or evaluation (post-implementation) phases.

Letters of inquiry are due February 6, 2025. If invited, full proposals are due April 15, 2025.

Explore the Reimagining Land-Use opportunity.

This CFP will provide funding for a new cohort of research studies to produce new, actionable evidence about how to help medical, social, and public health systems work together to address forms of systemic racism. Each study funded under this CFP must identify a specific form of systemic racism that limits health and wellbeing for affected populations; and investigate a novel systems alignment strategy for solving the problem that engages relevant representatives from medical care, public health, and social services systems. The systems alignment strategy to be studied must engage all three types of systems that comprise the health and social ecosystem in American communities—medical care, public health, and social services.

This CFP offers two distinct categories of research awards, which are distinguished based on the completion of pilot testing and feasibility testing with the proposed systems alignment strategy: Developmental Research and Impact Research. 

Brief proposals are due February 7, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due May 22, 2024. 

Explore the Systems for Action: Systems and Services Research to Address Systemic Racism opportunity

This program supports researchers developing new methodologies or innovative approaches in regulatory science that will ultimately inform the regulatory decisions the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and others make. Individuals trained in mathematics, computer science, applied physics, medicine, engineering, toxicology, epidemiology, biostatistics, systems pharmacology, food safety and nutrition, etc, are encouraged to apply.

Explore the Innovation in Regulatory Science opportunity

This program aims to support research that will inform policies that would harness the potential of generative AI and other emerging technologies to boost growth, innovation, and productivity while ensuring robust competition and making sure that productivity gains are broad-based and lead to improved job quality. We are open to research on a range of technologies, such as generative AI and large language models, but also algorithms, electronic surveillance, and various forms of automation.

Explore the AI Innovation opportunity

This call for proposals will support actionable research that augments data on the intersection of financialization and structural racism to help counter the harms of financialization in the healthcare system. Proposals are sought for research projects that bolster advocacy campaigns and organizing efforts; build on opportunities afforded by the political and social landscape; and produce timely and useful information for use by advocates, community organizers, policymakers, and other decisionmakers.

Proposed projects should fall into one of the following three priority topic areas, with the understanding that topic areas are not mutually exclusive and will likely overlap. The research areas are (1) Policy and Systems, (2) Narratives and Storytelling, and (3) Financialization and Structural Racism.

Concept papers are due February 12, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due April 8, 2024.

Explore the Addressing the Harms of Financialization in Healthcare opportunity

Up to six awards will be made for up to $9M total funding to support technology development in 1) Organelle Communication and 2) Membrane Biophysics - Approaches. 

• Organelle Communication: Proposals should elucidate new perspectives on inter-organelle communication via membrane-membrane contact sites, with a focus on discovering new biological principles in these interactions. 
• Membrane Biophysics - Approaches: Proposals should develop new experimental approaches for probing the biophysics of cellular membranes to explore and reveal essential aspects of the interplay between membrane form, function, and dynamics.

The funder encourages researchers from across career stages, who are members of underserved groups, and/or who have followed less-traditional career paths to apply. PIs may participate on up to two LOI submissions total per call.

LOIs are due February 14, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due May 15, 2024.

Explore the Allen Distinguished Investigator opportunity

The Leukemia Research Foundation exclusively funds New Investigators – individuals beginning to establish their own laboratories that are no longer under the tutelage of a senior scientist mentor. Preference is given to proposals that focus on leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and/or MDS. New Investigators are considered to be within seven years of their first independent position. 

LOIs are due February 14, 2025. Invited full applications will be due April 25, 2025.

Explore the New Investigator Grants opportunity

The Decarbonization and Energy Virtual Institute is an initiative of Schmidt Sciences’ Climate Institute to advance the methodological frontier of decarbonization modeling. Projects must be cross-disciplinary and multi-institutional collaborations targeting fundamental research across four focus areas: a) advances in the understanding of complex interdependencies in decarbonization pathways; b) methodological advances that improve model representation of said interdependencies; c) rigorous uncertainty analyses and model validation; and d) generating context-specific insights highlighting the needs, constraints and impacts of decarbonization pathways.  

This program is accepting  expressions of intent (EOIs) for two categories of projects : a) sectoral modeling efforts up to USD 3 million over 5 years and b) economy-wide modeling efforts on coupling models from different sectors and scales up to USD 10 million over 5 years.

Explore the Decarbonization & Energy Virtual Institute opportunity.

This program will not open in 2024.

The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) is soliciting applications from early career investigators for Innovator Awards to be used for exploring the basic biology and translational potential of stem cells. The goal of this initiative is to foster bold and innovative scientists with the potential to transform the field of stem cell research, and advance understanding and use of stem cells in the development of treatments for human disease.

For this application year, NYSCF is extending its eligibility criterion to be within 6 years of starting a faculty (professorship) position on June 1, 2023 due to the pandemic.

Explore the Stem Cell Investigator Awards opportunity

The Henry Luce Foundation’s Theology Program invites new inquiries for projects seeking to deepen public understanding of democracy, race, and religion in America.

The Foundation aims to support knowledge creation and public circulation in many forms, including (but not limited to) independent media, visual art, film and video, educational curricula, policy analysis, community advocacy, research and scholarship through collaborative and experimental initiatives that seek to deepen understanding of religion’s complex and contested place in public life, to envision and cultivate new religious and democratic possibilities, and to promote more curious and more generous public conversations. Projects should projects challenge received understandings and revisit accepted histories, amplify more capacious narratives of American religion, and alter the terms, tone, and terrain of public discourse.  

The Foundation especially encourages the submission of ideas for projects that: 

• Deepen and extend efforts to build a more open, democratic, and equitable future,
• Strengthen understanding of the role of religion in movements for racial justice,
• Critically examine connections among religion, racism, and nationalism, and/or
• Intersect with the aims and emphases of related Luce Foundation initiatives, including efforts to amplify AAPI stories, to support Indigenous knowledge makers, and to strengthen the fabric of democracy and civil society.

Concept papers are due February 15, 2023. Invited full proposals will be due June 15, 2023.

Explore the Advancing Public Knowledge on Race, Justice, and Religion in America opportunity

NYSCF will not open this competition in 2024.

The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) is soliciting applications from early career investigators for Innovator Awards in Neuroscience. The goal of this initiative is to foster truly bold, innovative scientists with the potential to transform the field of neuroscience. Applicants are encouraged in all areas of neuroscience and do not need to be working in areas related to stem cells. Investigators must have completed their MD, PhD, and/or DPhil degree and be within 6 years of starting a faculty or comparable position on June 1, 2022. An additional year of eligibility was added this year due to the pandemic.

NYSCF especially encourages applications from neuroscientists whose research is focused on human systems. This might include research using patient-derived model systems and approaches using samples or data (genomic, epidemiological, imaging, real-world data, etc.) collected from individuals or human populations.

Explore the Neuroscience Investigator Awards opportunity

The goal of this CFP is to fund research on policies that can advance the full social, economic, and civic inclusion of immigrant children and families. The intention is to spotlight policies that can transform systems/structures that ensure equal access to (and take-up of) goods and services, including public benefits, irrespective of immigration status. The proposed research can cover a wide range of service systems, and related policies.

LOIs are due February 16, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due July 23, 2024. 

Explore the Policies for Action: Policy Research to Advance the Inclusion of Immigrant Families and Children opportunity

This program strives to foster collaboration between students, neuroscience and society scholars, funders, policymakers, professionals, and communities in pursuit of advancing knowledge and co-creating neuroscience-informed solutions to complex societal problems. Grants are organized around three program areas that support education, training, and public engagement on neuroscience and society issues:

• Dana Education: Strengthening neuroscience’s positive role in the world by sparking interest in and supporting education around neuroscience and the many ways it interfaces with our everyday lives.
• Dana NextGen: Strengthening neuroscience’s positive role in the world by developing a new generation of interdisciplinary experts who shepherd neuroscience uses for a better world.
• Dana Frontiers: Strengthening neuroscience’s positive role in the world by increasing engagement with diverse publics to deepen trust and inform policy.

Explore the Neuroscience & Society Pilot Grants opportunity

Moore’s Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems (EPiQS) Initiative aims to accelerate progress in the field of quantum materials. EPiQS places special emphasis on materials synthesis, as a key driver of progress in the field.

All materials synthesis techniques will be considered. Strong preference will be given to candidates interested in the basic science of quantum materials. The following broad classes of solid materials are of interest to EPiQS:

• Strongly correlated systems, including but not limited to high-temperature and other unconventional superconductors, Mott insulators, heavy fermion systems, multiferroics, and correlated oxide heterostructures;
• Frustrated magnets and other solids exhibiting exotic magnetic behavior;
• Materials exhibiting topological order;
• Two-dimensional crystals and layered systems, including but not limited to graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides, and van der Waals heterostructures;
• Other low-dimensional systems, including but not limited to quantum wells and quantum wires with emergent electronic properties.

Candidates should be early-career scientists whose primary research expertise and interests are in quantum materials synthesis. Applicants must currently hold their first tenure-track appointment (started in 2021 or later) or will have accepted their first tenure-track appointment, but not yet started, by the application deadline.

Explore the Fellows in Materials Synthesis opportunity

Grant funding is available for programs that foster exchange and collaboration, such as workshops, symposia, and colloquia. Programs should advance innovative and experimental research and professional practice in American art and address critical issues facing the field. Requests for convenings intended to inform projects in their early stages, which will benefit from the learning and practice that can be developed through dialogue are also welcome.

This program is open to organizations within and outside of the United States. Convenings held in person and/or online are eligible for support.

To be considered, visual art projects should focus on arts of the United States, including Native American arts. Projects can be focused on historical or contemporary art. Contemporary art projects should offer a reflective and critical engagement with histories, arts, and/or art histories associated with American contexts.

This application cycle is for programs taking place after October 1, 2026. LOIs are due February 16, 2026. Invited full proposals will be due April 24, 2026.

Explore the Convening Grants opportunity

This Request for Applications (RFA) aims to advance technology directed at the goal of obtaining near-atomic resolution readouts inside the cell. This RFA is explicitly aimed at technology development. It is not intended to support question-driven basic or translational research, clinical trials, or drug development. Preliminary data is encouraged but not required.

Examples of research themes include:

• Hardware and software development to enhance contrast and resolution for electron tomography, high-resolution correlated light and electron microscopy (CLEM), and FIB-SEM. 
• Sample preparation improvements for electron tomography, or high-resolution correlated light and electron microscopy (CLEM) approaches, and FIB-SEM.
• Software development or development of new computational techniques and algorithms for identifying protein molecules inside cells or segmenting cellular sub-structures.

Award amounts will be determined on a per project basis.

View the Visual Proteomics Imaging opportunity

The Glenn Foundation for Medical Research (GFMR) in collaboration with the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) has established the Glenn Foundation Discovery Award. This grant program was created to support research projects with strong potential to develop pioneering discoveries for understanding the underlying biological mechanisms that govern normal human aging and its related physiological decline. Relevant proposals from any branch of biology are eligible. This funding program specifically seeks to include principal investigators who may not have previously worked in the area of aging, but whose research and expertise are applicable to understanding the biological mechanisms of normal aging and its relevance to age-associated health decline.

LOIs are due February 18, 2025.  If invited, full proposals will be due in early June 2025.

Explore the Glen Foundation Discovery Award opportunity.

Production and Presentation Grants assist organizations with the production-related expenses that are necessary to take a project from conceptualization to realization and public presentation. These projects include, but are not limited to, publications, exhibitions, installations, films, new media projects, conferences/lectures, and other public programs.

If applying for publication support, the organization should have a committed publisher for the work, that is, a publisher with whom you have a contractual agreement to publish your project.

Explore the Grants to Organizations opportunity

Explore the Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program opportunity

The Hearing Health Foundation is accepting applications for the following:

• For Early Stage Investigators:
  • Any topic in hearing or balance  (any topic in hearing or balance research--see website for example research areas)
• For Senior and Early Stage Investigators:
  • Central Auditory Processing Disorder
  • Pain Hyperacusis
  • Ménière’s Disease
  • Tinnitus

The Alzheimer's Association offers the following competitions within their International Research Grant Program. 

• Clinician Scientist Fellowship (AACSF), award amount: up to $250,000
• Clinician Scientist Fellowship to Promote Diversity (AACSF-D), award amount: up to $250,000
• Research Fellowship (AARF), award amount: up to $200,000
• Research Fellowship to Promote Diversity (AARF-D), award amount: up to $200,000
• Research Grant (AARG), award amount: up to $200,000
• Research Grant to Promote Diversity (AARG-D), award amount: up to $200,000
• Research Grant--New to the Field (AARG-NTF), award amount: up to $200,000
• Research Grant to Promote Diversity--New to the Field (AARG-D-NTF), award amount: up to $200,000

Explore the Research Grant Program opportunity

This program is focused on addressing the knowledge gaps surrounding intrinsically disordered proteins’ connection to cancer initiation, development, and progression. Applications also may explore the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of IDPs, including the development of innovative methods to target these complex proteins, thereby leveraging their untapped potential in cancer treatment. Projects can be centered on basic research, therapeutic discovery and translational since, innovated technologies, and/or clinical research.Projects can be centered on basic research, therapeutic discovery and translational since, innovated technologies, and/or clinical research.  Awarded projects typically start on the ASPIRE I track; those that successfully demonstrate feasibility or proof of concept may be invited to apply for an ASPIRE II to further develop and expand the research.

Letters of inquiry are due February 28, 2025. Invitations to full proposals are anticipated in March 2025.

Explore the ASPIRE - Intrinsically Disordered Proteins opportunity. 

The Thomas Jefferson Fund supports cooperation among the most promising young French and American researchers, and fosters forward-looking collaborative research that addresses the most pressing global challenges. The Thomas Jefferson Fund aims to encourage innovative research of the highest quality and new collaborations, and especially seeks to support projects involving young researchers (post-docs, PhDs). Applications are accepted in: Humanities and Social Sciences; Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics; and Science for Society (interdisciplinary STEM-HSS projects). Awards are up to $20,000 over two years.

Explore the Thomas Jefferson Fund opportunity

This grant program supports projects that advance our understanding of wholesome mental qualities and positive interpersonal and social action related to Prosociality, Empathy, Altruism, Compassion, and Ethics (PEACE). Mind & Life PEACE grants will fund projects that advance our understanding of the mechanisms, implementation, and outcomes of contemplative approaches to promote well-being and prosocial behavior in individuals and communities. The program encourages the active collaboration of scientists with contemplative scholars/practitioners in all phases of research. Proposals should examine one or more of the following:

• practices, methods, or interventions that may cultivate PEACE qualities,
• basic mechanisms (psychological, physiological, social, developmental, etc.) underlying PEACE qualities and their growth, and
• the development of measures to rigorously assess PEACE qualities in various contexts (both in the laboratory and in the real world).

While projects do not need to have an immediate applied component, applicants should make clear how the proposed research could support positive action in the world. 

LOIs are due February 29, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due July 26, 2024.

Explore the PEACE Grants opportunity

The next cycle will be offered in 2026

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation (ASHFoundation) invites new investigators to submit proposals in competition for one $10,000 grant underwritten by an endowment fund in memory of the late Dr. Dennis Klatt. The grant can be used to initiate new research or supplement an existing research study. Funds may be requested for a variety of purposes—for example, equipment, subjects, research assistants, or research-related travel. Investigators must have completed a PhD or equivalent research doctorate within the past five years.

Interested applicants must submit an Intent to Submit form by March 1, 2024. Full proposals are due April 17, 2024.

Explore the Speech Science Grant opportunity

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation (ASHFoundation) invites new researchers to submit proposals in competition for up to ten research grants of $10,000 each. The New Investigators Research Grant competition is designed to help further new investigators' research activities by funding preliminary studies that could launch larger-scale research investigations. Investigators must have completed a PhD or equivalent research doctorate within the past five years. Research, while not limited in topic, should be focused to match the one-year scope and should have clinical relevance to audiology and/or speech-language pathology.

Interested applicants must submit an Intent to Submit form by March 1, 2024. Full proposals are due April 17, 2024.

Explore the New Investigators Research Grant opportunity

The New Century Scholars Research Grant is designed to advance knowledge, tools, and techniques in communication sciences and disorders. While proposal type and content area are not restricted, this grant supports studies that are innovative, have a promise of major impact, or can meet research needs not yet addressed. The funding can be applied to a one- or two-year study. These grants are not intended to provide additional or extended support for an established and funded research effort.

Interested applicants must submit an Intent to Submit form by March 1, 2024. Full proposals are due April 17, 2024.

Explore the New Century Scholars Research Grant opportunity

The Researcher-Practitioner Collaboration Grant supports partnerships between academic or organizational researchers and clinical practitioners to conduct collaborative studies in practice settings that are designed to enhance evidence for improving communication sciences and disorders (CSD) services. The funding can be applied to one- or two-year studies.

Proposed studies must address a clinical problem/question that has direct application and is compatible to practice. This grant is designed to support preliminary research that will lead to a larger-scale study. The research question may originate with the researcher or the practitioner, but be of substantial interest to both in their mutual areas of expertise. The collaborative effort is central to this unique funding opportunity.

Interested applicants must submit an Intent to Submit form by March 1, 2024. Full proposals are due April 17, 2024.

Explore the Researcher-Practitioner Collaboration Grant opportunity

The History of Art program supports scholarly projects that will enhance the appreciation and understanding of European art and architecture.

LOIs are due March 1; if selected to move forward, full proposals will be due April 1.

Explore the History of Art Grants Program opportunity

The Conservation program supports the professional practice of art conservation, especially as it relates to European art of the pre-modern era.

LOIs are due March 1; if selected to move forward, full proposals will be due April 1.

Explore the Conservation Grants Program opportunity

The Digital Art History Grants program is intended to foster new forms of research and collaboration as well as new approaches to teaching and learning. Support may also be offered for the digitization of important visual resources (especially essential art history photographic archives) in the area of pre-modern European art history; of primary textual sources (especially the literary and documentary sources of European art history); for promising initiatives in online publishing; and for innovative experiments in the field of digital art history. 

LOIs are due March 1; if selected to move forward, full proposals will be due April 1.

Explore the Digital Art History Grants opportunity

This program aims to support projects that address the obstacles that prevent or discourage women on their campuses from pursuing and thriving in STEM fields. Applicants must have conducted or plan to conduct research that demonstrates a clear understanding of the barriers its particular communities of women encounter. 

Explore the Clare Boothe Luce Program for Women in STEM opportunity.

Explore the Woods Fund Chicago Grants opportunity.

The Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation accepts proposals in the following areas:

• Great Lakes
• Sustainable Business
• Democracy

Proposals are reviewed during January, May and September board meetings.

Explore the various opportunities.

The Exploratory Grantmaking program intends to identify emerging new sectors, tools and methods that may not receive mainstream funding. Currently, the program focuses on:

• AI in Science 
• Automation in Science

Explore the Technology opportunity.

The Open Source in Science program supports the development of tools and norms that make the most of open source practices to further the development, adoption and maintenance of discovery-enabling software, hardware, and models. Current areas of focus include: Institutional Support for Open Sources, Publication & Archiving, Roles & Career Paths.

Explore the Open Source opportunity.

This Fund, supported by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, Omidyar Network, and Open Collective Foundation, seeks to support a diverse set of initiatives that enable greater individual agency or community control over data. Successful applications might develop a participatory process or tool to collect data, apply a tool to a particular challenge, collaboratively build a new dataset, develop a technical protocol or standard that empowers people to use their data rights, and more. The Fund is particularly interested in supporting initiatives that have significant public policy relevance; that enable people to control whether, or how, data is used to train AI models; or that involve a novel legal, technological or participatory approach, and therefore can be learned from.

Explore the Enabling Greater Individual Agency or Community Control Over Data opportunity

VIEW will support research needed for a sustainable global water future. This encompasses quantifying and addressing sustainable water use, improving projections of freshwater resources, preparing for climate extremes, and quantifying linkages to ecosystem resilience, the carbon cycle, and climate change mitigation including the food/energy/water nexus. Schmidt Sciences intends to fund multiple transformational research projects that will be crucial in informing freshwater management, producing results that are poised to support decision-making worldwide within the next decade.

 VIEW research projects should be aimed at one or more of three targeted research opportunities:

• Develop a water reanalysis framework that will fill in knowledge gaps through state-of-the-art quantification and mapping of historical and current water availability and use.
• Quantify water risk and assess sustainable practices taking into account precipitation and evaporation as well as terrestrial water.
• Explore scenarios and counterfactuals through transformational change in the representation of the natural and human demand-driven freshwater cycle at sub-seasonal to decadal scales using data-driven methods (such as machine learning or emulation) or Earth System Models.

Explore the VIEW opportunity

This program will provide support for instrumentation acquisition, development, and maintenance; support for data science collaborations within research teams; and costs for the proposed research programs. 

Proposals should be centered around core biological problems and a research program that is enabled by the dynamic, 3D, and long-term imaging capabilities of advanced light-sheet microscopy. Proposals shall include one-page descriptions of up to 3 distinct research project(s) to which the light-sheet capability will be applied that will represent significant advances within this larger research program. Additional consideration will be given to proposals that include other imaging, sensing, or analysis technologies as an integral part of one or more of the proposed research project(s).

Pre-proposals are due March 6, 2020. Invitations to the full proposal stage are expected to be made in June 2020.

Explore the Instrumentation Grant for Advanced Light-Sheet Microscopy and Data Science opportunity

The goal of the portfolio is to develop sound data to inform and disseminate best practices that produce better outcomes, improving quality of life for people living with spinal cord injury. This research explores the interrelation of behavioral, social and psychological factors that influence participation, health practice, lifestyle, and support systems in community and clinical settings.

Postdoctoral Fellowships are up to $200,000 for two years. Investigational grants are up to $300,000 for two years. Interventional Testing projects are eligible for up to $350,000 for three years.

LOIs are due March 6, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due July 10, 2025.

Explore the Psychosocial Research Grants opportunity

The Fund intends to enable and enhance development of identified gifted and talented children and adolescents, and encourage promising psychologists to continue innovative research and programs in this area. The Fund supports activities on the advancement and application of knowledge related to the psychological understanding of gifted and talented children and adolescents, including research, pilot projects, and research-based programs.

Explore the Esther Katz Rosen Fund Grants opportunity

This program offers support for organizations to plan and/or present temporary exhibitions primarily comprising artworks that are not part of the institution’s permanent collection. The Terra Foundation supports visual arts projects with a focus on art of the United States and Indigenous art of North America that question and broaden understandings of American art and transform how its stories are told. This grant can be used to cover planning and implementation costs.

LOIs are due March 7, 2025. If invited, full proposal will be due May 16, 2025.

Explore the Exhibition Grants opportunity.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation  champions investment in human capital to fast-forward solutions for prostate cancer with the ultimate goal of ending death and suffering from metastatic prostate cancer. Funds from the Young Investigator Awards may be used innovatively and flexibly to advance the career and research efforts of awardees. 

Applications are sought from early-career basic scientists, medical oncologists, pathologists, urologists, radiologists, radiation oncologists, public health experts, bioinformaticians, bioengineers, or professionals from any other field that could contribute to the end of prostate cancer. Applicants traditionally under-represented in science and medicine are highly encouraged.

Explore the Young Investigator Awards-Prostate Cancer opportunity

The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research in partnership with Lustgarten foundation and American Association for Cancer Research invite letters of inquiry that focus on accelerating the development of effective new approaches to the early detection of cancer. This program will only consider projects related to pancreatic cancer, hepatobiliary cancers, ovarian cancer, glioblastoma, upper GI cancers, and/or cancers resulting from hereditary cancer predisposition syndromes. This program will not consider applications that focus on cancer prevention. Projects must contain two of four investigators who hold independent faculty research appointments.

Letters of Inquiry are due March 10, 2025. If invited, full proposals will be due June 17, 2025.

Explore the  Early Detection Award opportunity.

The Distinguished Scientist Award (DSA) seeks to provide career and research support to early career scientists who demonstrate outstanding promise for making scientific and medical breakthroughs in the field of brain cancer research. 

Applicants must have received their first independent faculty appointment no earlier than
March 1, 2020 and no later than January 1, 2025 . The applicant's career track and proposed research should demonstrate potential to generate new knowledge relating to causes, cure or treatment of primary brain tumors/brain cancer.

Explore the Distinguished Scientist Award opportunity

This opportunity is only open to Cottrell Scholar and Holland Award recipients. Cottrell Scholars must be at least six years beyond their Cottrell Scholar Award. Eligible applicants will have received the award in or before 2018. This award aims to support new, innovative research projects with potential to lead to a transformative line of inquiry. Risky, interdisciplinary, and exploratory projects are strongly encouraged. No preliminary data are required.

 Explore the New Research Directions opportunity

This program is currently on hiatus.

Furthermore grants assist nonfiction books having to do with art, architecture, and design; cultural history, the city, and related public issues; and conservation and preservation. The organization looks for work that appeals to an informed general audience, gives evidence of high standards in editing, design, and production, and promises a reasonable shelf life.

Applications are accepted on March 1 and September 1 annually.

Explore the Grants in Publishing opportunity

The Young Investigator Grant enables promising investigators in neuroscience and psychiatry to either extend research fellowship training or begin careers as independent research faculty. Funding is intended to help young investigators gather pilot data to apply for larger federal and university grants. All research must be relevant to our understanding, treatment, and prevention of serious psychiatric disorders or early onset brain and behavior disorders.

Applicants must have a doctoral degree and be employed in research training of a faculty research position. Postdoctoral fellows, instructors, and assistant professors are eligible to apply. Assistant professors who have served as a PI on a NIH R01 grant are not eligible for this award.

Explore the Young Investigator Grant opportunity

This RFP aims to identify and evaluate evidence-based solutions targeting the nation’s most pressing social problems. Causal research should bolster the knowledge base about potentially effective policies, programs, and interventions. The program will fund researchers to conduct rigorous, causal research that aligns with key AV policy areas, including higher education, infrastructure, contraceptive choice and access, and public finance.

LOIs are due March 15, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due July 1, 2025.

Explore the Building Evidence: Support for Causal Studies to Evaluate Social Programs and Policies opportunity

The goal of this opportunity is to catalyze impactful collaborations that scale the reach of scientific information and build relationships between journalists and civic organizations in the United States. The opportunity will fund projects involving partnerships that:

• Emphasize meaningful collaborations between civic science and journalism organizations to achieve shared purpose, including building awareness of civic science issues and potential solutions.
• Involve community engagement with the intended audiences and are relevant to communities, particularly communities where new or deeper engagement with science has the potential to be transformative.
• Have the potential to be a catalyst for future collaborations.

Once the grantees are selected, the Center will host monthly calls to help foster a sense of community among the cohort and learn from each other’s work.

Explore the Civic Science Journalism opportunity

Fellowships are available for theoretical and experimental research relevant to the study of cancer and the search for cancer causes, mechanisms, therapies, and prevention. Applicants must have completed at least an MD, PhD, MD/PhD, DDS, DVM, or equivalent. Level 1 applicants (basic and physician scientists) must have received their degrees no more than 18 months prior to the deadline. Level 2 applicants (physician scientists-Mc, MD/PhD, DDS, DVM, or equivalent) must have completed their residencies and clinical training, be board eligible, and able to donate at least 80% of their time to these activities.

Explore the Damon Runyon Fellowship Award opportunity

The objective of the Mason Award is to kick-start the research career of promising future senior investigators in the chemical sciences. The Marion Milligan Mason Fund will provide four to five grants of $55,000 every other year to women researchers engaged in basic research in the chemical sciences. Awards are for women who are starting their academic research careers. In addition to research funding, the program will provide leadership development and mentoring opportunities.

Applicants must be women who:

• Earned a Ph.D. in chemistry, biochemistry, physiology, or any chemistry related field.
• Are early in a research career as teaching or research staff with 10 or fewer years since earning a Ph.D, at the time of application (postdoctoral fellows are not eligible)
• Are teaching or research staff members originating independent research at an American Ph.D.-granting institution.
• Are American-born, naturalized citizens or permanent residents.

Applicants must have a "full-time" career-track appointment. More than one applicant from the same institution can apply for this award, provided that each application is scientifically distinct.

Explore the Marion Mason Milligan Award for Women in the Chemical Sciences opportunity

The purpose of this program is to encourage the development of medical research in child health by awarding small grants to new researchers. The Fund is open to a wide variety of research topics. They do not focus on a particular disease, but all funded projects deal directly with children's health. Those eligible to apply include physicians who are in a residency/fellowship training program; physicians who completed their residency program no more than one year before the date of submission of the Concept Paper; or postdoctoral researchers who received the doctoral level degree no more than three years prior to the date of submission of the Concept Paper. 

Concept papers are due March 18, 2025. If selected to move forward, full proposals will be due May 8, 2025.

Explore the Early Career Awards for Children's Health opportunity

HFSP grants support innovative basic research into fundamental biological problems, with emphasis placed on novel and interdisciplinary approaches that involve scientific exchanges across national and disciplinary boundaries. Research grants are provided for teams of scientists (2-4 members, no previous collaborations) from different countries who wish to combine their expertise in innovative approaches to questions that could not be answered by individual laboratories. Participation of scientists from disciplines outside the traditional life sciences such as biophysics, chemistry, computational biology, computer science, engineering, mathematics, nanoscience or physics is recommended .

There are two types of grants:

• Early Career Grants: Awarded to teams of researchers, all of whom must direct a research group, be within 5 years of obtaining an independent position, and within 10 years of obtaining their first doctoral degree (see guidelines for details).
• Research Grants - Program: Awarded to teams of independent researchers at any stage of their careers. The research team is expected to develop new lines of research through the collaboration.

LOIs must be initiated by March 18, 2025 and submitted prior to March 27, 2025. 

Explore the Research Grants - Science and Engineering opportunity

In collaboration with the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) Initiative, The Michael J Fox Foundation welcomes letters of inquiry from research teams to join their network of international and multidisciplinary scientists working to further understand Parkinson’s disease. Eligible research teams will consist of one lead PI and between two and four co-investigators. Each team member must hold a PhD, MD or equivalent degree. There are six eligible research areas for this program:

• Examining Parkinson’s in the context of aging
• Exploring how co-pathologies can influence Parkston’s pathogenesis and progression
• The role of know environmental risk factors in contributing to disease pathogenesis
• Understanding the circuit biology driving clinical symptoms presentation (with an emphasis on non-motor symptoms)
• The role of clearance mechanisms in Parkinson’s
• Identification of Factors Influencing Seeding in the Alpha-Synuclein Seeding Amplification Assay

All funded projects are subject to ASAP’s Open Science Policy.

Explore the Collaborative Research Network Award opportunity.

The next Investigator competition will launch in 2025.

The HHMI Investigator Program supports approximately 300 Investigators at more than 60 research institutions across the United States. Investigators are recognized for pushing the bounds of knowledge in biomedical research. HHMI selects people, not projects, who ask tough questions in science and develop new tools and methods that make it possible to ask previously unapproachable questions.

Applicants must hold an MD or PhD, have a substantial commitment from their institution (such as a tenure-track faculty position), have a track record of peer-reviewed funding, among other requirements. Please see the full program announcement for additional information about the competition and eligibility requirements.

Explore the HHMI Investigator Program opportunity

This grant program advances ALSF’s mission to find cures and better treatments for childhood cancers by providing support to move hypothesis-driven research into the clinic. The Reach Grant provides support for important preclinical projects that are necessary to move a study from the pre-clinical arena into a clinical trial, thereby supporting late-translational studies.

Explore the Reach Grant - Pediatric Cancer opportunity

This program invites Letters of Inquiry for interdisciplinary, collaborative social science research projects led by early- and mid-career scholars that analyze the systemic interactions and connections associated with the transition to a low-carbon economy in the United States. The foundation is particularly interested in research project ideas that examine the links and implications between different components of the energy system and how they relate to other aspects of the economy. Relevant disciplines and fields could include but are not limited to economics, finance, political science, public policy, sociology, anthropology, geography, and energy system modeling.

Explore the Energy System Interactions  opportunity.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF), Wellcome Trust, and the Gates Foundation are jointly launching a new initiative, Gram-Negative Antibiotic Discovery Innovator, to drive innovation in early drug discovery for Gram-negative pathogens. This program invites proposals with a focus on the discovery of direct-acting small molecule antibiotics with broad-spectrum activity against Enterobacteriaceae, using Klebsiella spp. as the pathogen to initiate a discovery program. Successful applicants will demonstrate a spirit of collaboration and embrace the consortium approach, with all grantees functioning within the consortium under a single data sharing agreement.

Explore the Innovations for Gram-Negative Antibiotic DiscoveryA opportunity.

The Human Cell Atlas (HCA) is a global effort to create a reference map of all cell types in the healthy human body in order to generate a fundamental reference for biomedical research and improve our understanding of health and disease. 

This RFA welcomes proposals that will make significant contributions toward single-cell reference data for the community of patients, clinicians, and researchers engaged in pediatric research. It is intended to support active collaborative teams of researchers that have access to established resources and protocols that are ready to be extended and scaled. The opportunity is also intended to support new collaborative teams that will benefit from the experience of existing teams while bringing complementary and differentiated perspectives and resources. The opportunity aims to support a variety of collaborative teams that will all make contributions to the larger community via regular engagement and sharing of learnings, data, samples, and other resources.

Explore the Pediatric Networks for the Human Cell Atlas opportunity

Interested applicants should reach out to Chloe Taft Kang

The Cyrus Tang Foundation welcomes one-page concept papers focused on Global Health, Arts and Cultures, and Chinese Education Advancement and Innovation. Successful applications will identify methods to ensure a sustainable, meaningful impact and demonstrate a potential to materially improve the lives of people in China. The Foundation will accept concept proposals for the three following topics:

• Global Health: Proposals must demonstrate a strong theoretical framework and identify quantifiable and qualitative impacts on topics like climate change and health, neonatal and maternal healthcare, health systems strengthening and sustainability, healthcare access, youth health education, US-China exchange and/or disease prevention.
• Arts and Culture: Successful proposals will have a strong bias to action that emphasizes creativity, engagement, and experience that focus on youth education, extracurricular youth programs and camps, East-West integration, the global impact of Chinese food, contemporary Chinese music, literature and cinema, Chinese internet culture, foreign literature in Chinese education, and/or Chinese literature in foreign education.
• Chinese Education Improvement and Innovation: Successful proposals will be non-political in nature, designed around active engagement and collaboration, and capable of demonstrating measurable impact in the areas of rural education, curriculum and pedagogy, learning and play, and/or applied small-scale innovation projects that enhance the classroom experience.

Explore the Open-Bid Project Initiative opportunity.

This program aims to support fundamental research in artificial intelligence (AI), the application of AI and data science across a wide range of disciplines, and the creation of high-impact research platforms that accelerate discovery. This RFP is interested in exploring how AI adoption may influence the nature of work and the functioning of the labor market. Submitted LOIs will also be considered for a $10,000 Proposal Development Award. The funder expects to award 20-30 Proposal Development Awards and 10-15 full AI at Work Awards. The funder encourages early career economists, sociologists, political scientists, network scientists, psychologists, statisticians, or others conducting relevant work to submit.

LOIs are due March 31, 2025. If invited, full proposals will be due July 31, 2025.

Explore the AI at Work opportunity.

LOIs are due April 1, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due July 1, 2025.

Explore the Research Grants opportunity

The Foundation seeks to support projects to develop and test the feasibility of new programs for promoting positive cognitive and/or achievement outcomes for children (birth through 18 years) from underserved groups and/or low-resourced communities (minority ethnic groups, low-income families), as well as projects that evaluate the effectiveness of such programs.

Grants have ranged from $25,000 to $790,000.

LOIs are due April 1, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due August 1, 2025.

Explore the Brady Education Foundation opportunity 

The William T. Grant Scholars Program awards $350,000 over five years for early career researchers in the social, behavioral, and health sciences. Scholars should tackle important questions that will advance theory, policy, and practice for youth. Applicants identify new methods, disciplines, or content they want to learn, and propose five-year research plans that foster their growth in those areas. This award includes a mentoring component. Potential Scholars should have a promising track record of conducting high-quality research, but want to pursue a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers.

Internal LOIs are due April 1, 2025. If selected to move forward, the sponsor proposal will be due July 1, 2025.

Explore the Scholars Program opportunity

This program seeks to promote broader interactions among different sectors of the quantum science community and will facilitate connections among early career researchers from a wide cross section of academic disciplines. Scientists from physics, chemistry, materials science, surface science, applied mathematics, computer science, engineering, and related fields will be brought together to develop new methodologies and help enhance our understanding of the quantum world with an interdisciplinary perspective.

Explore the Quantum Matter and Information opportunity

This Scialog series will facilitate connections between approximately 50 early career chemists, materials scientists, geologists, ecologists, engineers, and energy system modelers, with the goal of catalyzing collaborative, cross-disciplinary projects to investigate how to design, manufacture, and recycle substances so that their use and production at scale is more compatible with ethical stewardship of our environment and decarbonizing the energy system.

Explore the Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials opportunity

This initiative envisages a biennial call for cross-disciplinary proposals that advance the conceptualization, development and/or implementation of climate solutions. The new initiative will focus on how aspects of climate related processes can be offset by novel technologies, regulations, policy etc. Examples of such processes are:

1. Atmosphere (e.g. carbon dioxide capture, methane emissions, hurricane preparedness, climate change, extreme weather etc.)
2. Earth (salt intrusion; rivers, estuaries and marshlands; coastal erosion; droughts; arid ecosystems; alternative energy sources wind, solar); deforestation etc.).
3. Ocean (alternative energy sources (tidal, wave); coral bleaching; biodiversity and biogeography; food web structures; ocean acidification etc.)

Explore the Climate Solutions opportunity

HER, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, seeks research proposals to generate evidence on supportive family policies and programs that have strong potential to impact equitable access to nutritious food in communities, nutrition security, diet quality, and improved nutrition and health outcomes. Programs that will be studied are in the areas of: federal nutrition assistance programs; hunger-relief programs; community-powered food systems efforts; and social and economic programs (nonfood policies). HER is especially interested in strategies to improve health outcomes for children ages 0 to 18 at highest risk for poor nutrition, specifically lower-income families, as well as the racially and ethnically diverse populations experiencing higher rates of health disparities.

Please note: Funded proposals will be awarded as subawards from Duke University, which houses the HER program.

Explore the Healthy Eating Research: Addressing Supportive Family Policies and Programs so All Children and Adolescents in the U.S. Can Thrive  opportunity

The APF Visionary Grants seek to seed innovation through supporting research, education and intervention projects and programs that use psychology to solve social problems in the following priority areas:

• Applying psychology to at-risk, vulnerable populations (e.g. serious mental illness, returning military, those who are incarcerated or economically disadvantaged)
• Preventing violence
• Understanding the connection between behavior and health (e.g. wellness, diabetes, obesity)
• Understanding and eliminating stigma and prejudice (e.g. race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability and socioeconomic status)
• Furthering racial equity: APA has requested funds from their fund at the Tides Foundation to fund a 2025 Visionary Grant that is focused on furthering racial equity.

Preference will be given to pilot projects that, if successful, would be strong candidates for support from major federal and foundation funding agencies, and “demonstration projects” that promise to generalize broadly to similar settings in other geographical areas and/or to other settings.

Explore the Visionary Grants opportunity

The Brain Research Foundation’s Scientific Innovations Award 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.

Studies should be related to either normal human brain development or specifically identified disease states. This includes molecular and clinical neuroscience as well as studies of neural, sensory, motor, cognitive, behavioral and emotional functioning in health and disease.

Internal LOIs are due April 3, 2025. If selected to move forward, the Sponsor LOI will be due June 3, 2025.

Explore the Scientific Innovations Award opportunity

This program provides seed funding to support high-risk, high-reward translational research that can be transferred to clinical practice in the near term. The award supports planning and development of projects, teams, tools, techniques, and management infrastructure necessary to lay the foundation for a subsequent $1 million Transformational Award.

The program is designed to support high-risk, high-reward projects that address critical scientific and therapeutic roadblocks. If successful, these projects will open new avenues for treating and curing disease. The program has three principal areas of focus:

1. Identification of biological markers of disease activity and progression,
2. Identification of targets for therapeutic interventions, and
3. Development of therapeutic agents that will disrupt, arrest, or prevent the disease process.

In addition to preclinical research studies, proposals for investigator-initiated trials (human
clinical studies that are initiated, managed, and sponsored by the investigator or investigator’s
institute) may be considered.

Internal proposals are due April 3, 2025. If selected to move forward, the sponsor proposal deadline is June 3, 2025.

In partnership with Arnold Ventures, The Russell Sage Foundation requests proposals from researchers conducting causal research on the criminal justice system. Proposals must include causal research designs that can reliably isolate the treatment effects of a policy, practice, or intervention. Examples include difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, instrumental variables, and randomized controlled trials.

Explore the Causal Research on the Criminal Justice System opportunity.

The purpose of HAVI is to provide philanthropic resources to (1) catalyze groundbreaking, domain-specific research outcomes from humanities scholars through the integral application of AI-inspired tools and techniques; and (2) produce insights and techniques from the humanities that will advance the development of AI generally. Priority areas include Heterogeneity and Contextual Understanding, and Multimodal and Multilingual Understanding.

Expressions of interest are due April 4, 2025. Full proposals will be by invitation only.

Explore the HAVI opportunity.

The broad goal of the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program is to produce diverse interdisciplinary leaders who conduct and apply high-quality, community-engaged, action-oriented, equity-focused health research in order to drive improvements in the health of communities. This opportunity seeks teams of researchers and community members who are committed to working together to produce community-relevant, action-oriented research to improve health and well-being. 

The program will recruit and select applicant organizations represented by teams of three people: two mid-career researchers and one community member to become IRL program fellows. IRL teams will join together as a diverse cohort of fellows that will participate in a three-year program.

Explore the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders opportunity

The Another Look grant program provides funding for health-related research projects that can improve the quality of care and the quality of life for adults who are 65 year or older and who are long term residents living in nursing homes, assisted living, and other congregate care facilities. This program requires researchers to rely on existing datasets to address the research question they seek to answer. Limited collection of new data is allowed if it will enhance the utility of the project outcomes to improve quality in care facilities. Researchers applying for this grant must include a stakeholder in the care delivery or policy arena with whom they will collaborate.

A total of $750,000 will be awarded for 4-5 grants.

Letters of intent are due April 9, 2025. Invited applications will be due July 7, 2025.

Explore the Another Look opportunity

The Huo Family Foundation proposals for projects focused on key questions within the broad topic of the effects of usage of and exposure to digital technologies on brain development and function (including physiological responses), social behavior and interactions, and mental health of children and young people. This program accepts applications from researchers of all career stages, collaborating as a multi-disciplinary team with different expertise and skills, to take an integrated approach to tackle the more difficult questions in this domain. Research should focus on subjects within the age range of 7-24 years old.

Explore the Special Projects opportunity.

The Metascience and AI fellowship aims to support early career researchers in the social sciences and humanities (with particular emphasis on philosophy, sociology of science, and metascience) who are interested in building a career in understanding the implications of AI for the science and research ecosystem. This fellowship program is intended for researchers who are uniquely interested in AI’s impact on science, rather than general AI ethics, safety and society-related topics. This program will not fund fellows whose primary research objective involves working directly on scientific AI tool development. All applicants are required to have a faculty mentor and must submit a statement from their mentor that details the personal and institutional commitment of the mentor to this application and applicant.

Explore the Metascience and AI  opportunity.

Only one application per institution is permitted for the following program. Please contact Chloe Kang if you are interested in applying for this opportunity. 

Recordings at Risk supports the preservation of rare and unique audio and audiovisual content of high scholarly value through digital reformatting. Awards may cover costs of preservation reformatting for audio and/or audiovisual content by qualified external service providers.

The program encourages professionals who may be constrained by limited resources and/or technical expertise to take action against the threats of degradation and obsolescence. The program aims to help institutions identify priorities and develop practical strategies for digital reformatting, build relationships with partners, and raise awareness of best practices.

Explore the Recordings at Risk opportunity

The Whitehall Foundation assists scholarly research in the life sciences. The Foundation is currently interested in basic research in neurobiology. The Foundation does not support research focused primarily on disease(s) unless it will also provide insights into normal functioning.

Explore the Life Science Research Grants opportunity

The Foundation supports scholarly research in the life sciences. The program is designed for researchers at the assistant professor level who experience difficulty in competing for research funds because they have not yet become firmly established. 

Explore the Life Science Grants-in-Aid opportunity

The Foundation is accepting applications for the following opportunities:

• Magistro Family Foundation - Evaluate the effectiveness of commonly delivered clinical interventions and develop and evaluate the effectiveness of innovative interventions. Inclusion of cost-effectiveness preferred. ($175,000)
• Paris Patla Manual Therapy - Advance the therapeutic value of clinical manual therapy interventions and the evidence base for effective manual therapy practice for musculoskeletal conditions ($200,000)
• Paris Patla Physical Therapy - Evaluate the effectiveness of commonly delivered clinical interventions and develop and evaluate the effectiveness of innovative intermixture. Inclusion of cost-effectiveness preferred. ($200,000)

Letters of inquiry are due April 15, 2025. If invited, full proposals are due May 1, 2025.

This program supports research activities to validate novel targets that have a clear therapeutic concept, a strong biological rationale and relevance to early intervention in anxiety, depression and/or psychosis. The targets this program is interested in includes but is not limited to receptors, proteins, enzymes, biomolecules (for example, DNA, RNA, peptides). Competitive proposals will generate data demonstrating that modulation of the target has potential to lead to a clinical benefit, and will develop the potential for a drug discovery campaign.

Explore the  Advancing Target Validation for Novel Mental Health Drug Discovery opportunity.

These research grants are intended to encourage research that will impact the delivery of services to individuals with communication disorders. Research should directly advance our knowledge of the efficacy of treatment and assessment practices in speech-language pathology and audiology, or investigate the implementation of evidence into practice.

Investigators are asked to complete an intent to submit form in March. Full proposals are due April 16, 2025.

Explore the Clinical Research Grant opportunity

The Small Research Grants Program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets up to $50,000 for projects ranging from one to five years. This program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, or method. The Foundation's goal for this program is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research. This program supports proposals from multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives, both domestically and internationally, from scholars at various stages in their career.

Explore the Research Grants on Education - Small opportunity

The Walter Katkovsky Research Grants support research on the general topic of psychotherapy. Research proposals should be directed to questions and hypotheses designed to improve our understanding based on theory or methods of how psychotherapy promotes behavioral, emotional, or cognitive changes. Eligible applicants will be psychologists within 12 years of receiving their doctoral degree.

Explore the Walter Katkovsky Grant opportunity.

Part of the CZI Neurodegeneration Challenge Network, this investigator award is intended for early career academic investigators, particularly those who are new to the field of neurodegeneration, to conduct bold, innovative, and rigorous research related to the biological mechanisms underpinning neurodegenerative disorders. CZI is especially interested in investigators who are exploring cellular or circuit mechanisms that are broadly relevant and address these mechanisms in the context of an integrated view of human disease biology, as well as scientists with ideas for new tools, resources, and approaches (experimental and analytical) that can be deployed to address critical challenges in the field. The RFA is also open to proposals addressing general challenges in neuroscience, particularly in areas where there is a strong case for relevance to neurodegenerative disease.

Applicants must have been in their first independent position for a minimum of two years and less than six years as of the LOI deadline.

LOIs are due April 20, 2023. Invited full proposals will be due June 13, 2023.

Explore the Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Awards opportunity

The National Geographic Society’s Freshwater Storytelling program aims to support accomplished and talented storytellers interested in creating and disseminating content that raises public awareness and engagement of important issues around the sustainable use of freshwater resources. A variety of content formats, including, but not limited to, Photography, Film and Video, Mapmaking, Data Visualization, Written Word, Spoken Word, etc. will be considered. Projects that dig deeper into the challenges facing specific communities such as last mile households, low-income households, women and girls, and children face in achieving equitable access to freshwater and how these issues are worsening as freshwater scarcity increases are encouraged. The funder is interested in grantmaking in the areas of storytelling, conservation and education. Applicants should show a record of successful media projects and must submit a portfolio as part of their application packet.

Explore the  Freshwater Storytelling  opportunity.

The Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences provides funding to early career investigators of outstanding promise in science relevant to the advancement of human health. The program makes grants to selected academic institutions to support the independent research of outstanding individuals at the assistant professor level. As of September 5, 2024, applicants must hold a full-time appointment at the rank of assistant professor. Pew Scholar awards provide a total of $300,000 over four years.

Northwestern's internal application deadline is April 24, 2025. If selected, the sponsor proposal will be due September 3, 2025.

Explore the Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences opportunity

The John and Polly Sparks Early Career Grant supports early career psychologists conducting research in the area of early intervention and treatment for serious emotional disturbance in children. Applicants must be early career psychologists (no more than 10 years postdoctoral with a degree from an accredited university)

Explore the Sparks opportunity.

This program will fund innovative pilot activities that initiate long-term transformative change in the field of China Studies. The group may apply for a grant to design and pilot activities that solve specific, pressing challenges in the field over a 12- to 18-month period. The collaborative grant will serve to test and refine promising solutions; to produce recommendations for those activities to be adopted at scale in universities and colleges; and to identify strategies for long-term sustainability. Outcomes may include a pilot program, a new cross-institutional network, a plan for scaling and/or sustainability, or a white paper.

Applicants are encouraged to submit proposals in response to the following prompts:

• Teaching and Curricular Resources
• Enabling Productive Engagement with China
• Open-Access Resources
• Language Training 
• Digital Research Methods

Explore the Collaborative Grant in China Studies opportunity

The goal of this program is to test new approaches and tools that organizations can readily use to improve the value of the healthcare they provide to their patients and communities. In order to be eligible, investigators must partner with an organization that delivers healthcare services. 

LOIs are due April 29, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due August 6, 2025.

Explore the Greater Value Portfolio opportunity

The AI Safety Science program aims to deepen our understanding of the safety properties of systems built with large language models (LLMs) and to develop well-founded, concrete, implementable technical methods for testing, evaluating, and improving the safety of LLMs. The program is interested in  exploring various testing methodologies and methods to design safer AI systems, grow the technical AI safety academic community, and ensure that safety theory is informed by practice.

The Expression of Interest is due April 30, 2025. If selected by the sponsor, invitations to submit a full proposal will be sent in May 2025.

Explore the AI Safety opportunity.

The Elsa U. Pardee Foundation funds research directed toward identifying new treatments or cures for cancer.

Applications are accepted December 31, April 30, and August 31 annually.

Explore the Cancer Research Grants opportunity

The aim of this RFP is to make the impacts of climate change visible across a wide range of physical and mental health outcomes in order to increase the profile of the evidence, advance impactful narratives on the effects of climate change on health, and use these to drive urgent policy and practice change at scale. This will include generating and synthesizing evidence (including across multiple sites/countries) on under-researched but significant health issues arising from climate impacts that fill a policy and practice-relevant evidence gap and/or present localizing knowledge to specific contexts where evidence is missing.

 This program will fund transdisciplinary teams (e.g., researchers, policymakers, practitioners, community stakeholders, communications, and public engagement experts) with capacity to use evidence to drive climate action. Research that serves the expressed needs of at-risk populations and communities with high exposure and vulnerabilities to the health impacts of climate change will be prioritized.

Explore the Climate Impacts Awards: Unlocking urgent climate action by making the health effects of climate change visible opportunity

The Mercury Project now invites proposals to evaluate the causal impacts of online or offline interventions designed to increase demand for vaccinations consistent with national priorities, including childhood vaccines, HPV, polio, measles, and Covid-19 vaccinations, in low- and lower-middle income countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Applicants are encouraged to consider the Mercury Project’s Research Framework in developing proposals. Preference will be given to projects that:

1. evaluate the effects of interventions on behavioral outcomes, including vaccination uptake;
2. evaluate interventions that are designed and delivered in collaboration with governmental, NGO, and/or corporate partners;
3. have demonstrated potential to be cost-effective at scale;
4. include researchers and research institutions located in the countries in which the study is being conducted.

 Proposals will be reviewed on a rolling basis; we encourage applicants to submit proposals earlier rather than later. Applications will not be accepted after May 1, 2023.

Explore the Evaluation of Interventions Designed to Increase Demand for Vaccinations in LMICs opportunity

• Advocacy: Achieving enduring social change around issues that affect older Americans
• Direct Service: Improve availability and quality of community-based and residential long-term services and supports
• Professional Education and Training: Increase the competency of professionals and paraprofessionals who serve older adults
• Research: Seek causes and solutions to significant problems for older adults

LOIs are due May 1 annually. Invited full proposals will be due August 5.

Explore the Responsive Grants opportunity

The Anna Lalor Burdick Program seeks to empower young women through education about healthy reproduction in order to broaden and enhance their options in life. The program focuses particularly on young women who have inadequate access to information regarding sexual and reproductive health.

Concept papers are due May 1 and November 1 annually.

Explore the Anna Lalor Burdick Program opportunity 

Post-Ph.D. Research Grants are awarded to individuals holding a Ph.D. or equivalent degree to support individual research projects. The Foundation supports research that demonstrates a clear link to anthropological theory and debates, and promises to make a solid contribution to advancing these ideas. 

Applications are accepted May 1 and November 1 annually.

Explore the Post-Ph.D. Grant opportunity

This program aims to support internationally oriented, multidimensional research projects on forced migration that address questions receiving insufficient attention in the relevant debates so far. This includes further linking theoretical core research with concepts vital to social, humanitarian, and political praxis. Proposals that engage in comparisons across regions and time periods, as well as those that incorporate intersectional perspectives and issues are encouraged. Cooperation with local knowledge-producers (researchers as well as civil society actors), or people affected by displacement within countries of origin or asylum (particularly in the “Global South”), is strongly encouraged.

Explore the Forced Migration Programme opportunity

SFARI’s mission is to improve the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) by funding innovative research of the highest quality and relevance. This program prioritizes research that produces foundational knowledge about the neurobehavioral differences associated with ASD, many of which will inform or relate to the development and refinement of tools needed for translational efforts, such as biomarkers and outcome measures. Special emphasis is placed on objective, quantitative measures that may be used in conjunction with standardized clinical measures and genomic information to better triangulate phenotypic and neurobiological variability within and across individuals with ASD. While applications may propose laboratory-based measures, the funder is especially interested in real-world, scalable, and quantitative measures of behavior (e.g., wearable devices and other methods of digital phenotyping).

Three tracks are available:

• Explorer Track: Early-stage projects in which establishing feasibility and proof-of-concept are the most relevant outcomes of the grant period. Award amount: up to $500,000
• Expansion Track: More mature projects with evidence of feasibility and preliminary validity. Award amount: up to $900,000
• Collaboration Track: Multi-lab, cross-institutional projects engaging teams tackling a critical issue in the neurobehavioral differences of autism with clear translational implications. Award amount: up to $750,000 per collaborating lab (up to 4 labs)

Explore the Autism Research Initiative: Human Cognitive and Behavioral Science opportunity

Through EPiQS, the foundation strives to accelerate progress in the field of quantum materials — solids and engineered structures characterized by novel quantum phases of matter and exotic cooperative behaviors of electrons.

The goal of flexible funding grants is to drive scientific innovation by enhancing experimental capabilities at leading research institutions and supporting projects with significant potential to create breakthroughs in the field of quantum materials. These grants have two varieties: equipment grants and rapid response grants. 

• Equipment grants support the development of sophisticated and sometimes one-of-a-kind instrumentation at institutions with active research programs in quantum materials. 
• Rapid response grants support projects that are exceptionally timely and have a very high potential impact. These projects may include experimental tests of novel important theoretical concepts and innovative, unconventional research endeavors that are unlikely to be supported through traditional funding channels due to their high-risk nature. 

Explore the Emergency Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative (EPiQS) Flexible Funding opportunity

This interdisciplinary funding program aims to place current challenges facing shrinking and abandoned "lost cities" in historical context. It focuses not on the question of which factors led to a city's abandonment, but rather on the ways in which lost cities are "read," instrumentalized, and codified in various cultures and periods of time. Applicants should be part of research groups in the humanities and/or social sciences.

Explore the Lost Cities Funding Programme opportunity

The Mark Foundation Emerging Leader Awards support innovative research from the next generation of leaders in cancer research. These grants are awarded to outstanding early career investigators to support high-impact, high-risk projects that are distinct from their current research portfolio. Applicants must be three to eight years from the start of an independent faculty research appointment as of December 31, 2025. See description for more information about eligibility.

LOIs are due April 29, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due July 28, 2025.

Explore the Emerging Leader Award opportunity

This special program is designed to support education research projects that will contribute to understanding and ameliorating racial inequality in education. Studies should aim to understand and disrupt the reproduction and deepening of educational inequality in education, and seek to (re)imagine and make new forms of equitable education. Thus, the Foundation is interested in research projects that seek to envision educational opportunities in a multiplicity of education systems, levels, settings, and developmental ranges and that reach beyond documenting conditions and paradigms that contribute to persistent racial inequalities.

Like other Spencer Foundation programs, this program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not required to be developed around a particular research topic, discipline, design, method, or geographic location. 

Intent to Apply forms are due May 5, 2025. Full proposals are due June 25, 2025.

Explore the Racial Equity Research Grants opportunity

This funding opportunity supports projects that identify a challenge related to a specific place and its unique conditions and leverages an educational solution using spatial thinking (such as geospatial technologies, maps, data, inquiry-based learning, or innovative technologies or tools (on the low to high tech spectrum)) to enable people to act on behalf of our planet and its people. Successful proposals will describe projects that are co-developed with members of a community or developed by community(ies) that will be impacted, or provide a detailed justification of that omission. The funder is particularly interested in projects that make connections across disciplines to identify creative solutions through interdisciplinary methods, use experiential learning, and define spatial thinking broadly. All topics related to the funder’s focus areas – Ocean, Land, Wildlife, Human Histories and Cultures, Planetary Health, and Space – are encouraged. A portion of the grant awards within this funding opportunity are reserved for project ideas related to freshwater in a specific place.

Explore the  Spatial Thinking opportunity.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation invites proposals for investigations of metastatic, lethal prostate cancer. These awards will be funded depending on the level of innovation in applications received. This funder seeks high-risk, currently unfunded projects from academic institutions around the world. Proposals must have a team of at least three investigators, including one young investigator who is within six- years of the completion of their professional degree (MD, PhD, DO or equivalent).

Explore the Challenge Grant opportunity.

The Simons Foundation invites applications for postdoctoral fellowships to support research on fundamental problems in marine microbial ecology. The foundation is particularly interested in applicants with training in different fields who want to apply their experience to understanding the role of microorganisms in shaping ocean processes, and vice versa, as well as applicants with experience in modeling or theory development. While these cross-disciplinary applicants will receive particular attention, applicants already involved in ocean research are also encouraged to apply.

Applicants should have received their Ph.D. or equivalent degree within three years of the fellowship’s start date. Preference will be for applicants with no more than one year of postdoctoral experience.

Explore the Postdoctoral Fellowships in Marine Microbial Ecology opportunity

The W. T. Grant Foundation funds research that increases our understanding of the programs, policies, and practices that reduce inequality in youth outcomes, and strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit youth.

Explore the Research Grants to Reduce Inequality and Improve the Use of Research Evidence opportunities

This program supports proposals for frontier, potentially transformative research in the life sciences. Projects should be interdisciplinary in nature and should challenge existing paradigms by using novel approaches and techniques. Scientifically, they should address an important problem or a barrier to progress in the field. Long-Term Fellowships (LTF) are for applicants with a PhD on a biological topic who want to embark on a novel and frontier project focusing on the life sciences. Cross-Disciplinary Fellowships (CDF) are for applicants who hold a doctoral degree from a non-biological discipline (e.g. physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering or computer sciences) and who have not worked in the life sciences before. Candidates must propose work in a country different than the one in which they did their PhD research or previous postdoctoral research. A doctoral degree must be conferred by the start of the fellowship or within three years prior to the submission deadline of the full proposal.

Explore the Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Life Sciences opportunity

The fellowship will support a scientist or biomedical engineer who is still in the early stages of research career development. It may not be used to extend or complete clinical training. The Fellowship should support “applied” biomedical research or the development of new technologies that have the potential to improve health outcomes for children in the United States. The Foundation does not fund basic research with a long time-horizon to translation, public health epidemiology, social science, ecology, environmental impacts, botany, or anthropology.

 Internal proposals are due May 9, 2025. If selected to continue, the sponsor's deadline is June 30, 2025.

Explore the Postdoctoral Fellowship announcement.

The Large Research Grants on Education Program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets ranging from $125,000 up through $500,000 for projects ranging from one to five years. This program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, or method.

Intent to Apply forms must be completed by May 12, 2025. Full proposals are due June 17, 2025.

Explore the Research Grants on Education - Large opportunity

The ADDF offers funding to researchers for Alzheimer's drug discovery, clinical trials, and biomarker development research. Core request for proposals include:

• Neuroimaging and CSF Biomarker Development, award amount: up to $600,000
• Prevention Pipeline, award amount: up to $5,000,000
• Drug Development, award amount: up to $600,000 

LOIs are due May 13, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due May 13, 2024.

Explore the Core Requests for Proposals opportunity

The Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) and The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (AFTD) seek to accelerate and support innovative small molecule and biologic drug discovery programs for FTD. The funding priorities are:

• Lead optimization of novel disease-modifying compounds, including medicinal chemistry refinement and in vitro ADME.
• In vivo testing of novel lead compounds, biologics, or repurposed drug candidates in relevant animal models for pharmacokinetics, dose-range finding, target engagement, in vivo efficacy, and/or preliminary rodent tolerability studies.

LOIs are due May 13, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due July 22, 2024.

Explore the Accelerating Drug Discovery for Frontotemporal Degeneration opportunity

This program seeks creative and innovative early career basic researchers, including physician scientists, who have strong potential to become leaders in their fields and to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion through their mentorship and understanding of the experiences of trainees from races and ethnicities underrepresented in U.S. science. It is expected that scholars will prioritize scientific excellence in their own research while creating an inclusive and equitable lab climate that values diversity and serves as a model for the institution and beyond.

Individuals must have begun their first post-training position and begun a tenure-track faculty position on or after 3/1/20, or have accepted an offer for a tenure-track position that will begin no later than 3/1/25. Eligible research areas include all areas of basic biomedical science, such as biochemistry, cell biology, physiology, immunology, neurobiology, etc., as well as plant biology, evolutionary biology, biophysics, chemical biology, biomedical engineering, and/or computational biology.

 Scholars will be appointed to a five-year term and will receive an approximate $2 million research budget, salary and benefits, and will be eligible to participate in capital equipment purchasing programs. A five-year renewal term is also possible.

Explore the Freeman Hrabowski Scholars opportunity

Grant-making interests are focused on nutrition and/or health-related research having a significant impact on issues facing infants and young children from the first year before birth to age 3.

Concept papers are due May 15 and November 15 annually.

Explore the Pediatric Research Grants opportunity

The One Mind Rising Star Awards aim to catalyze a deep mechanistic understanding of psychiatric disorders and therapeutic action, and with the end-goal of identifying or developing biomarkers and therapeutic interventions to better diagnose, treat, and prevent such disorders. Proposals can span basic/preclinical, translational, and clinical research for psychiatric disorders, including, but not limited to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, and suicidality. Candidates must be within six years of their initial independent appointment and should have demonstrated academic excellence and research productivity in scientific fields that can be applied to the study of psychiatric disorders.

Explore the Rising Star Awards opportunity

This program helps support innovative projects that meet a need not already addressed by the Foundation’s other programs and that benefit the discipline of anthropology by creating the conditions for anthropologists to do better work. The Foundation looks for initiatives in which a small amount of money can have a wide and lasting impact, building capacity for the discipline to thrive. This year, the Foundation is promoting Paleoanthropology of East Africa and will prioritize support for collaborative projects designed to promote the growth and flourishing of paleoanthropology in this key global region.  

Explore the Global Initiatives Grants opportunity

The Pivot Fellowship supports researchers who have a strong track record of success and achievement in their current field, and a deep interest, curiosity and drive to make contributions to a new discipline. The fellowship will enable today’s brightest minds to apply their talent and expertise to a new field and will consist of one training year where the fellow will be embedded in a lab of a mentor to learn the new discipline and its culture.

Fellows and mentors must hold a Ph.D., M.D. or equivalent degree in the natural sciences (astronomy, biology, chemistry, Earth sciences, neuroscience and physics), engineering, mathematics, data science or computer science — and all sub-disciplines therein — and be faculty at an academic institution or hold an equivalent position.

The fellowship provides one year of salary support of the fellow's academic year salary and a $10,000 research, travel, and professional development allowance. Mentors will receive a $50,000 research fund during the fellowship year, which may be used for salary support for the mentor and lab personnel, equipment, travel, publication, tuition, and other research expenses. 

At the end of the fellowship year, fellows will be invited to submit a $1.5 million application for a three-year research award in the new field.  

Explore the Pivot Fellowship opportunity

This program invites proposals for research projects focused on the construction of new instrumentation for existing ground-based telescopes with apertures in the range of 2 to 5 meters, to explore scientific phenomena in the optical or near-infrared wavelengths.

Explore the Instrumentation for Astrophysics opportunity.

This program seeks high-risk, currently unfunded projects from qualified teams of academic scientists that will specifically address the development of 21st Century therapies for lethal forms of prostate cancer The level of funding varies from five to ten million USD depending on the level of innovation and risk of the awarded proposals.

Letters of Inquiry are due May 19, 2025. If invited, full proposals will be due July 9, 2025.

Explore the TACTICAL opportunity.

The Autism & Neuroscience division at the Simons Foundation is accepting applications for funding of courses or conferences. This year, courses and conferences that align with the scientific missions of any of the following programs will be prioritized: Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI), with a mission to advance the basic science of autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders, the Simons Collaboration on Plasticity and the Aging Brain (SCPAB), with a focus on healthy cognitive aging, and the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB), with a focus on the fields of systems and computational neuroscience. Conferences must plan to occur between September 1, 2025 and August 31, 2026.

LOIs are due May 22, 2025. If invited, full proposals are due July 10, 2025.

Explore the Autism & Neuroscience Conferences and Courses opportunity.

Edwards Lifesciences Foundation invites proposals that focus on the detection, treatment or recovery of structural heart disease.

Internal LOIs are due to ORD by May 22, 2025. If selected to continue, sponsor proposals will be due June 15, 2025.

Explore the Every Heartbeat Matters opportunity.

The Neuroscience Collaborations at the Simons Foundation are accepting applications for funding of courses or conferences in fundamental neuroscience. Courses and conferences that align with the scientific missions of the Foundation’s programs, the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB), with a focus on the fields of systems and computational neuroscience, and/or the Simons Collaboration on Plasticity and the Aging Brain (SCPAB), with a focus on healthy cognitive aging, will be prioritized. 

Funding requests may not overlap across years for the same course or conference either through this RFA or a previous RFA for courses and conferences through the SCGB. The first instance of the course or conference must occur between September 1, 2024, and August 31, 2025. 

Awards will be $5,000-$50,000 per year for up to three years. For requests of $50,000, applicants must contact neurocollabs@simonsfoundation.org by May 9, 2024, before submitting their application to obtain prior written approval from the Simons Foundation Neuroscience Collaborations. 

Explore the Neuroscience Collaborations Courses and Conferences Awards opportunity

The Spinal Cord Injury Research on the Translational Spectrum (SCIRTS) portfolio focuses on research designed to improve understanding and advance the current treatment of acute and chronic spinal cord injury. The goal of the portfolio is to address gaps in the field and advance novel approaches to improving function and developing curative therapies after spinal cord injury. The program encompasses mechanistic, preclinical modeling, translational and/or clinical research. The Foundation offers Postdoctoral fellowships (up to $200K),and Translational Spectrum grants (up to $400K).

LOIs are due May 23, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due November 7, 2025.

Explore the Spinal Cord Injury Research on the Translational Spectrum opportunity

The Huo Family Foundation is interested in the effect and impact of usage of digital technology on young people. These fellowships are to allow early-career researchers to design, plan and deliver their own innovative research project, and to make the transition to independent researcher. Proposals should be tackling key questions within the broad topic of the effects of usage of and exposure to digital technologies on brain development and function (including physiological responses), social behavior and interactions, and mental health of children and young people. Applicants must have completed their PhD in January 2022 or later.

Explore the Early Career Fellowship opportunity.

The Huo Family Foundation invites applications for junior faculty research grants to support early-career researchers to develop further their own research vision and help establish a research group. These grants are to support new lecturers/assistant professors at the start of their careers to foster their independence and gain experience of managing and leading research projects and teams. Proposals should be tackling key questions within the broad topic of the effects of usage of and exposure to digital technologies on brain development and function (including physiological responses), social behavior and interactions, and mental health of children and young people.

Explore the Junior Faculty Research opportunity.

The National Geographic Society, in collaboration with the University of California Berkeley, invites proposals for conservation research or conservation projects focused on ecological, cultural, or economic keystone species in the United States. This program is interested in the key themes of connectivity, blending Indigenous and academic science approaches, new technology for biodiversity monitoring and/or human- wildlife conflict management, past human relationships with American Keystones, and cutting-edge approaches to managing systems for change. Funding may be used for learning opportunities focused on leadership and fostering collaboration, as well as available innovative equipment, technology, and data services to support and propel grantees’ projects.

Pre-applications are due May 23, 2025. If selected, invitations to full proposal will be sent in June 2025.

Explore the American Keystone Species opportunity.

As part of its Human Cell Atlas (HCA) program, CZI seeks proposals for collaborative projects for the generation of healthy, single-cell reference data from ancestrally diverse tissue samples. 

The RFA intends to bring together teams of experts to 1) ethically and appropriately generate data derived from tissues from people whose ancestral groups are historically understudied and thereby expand the ancestral diversity of single-cell data that is available via the HCA, and 2) utilize best practices and build up systems to enable long-term engagement of potential participants and donors from diverse communities to contribute to the current and future drafts of the HCA. This work will help provide insights into the contribution of genetic ancestry to disease now and in the future, resulting in an atlas that may be more generalizable and representative of the diversity found in the global human population.

This Ancestry Network should collectively generate new tools, open source analysis methods, and openly available data from ancestrally diverse donors across multiple tissue types that provide valuable contributions to the HCA community. Applications should focus on healthy human tissues that will contribute to the reference atlas.

View the Ancestry Networks for the Human Cell Atlas opportunity

Support is primarily provided for the historical humanities, in particular to support research projects in the fields of Archaeology, Art History, Historical Islamic Studies, History, History of Law, History of Science, Prehistory and Early History. Candidates can apply regardless of their nationality and place of work.

Grants cover costs for personnel, travel, materials and/or other costs.

Grant amounts are not specified; however, they averaged $25,000 in 2017. See the opportunity for more information.

Explore the General Research Grants-Projects opportunity

Open, but not limited to, early career researchers. 

These awards grant support to individuals for cutting-edge biomedical applied research that may potentially benefit children. Based upon submitted nominees, the foundation will select ten investigators to receive a Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award for three years at $100,000 per year. For each nominee selected for funding, the sponsoring participating institution will also receive a Hartwell Fellowship to fund one postdoctoral candidate of their choice who exemplifies the values of the Foundation.

Internal LOIs (required) are due May 26, 2025. If selected, the sponsor proposal will be due September 15, 2025.

View the Biomedical Research Awards opportunity

The Global Science Scholars program supports a two-year international postdoctoral fellowship program between the U.S. and Japan designed to advance excellence in bioengineering and biomedical research by supporting early-career researchers to advance their careers and conduct groundbreaking science in U.S. and Japanese research labs. Candidates must have received their doctoral degree on or after July 1, 2021.

Explore the Global Science Scholars opportunity.

This program will fund fundamental research on using generative AI to improve the measurement or treatment of anxiety, depression and psychosis. This program aims to create or improve models and computational approaches to help address challenges in mental health measurement and intervention. Additionally, this request for proposals aims to produce evidence of how generative models can and/or should collaborate with mental health professionals and end beneficiaries. Individual research cannot apply, only teams are eligible for this opportunity.

Explore the Generative AI opportunity.

The goal of HES4A is to support the career development and academic advancement of researchers from historically underrepresented backgrounds who conduct health equity research. Grants will be awarded to address the challenges that underrepresented researchers experience; help them overcome obstacles to earning tenure; and make progress toward acquiring independent research funding. Grants will support three aspects of career development: research, mentorship, and connection with a community of support.

 Applicants must have completed a doctoral degree in the last five years (in any field), be a junior faculty member or postdoc poised to be in such a position by the start of the grant, and have never served as a principal investigator since receiving their doctoral degree. Please see the program description for additional eligibility criteria.

Explore the Health Equity Scholars for Action (HES4A) opportunity

The Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood supports promising research and development projects that appear likely to improve the welfare of young children, from infancy through 7 years, in the United States. Welfare is broadly defined to include physical and mental health, safety, nutrition, education, play, familial support, acculturation, societal integration and childcare.

Grants are only made if a successful project outcome will likely be of significant interest to other professionals, within the grantee’s field of endeavor, and would have a direct benefit and potential national application. The Foundation’s goal is to provide seed money to implement those imaginative proposals that exhibit the greatest chance of improving the lives of young children, on a national scale. 

Grants are made in the areas of:

• early childhood welfare
• early childhood education and play
• parenting education

Grants typically range between $50,000 and $60,000. 

Explore the Early Childhood Grants opportunity

This imaging program seeks to give biologists access to reproducible quantitative image analysis. CZI has partnered with napari, a community-built, Python-based, open- source tool for browsing, annotating, and analyzing large multi-dimensional images. CZI invites applications for grants to improve the quality of one or more existing napari plugins through improvements to documentation, user support, usability, reliability, or other activities.

Applications for two types of grants will be considered in scope according to the level of maturity of the plugin:

• Quality improvement grants to improve the quality of one or more existing open source napari plugins
• Cell biology grants to convert existing open source tools, methods, or processing steps that support common cell biology workflows into one or more napari plugins.

Explore the napari Plugin Foundation Grants opportunity

This RFA aims to accelerate innovative discoveries in metabolism and metabolic physiology in health and disease. It is explicitly aimed at addressing the mechanisms of metabolism, including its dynamics and resolution, molecular drivers, and the effects of genetic and environmental risk factors on relevant sub-cellular and cellular properties and interactions, and precisely mapping metabolic changes and states across various scales using a broad range of technologies. Projects should aim to use diverse experimental systems beyond immortalized cell lines to ensure the broadest possible insights into cellular and organelle biology.

The opportunity also aims to support new collaborative teams focused on bridging multiple biology fields to accelerate metabolism research and the development of new tools to measure human biology. Teams may include up to a total of three PIs with at least one PI with expertise in metabolism, metabolic reprogramming and/or homeostasis, organelle biology, metabolomics tools, or any other related field. 

Grants will be awarded at two levels:

• Focused Projects: Exploratory, risky technology development strategies

• Expanded Projects: Hypothesis-driven biological questions that rely on applying, scaling and/or improving existing technology to measure metabolism across organelles and cells.

 These grants are not intended to support translational research, clinical trials, or drug development.

Explore the Measuring Metabolism Across Scales opportunity

The Capita Foundation mission is to support innovative research that works toward the prevention and cure of hearing disorders.

Applications must be received before June 1 annually.

Explore the Auditory Research Grants opportunity

Priority for conference and workshop grants will be given to events that foster the creation of an international community of research scholars in anthropology and advance significant and innovative anthropological research. Workshops, defined as working meetings that focus on developing and debating topical issues in theoretical anthropology, will involve a small group of scholars meeting for a sufficient period of time to deal intensely with the project. It is expected that workshops will result in a publication.

Applications are accepted on June 1 and December 1 annually.

Explore the Conference and Workshop Grants opportunity

The GRAMMY Foundation awards grants to support efforts that advance the archiving and preservation of the music and recorded sound heritage of the Americas for future generations.

Explore the Preservation Projects - Music and Recorded Sound opportunity

The GRAMMY Foundation Grant Program awards grants to organizations and individuals to support research on the impact of music on the human condition.

Explore the Scientific Research Projects - Music opportunity

The mission of the Foundation is to support early stage investigators engaged in basic biomedical research that has the potential to significantly advance the understanding, diagnosis, or treatment of disease. Mallinckrodt Research Grant applicants should be in the first to fourth year of a tenure-track faculty position. The funds are designed to provide faculty members who hold MD and/or PhD degrees with support to move the project forward to the point where R01 or other independent funding can be obtained. Grants provide up to $75,000 per year for three years. 

Applicants with current R01 funding should not apply.

Internal proposals are due June 2, 2025. If selected, the sponsor proposal will be due August 1, 2025. 

Explore the Research Grants - Basic Biomedical Research opportunity

The Water Research Foundation Endowment for Innovation in Applied Water Quality Research recognizes outstanding achievement and creative vision through the Paul L. Busch Award. The award seeks to distinguish individuals poised for greater recognition of their innovative, ongoing contributions to water quality advancements.

Explore the Paul L. Busch Award  opportunity

LOIs are due June 3, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due October 15, 2024.

Explore the Young Scholars Program opportunity

Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems is an emerging scientific area that provides a unique opportunity to examine neural adaptation and resilience within a societally relevant context. The Kavli Foundation is seeking to identify, explore, and/or understand key societal perspectives related to NCE, that can influence the development of the research agenda or identify areas that require further study. This could include work to identify key societal issues or create a framework for how these societal implications would be considered or addressed. Projects that take a field-wide view will be prioritized. Projects that do not take a similarly broad approach will be considered if the work proposed has the potential to influence research directions, for example, through a collaboration with neurobiology and changing ecosystems researchers. Funds will be used to support projects that identify or carry out scholarship or other efforts that advance the understanding of the societal issues in this field.  

Explore the Societal Considerations for Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems Research (NCE) opportunity

This program funds historical research into conflict histories surrounding the correct order and just society. The program includes two focus areas:

• Democracy as a Utopia, Experience and Threats aims at placing problematic issues in broader historical context and considering the history of conflicts over the foundation of the social order.
• Transformations of Democracy? Or: The Contours of Future Democratic Society focuses on analysis of the present situation and predictions for the future. It represents an invitation to venture contributions, speculations, and assertions so that we might learn to better understand the complex present-day situation and the processes of profound transformation that are taking shape while also trying to trace the contours of future society.

Explore the Democracy Funding Programme opportunity

The Joyce Foundation invests in public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region. The Foundation accepts applications in the following program areas:

• Culture
• Democracy
• Education & Economic Mobility
• Environment
• Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform
• Journalism

LOIs are to be submitted at least 6-8 weeks in advance of the full proposal deadline (August 1, 2024).

Explore the Joyce Foundation opportunity 

The Smith Richardson Foundation sponsors an annual Strategy and Policy Fellows grant competition to support young scholars and policy thinkers on American foreign policy, international relations, international security, military policy, and diplomatic and military history.

At least three research grants of $60,000 will be awarded to enable the recipients to research and write a book. 

Explore the Strategy & Policy Fellows Program opportunity

The Searle Scholars Program awards research grants to selected universities and research centers to support the independent research of exceptional faculty in the biomedical sciences and chemistry who have recently begun their appointment at the assistant professor level and whose appointment is their first tenure-track position at a participating academic or research institution. Candidates should have begun their first appointment as an independent investigator at the assistant professor level on or after July 1, 2024. 

Internal LOIs are due June 11, 2025, and internal proposals are due July 9, 2025. If selected to move forward, the sponsor proposal will be due September 30, 2025.

Explore the Searle Scholars opportunity

The G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation provides support for basic science that has potential for translational applications. Examples of current research areas we support include immunology, microbiome, structural biology, cellular physiology, cancer biology, genetics, genomics, microbiology and infectious diseases, stem cell biology, and neuroscience. 

Research areas that will not be considered for support include Covid-19 related research projects, Plant Biology Research, Oceanography, Space Exploration. and Global Warming related research. In addition, medical imaging technology related projects and/or electrical engineering technology development projects will not be considered for support.   The Foundation does not support research conducted in human subjects and will not fund requests for clinical trials or drug discovery. The Foundation will not support research projects which it considers pre-clinical drug development. 

Internal LOIs are due June 11, 2025. If selected to move forward, the sponsor LOI will be due October 3, 2025.

Explore the Research Program - Basic and Translational opportunity

The Wayne F. Placek Grant encourages research to increase the general public's understanding of homosexuality and sexual orientation, and to alleviate the stress that LGBTQIA+ individuals experience in this and future civilizations.

Explore the Wayne F. Placek Grants for LGBT Issues opportunity

The Arts and Culture for Community Wealth program seeks proposals for innovative and emerging projects that leverage arts and culture as catalysts to build individual and community wealth. This funding opportunity seeks to address this need by supporting projects that integrate arts and culture into public spaces and drive economic growth in underinvested communities and those experiencing displacement of longtime residents. This RFP is best suited for projects that are in the late planning stage, with fully formed ideas and established partnerships, but require additional resources to complete. 

LOIs are due June 12, 2025. If invited full proposals are due August 14, 2025.

Explore the Arts & Culture for Community Wealth opportunity.

The mission of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) is to improve the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) by funding innovative research of the highest quality and relevance.

The goal of the Pilot Award is to provide early support for exploratory ideas, particularly those with novel hypotheses. Appropriate projects for this mechanism include those considered higher risk but with the potential for transformative results. In particular, the Foundation encourages applications that propose research to link genetic or other ASD risk factors to molecular, cellular, circuit or behavioral mechanisms and set the stage for development of novel interventions.

Explore the Pilot Award opportunity

Grants awarded through the Cross-Species Studies of ASD request for applications (RFA) are intended to support multi-disciplinary teams of PIs with expertise in both human and animal research to perform coordinated cross-species studies to advance our understanding of ASD-relevant behaviors and their underlying neurobiological mechanisms, with the potential for developing novel biomarkers or interventions.

Explore the Cross-Species Studies of ASD opportunity 

The Helen Hay Whitney Foundation supports early postdoctoral research training in all basic biomedical sciences. To attain its goal of increasing the number of imaginative, well trained and dedicated medical scientists, the Foundation grants financial support of sufficient duration to help further the careers of young men and women engaged in biological or medical research. Candidates who hold, or are in the final stages of obtaining, a Ph.D., M.D., or equivalent degree and are seeking beginning postdoctoral training in basic biomedical research are eligible to apply for a fellowship. The Foundation accepts applications from candidates who have no more than one year of postdoctoral research experience as of June 16, 2025, and who have received a Ph.D. (or D.Phil. or equivalent) degree no more than two years before the deadline, or an M.D. degree no more than three years before the deadline.

Explore the Biomedical Research Fellowship opportunity

RWJF aims to support projects with the potential to support, sustain, and evolve the field in promoting systems-level change to prevent childhood obesity, address structural racism, and advance health equity. RWJF is especially interested in projects that aim to:

• Address structural racism and other systems that perpetuate health inequities.
• Respond to gaps in evidence or action identified by the field.
• Engage with communities most impacted by childhood obesity and nutrition insecurity and organizations focused on people of color.
• Leverage and complement existing field assets (RWJF’s and others’).

 Ideas and innovations that cut across, and even go beyond, the following four strategies are suggested:

• Influence policy and systems change,
• Produce and disseminate actionable evidence and data,
• Catalyze investment in communities, and
• Change narratives.

Explore the Addressing Childhood Obesity and Health Inequities opportunity

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative invites applications for the second cycle of the Collaborative Pairs Pilot Project Awards to support pairs of investigators and their teams to explore innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to address critical  for collaborative pilot projects to explore innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to address critical challenges in the fields of neurodegenerative disease and fundamental neuroscience.

Phase 1 of the Collaborative Pairs grants RFA will provide seed funds for new interdisciplinary collaborations involving a pair of investigators and their labs to pursue a pilot project towards addressing a critical gap in the field (see section on scope below). Each pair is required to include at least one early or mid-career researcher (less than 10 years in an independent academic PI role). Collaborative Pairs projects will be funded for 18 months ($200,00 total costs/collaboration) for a pilot phase where teams will generate tools and data and further develop their project proposal and team, with the main goal being the development of a project plan for Phase 2.

In Phase 2, Collaborative Pairs teams that received pilot project funding and have successfully progressed their project will be eligible to apply for an acceleration grant award of $400,000 total costs/year/pair for four years ($1.6 million total) to build on the work done in the pilot phase.

Explore the Collaborative Pairs Pilot Project Awards opportunity

The Michelson Prizes focus on transformative research in human immunology with trans-disease applications to accelerate vaccine and immunotherapy discovery. Reviewers will be looking for research aimed at tackling current roadblocks in human vaccine development and expanding our limited understanding of key immune processes that are fundamental to successful vaccine and immunotherapy development.  

Projects should propose innovative ideas and approaches that can be applied across disease areas and states. Projects should have the potential to significantly expand our understanding of the human immune system and accelerate the development of vaccines, diagnostics, and immunotherapies.  

While the Michelson Prizes are focused on research in the fields of immunology, vaccine and immunotherapy discovery, applicants from the full spectrum of related disciplines, including clinical research, molecular biology, computer science, biophysics, bioengineering, environmental health, biochemistry, protein engineering, AI/machine learning, nanotechnology, microbiome, and vector biology are welcome to apply. 

Applicants born before June 22, 1990, are not eligible to apply for this year’s award.

Explore the Michelson Prizes opportunity

This program supports research to help resolve an important emerging or unanswered problem in clinical, biomedical, or public health decision-making, policy, or practice. The program aims to fund projects that promote the Foundation’s vision and mission through innovative bioethics research that will have a real-world, practical impact. 

The Foundation is particularly interested in proposals that address the ethical and policy issues raised by the following priority topics:

• Trust in science, medicine, and public health;
• Bias and discrimination against patients or clinicians, which may be based on a broad range of characteristics and which may involve institutional and systemic contributors to bias and racism as well as health disparities or social determinants of health;
• Public health crises (related to, for example, emerging infectious diseases, climate change, and the opioid epidemic), including their impact on mental health;
• Healthcare access, costs, and resource allocation.
• Recent changes to the federal health and biomedical science policy and funding landscape.

Proposals for projects that address other real-world, practical bioethics problems are also welcome. 

Projects may be empirical, conceptual, or normative. All proposals should explain how they will help address a real-world bioethics dilemma. Projects to analyze the normative implications of already-completed empirical research are encouraged. Successful teams commonly involve a bioethics scholar and persons with on-the-ground experience with the bioethics dilemma, for example, in clinical care; biomedical research; biotechnology, pharmaceutical, big data, and artificial intelligence companies; or public service.

LOIs are due June 23, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due September 8, 2025.

Explore the Making a Difference in Real-World Bioethics Dilemmas opportunity

The Building Bridges 2020 Grants Program will support planning and implementation of projects that engage U.S.-based Muslims and their neighbors in online and/or live arts- and media-based experiences designed to advance relationships and understanding for mutual well-being. Through this approach, the program’s larger aim is to contribute toward a more just civil society and greater well-being among people.

Proposed projects or programs should offer immersive and interactive experiences that may be conducted in collaboration with other organizations and are tailored to the needs and interests of the specific intended audience(s). These experiential activities can be conducted online and/or live. There are many ways organizations might design, structure and implement projects that engage U.S.-based Muslims and their neighbors through digital, literary, multimedia, and/or performing arts-based experiences to foster relationships and understanding between communities. Organizations are encouraged to draw upon their core capabilities, knowledge of the selected population(s) and resources in the creation of their proposals. Competitive projects may include, but are not limited to:

• Development of new programs informed by past experience with successful U.S.-based or international programming grounded in the creative arts and;
• Expansion of existing programs that advance Building Bridges Grants Program goals.

Internal LOIs are due June 16, 2020. If selected to move forward, the sponsor letter of interest will be due July 13, 2020.

The National Geographic Society, in partnership with the John Templeton Foundation, aims to support innovative photography, short film, writing, data visualization and other storytelling proposals to help people consider some of the greatest questions of our time.  Proposals may investigate human origins, as well as look into the future of human/machine interaction and shifts in human consciousness, the physical, scientific, and philosophical world. The funders are interested in exploring the three following questions:

• What does it mean to be human?
• What are the boundaries of Earth, or more precisely, what are the limits to what we can understand?
• What is the relationship between the human and natural worlds?

Explore the Big Questions opportunity.

JDRF is focused on funding and catalyzing research that will lead to a cure of Type 1 diabetes (T1D), improving the quality of life and relieving the burden for people living with T1D, and preventing the disease. These awards are designed to provide crucial support to investigators who plan to pursue a career in diabetes-related clinical investigation. Awards are made in the later stages of training and include the ability for recipients to transition to independent faculty or research appointments. Clinical researchers who have received their first faculty-level appointment less than 5 years before the submission date are eligible to apply for this award. The successful candidate will have an MD or MD/PhD, hold an appointment or joint appointment in a subspecialty of clinical medicine, and conduct human clinical research. 

Explore the Early-Career Patient-Oriented Diabetes Research Awards opportunity

The Kauffman Foundation invites previous awardees to submit proposals for projects that no longer align with the foundation’ s funding priorities. Eligible applicants will be Kauffman Foundation grantees with grants ending in January 1, 2023 through June 2025. This program aims to help long-term grantees transition to new funding sources or bring closure to projects that are ending.

Explore the Sunset opportunity.

This RFP aims to identify and evaluate evidence-based solutions targeting the nation’s most pressing social problems. Causal research should bolster the knowledge base about potentially effective policies, programs, and interventions. The program will fund researchers to conduct rigorous, causal research that aligns with key AV policy areas, including housing, transportation, climate and energy.

LOIs are due June 13, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due September 26, 2025.

Explore the Building Evidence opportunity.

The Cottrell Scholar program develops outstanding teacher-scholars who are recognized by their scientific communities for the quality and innovation of their research programs and their academic leadership skills. Eligible applicants are tenure-track faculty members whose primary appointment is in a department of astronomy, chemistry or physics. Eligibility is limited to faculty members who started their first tenure-track appointment anytime in calendar year 2022.

Explore the Cottrell Scholars opportunity

The Innovation Award is designed to provide support for the next generation of exceptionally creative thinkers with "high-risk/high-reward" ideas that have the potential to significantly impact our understanding of and/or approaches to the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of cancer. This is a two-year award with the potential to be renewed for an additional two years ($800,000 total over four years).

Explore the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Awards opportunity

The Paralyzed Veterans of America Research Foundation is focused on funding projects grounded in basic laboratory science and the education of scientists working on breakthroughs directed toward a cure for paralysis or the secondary medical conditions, and technologies associated with spinal cord injury or disease (SCI/D). Funding is available for laboratory research, clinical and functional studies of the effects of SCI/D, design and development of assistive technology, and fellowships for postdoctoral scientists, clinicians, and engineers. 

Explore the Research Grants for SCI/D opportunity

The Career Development Award is focused on funding and catalyzing research that will lead to a cure of Type 1 diabetes (T1D), improving the quality of life and relieving the burden for people living with T1D, and preventing the disease. Career Development Awards are designed to attract qualified and promising scientists early in their faculty careers and given them the opportunity to establish themselves in areas that reflect the funder's research emphasis areas. The Career Development Award is intended for individuals at an early stage of their independent academic career. Researchers who have received their first faculty-level appointment less than 3 years before the submission date are eligible to apply for this award. The applicant must hold an academic faculty-level position (including assistant professor or equivalent) at the time of submission of the proposal. 

Explore the Career Development Awards opportunity

Breakthrough T1D is focused on funding and catalyzing research that will lead to a cure of Type 1 diabetes (T1D), improving the quality of life and relieving the burden for people living with T1D, and preventing the disease. The Advanced Postdoctoral Fellowship program is designed to attract qualified and promising health scientists, to provide an opportunity to receive full time research training, and to assist these promising individuals in transitioning from a fellowship to an independent (faculty-level) position. Generally, the most recent doctoral degree (PhD, MD, DMD, DVM, or equivalent) will have been received no more than 6 years before the application is submitted. 

Explore the Advanced Postdoctoral Fellowships opportunity

This funding opportunity seeks projects focused on the archaeology of sustainable communities and landscapes in changing climates to ultimately contribute to mitigating contemporary environmental crises. Competitive projects will have positive, measurable, and sustainable benefits that may include strengthening community land tenure or resource rights, empowering connections with traditional foodways and other heritage, and/or helping to support transmission of ecological knowledge and practices. Proposals for both research and conservation projects will be considered.

Explore the Enduring Impacts opportunity.

Furthermore grants assist nonfiction books having to do with art, architecture, and design; cultural history, the city, and related public issues; and conservation and preservation. The organization looks for work that appeals to an informed general audience, gives evidence of high standards in editing, design, and production, and promises a reasonable shelf life.

Explore the Grants in Publishing opportunity

Templeton World Charity Foundation seeks projects that aim to:

1. Empirically investigate and evaluate the causal impact of specific religious and spiritual exercises or practices on flourishing-related outcomes;
2. Identify and test potential mechanisms that mediate practices to their outcomes, as well as moderators that might influence those outcomes
3. Provide research data and evidence that can inform innovations in spiritual exercises so that more people can benefit from their practice

• Investigations of the impact of practices from indigenous religious traditions or
  Eastern religious traditions
• Under-researched forms of contemplative practices, including but not limited to
  contemplation on mortality (such as Maranasati meditation and memento mori) or
  meditation in or about nature
• Different forms of prayer, such as those that involve sacred texts (e.g., Lectio divina),
  visual images and icons, or self-reflection (e.g., prayer of Examen)
• Social spiritual exercises, such as group meditation
• Confession
• Movement-based spiritual exercises

Applicants may request up to $260,000 for a Small Grant, or up to $500,000 for a Large Grant.

Explore the The Science of Religious and Spiritual Exercises opportunity 

The Rita Allen Foundation Scholars program supports basic biomedical research in the fields of cancer, immunology and neuroscience. Scholars are nominated by premier research institutions and then selected by the Rita Allen Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee. 

Northwestern's internal deadline is July 2, 2025. If selected to move forward, the sponsor LOI will be due October 16, 2025.

Explore the Rita Allen Foundation Scholars opportunity

The Joyce Awards program is dedicated to supporting artists of color in major Great Lakes Cities (Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis-St. Paul). Each award supports an artist in the creation and production of a new work while providing the commissioning organization with the resources needed to engage audiences, new partners, and their surrounding communities at large.

Internal LOIs are due July 6, 2023. If selected to move forward, the sponsor LOI will be due September 11, 2023.

Explore the Joyce Awards opportunity

This program is accepting letters of intent (LOIs) from organizations to conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in sub-Saharan Africa comparing STI screening and standard of care syndromic management. The primary outcome of this study should be PID, with secondary outcomes possibly including chronic pelvic pain, ectopic pregnancy, and infertility. The study should provide insight into the risk of outcomes following infection with gonorrhea, chlamydia, and/or trichomoniasis and the impact and cost-effectiveness of etiologic screening to prevent morbidity.

Letters of intent are due July 7, 2025. Full proposals are by invitation only.

Explore the RCTs on STIs opportunity. 

CZI’s Imaging program aims to visualize and measure biological systems across biological scales and in their biological context. This RFA seeks to drive development of imaging technology focused on obtaining cellular resolution readouts within complex living organisms. This grant program will advance the field of deep tissue imaging, which aims to obtain cellular resolution in complex tissue and through skin and bone.

This Phase 2 RFA is limited to all applicants (see Eligibility) and is not limited to Deep Tissue Imaging Phase 1 pilot projects or investigators. 

LOIs are due July 11, 2023. Invited full applications will be due September 26, 2023.

Explore the Deep Tissue Imaging opportunity

This program seeks to advance the development of innovative molecular MRI (mMRI) techniques that directly quantify molecular and cellular events in Parkinson’s disease (PD).Priority will be given to proposals that address either novel probe/sequence development and validation and/or pre-clinical optimization and validation. This funder will not consider proposals focused on prospective collection of clinical data using existing mMRI strategies. 

Explore the mMRI biomarker opportunity. 

The mission of the Leakey Foundation is to increase scientific knowledge, education, and public understanding of human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival. Current funding priorities include 1) paleoanthropology of the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene; and 2) primates (old and new world), including evolution, behavior, morphology, ecology, endocrinology, genetics, isotope studies, and modern hunter-gatherer groups.

Most grants range between $3,000-$15,000. Proposals of up to $30,000 will be considered.

Applications are accepted on January 10 and July 15 annually.

Explore the Research Grants on Human Origins opportunity

The Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics is a career development award to enable junior faculty members to carry out innovative bioethics research. It supports research that goes beyond current work in bioethics to help resolve pressing ethical issues in clinical care, biomedical research, and public policy, and creates a community that enhances future bioethics research by Scholars and Alumni/ae.  The goal of the program is to develop the next generation of bioethics leaders.

The award provides 50 percent salary support for three years, as well as $5,000 per year for limited project support and travel.

Internal LOIs are due July 16, 2024. If selected, the sponsor LOI will be due September 16, 2024.

Explore the Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics opportunity

Grants will be made under the following programs: Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context; Future of Work; Immigration and Immigrant Integration; Race, Ethnicity and Immigration; and Social, Political and Economic Inequality

In addition, RSF will also accept LOIs relevant to any of its core programs that address the effects of social movements, such as drives for unionization and mass social protests, and the effects of racial/ethnic/gender bias and discrimination on a range of outcomes related to social and living conditions in the United States.

LOIs are due July 16, 2025.

Explore the Research Grants opportunity

This program aims to fund action-oriented health equity research, which prioritizes community knowledge and facilitates the relationships and governance structures that build community power, ownership of research, and systems change.

Letters of inquiry are due on July 17, 2025. If invited, full proposals will be due December 17, 2025.

Explore the Health Equity New Research Grants opportunity.

BrightFocus provides research funds for researchers pursuing pioneering research leading to greater understanding, prevention, and treatment of age-related macular degeneration. Three grant types are available:

• Innovative Research Grant: Supports high-risk/high-gain age-related macular degeneration research. The Foundation hopes to attract established investigators to apply for this support, but the aims of the application must contain outside-the-box ideas that are novel in the field. Applicants who are experts in another field are encouraged to apply their talents to proposing innovative research in the macular degeneration field. Award amount: $600,000
• New Investigator Program: Supports investigators during their early years as an independent investigator involved in studies that have an impact on the causes and/or treatment of macular degeneration. Award amount: $450,000
• Postdoctoral Fellowship Program: Supports  young postdoctoral researchers during their final stages of mentored training. The award provides salary support for a young scientist to conduct postdoctoral studies in an established laboratory focused on research contributing to understanding the biological causes and/or new clinical treatment of macular degeneration and should also serve as the basis for the applicant's own independent research career. Award amount: $200,000

LOIs are due July 17, 2025. 

Explore the Macular Degeneration Research Grant opportunity

The Schmidt Science Polymaths program offers long-term research support to recently tenured professors (within the past 3 years) with remarkable track records and promising futures. The key goal of the Schmidt Science Polymaths program is to encourage the best “polymath” scientists to expand their research portfolio by exploring new lines of research that are substantively different from their ongoing and proven research activities.

Schmidt Futures is looking for the brightest minds in the sciences, mathematics, engineering, and computing who have gained recognition for significant progress on one or more research problems while also showing a capacity for generating a continuing flow of innovative new ideas and approaches in a variety of areas. They will have demonstrated their high variance thinking through successful research in areas widely divergent from their main field of expertise.

The program is intended for the exploration of new ideas across disciplines that use new technologies and insights that are generally too new or risky to garner regular support. The award is not intended to relieve the researcher of pursuing other grants to continue their mainstream work, nor be large enough to fully support a modern lab.

Candidates must meet the following qualifications:

• Have achieved tenure (or equivalent status) within the past 3 years (2019 or after),
• Have a remarkable record of accomplishment in area(s) of science and engineering,
• Have a demonstrated history of pursuing and publishing results in more than one field,
• Demonstrate a need for additional funding to enable new experiments, explorations, or shifts in research directions.

Interested faculty members are required to submit a white paper by July 18, 2023.

Explore the Schmidt Science Polymaths opportunity

The Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease (PATH) award supports investigators at the assistant professor level to study pathogenesis, with a focus on the interplay between human and microbial biology, shedding light on how human and microbial systems are affected by their encounters.

LOIs are due July 18, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due November 14, 2024.

Explore the Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease opportunity

Art Seeking Understanding (ASU) is a program strategy concerned with Aesthetic Cognitivism and improving the methods of inquiry into the existence and nature of spiritual reality, including things like love, compassion, purpose, creativity, time, mind, infinity, complexity, and understanding.

Projects in this area would bring together artists and arts researchers, philosophers and theologians alongside scientists from a variety of sub-disciplines within the psychological, cognitive, and social sciences, including developmental psychology, cognitive science of religion, cognitive neuroscience, sociology, social psychology, personality psychology, psychometrics, and clinical psychology to conceive and design empirical and statistical studies of the cognitive significance of the arts with respect to spiritual realities and the discovery of new spiritual information.

View the Art Seeking Understanding opportunity.

This RFA will accelerate the development of imaging probes that can leverage and combine the strengths of 1) light microscopy to study cell function and 2) cryo-electron tomography to study sub-cellular structure. Development of genetically-encoded tags (green fluorescent protein, or GFP, and its variants), chemical tags (HaloTag, SNAP-tag), nanobodies, and other imaging labels have revolutionized live-cell and super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. In correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM), registration of fluorescence microscopy with electron microscopy images can be used to identify specific structures or molecules, such as proteins, organelles, or other cellular components.

CZI specifically seeks proposals that support the development of intracellular imaging probes that can withstand cryogenic preservation, provide high photon yields to allow accurate localization in cryo-CLEM, and have sufficient electron contrast or a unique shape to be detectable in cryo tomograms. This funding opportunity is explicitly aimed at the design and demonstration of a complete solution for general-purpose, intracellular cryo-CLEM imaging probes that could be broadly disseminated to the cryo-CLEM/cryo-ET field.

Explore the Cryo-CLEM Labels opportunity

This initiative supports innovative and practical integration of bioethics into policy. This initiative will not fund bioethics research but, rather, support bioethics researchers, policymakers, and others to take the next step and bridge the divide between research results and policymaking. Relevant policymaking under this initiative can occur at the federal, state, or local level. 

The Foundation intentionally is not prescribing the mechanisms it will fund through this initiative and welcomes creative ideas and applications. For illustrative purposes only, such mechanisms might include making actionable bioethics research readily available to policymakers in digestible and accessible formats or scaling up an evidence-based policy solution. They are unlikely to include publishing in an academic journal.

Explore the Bridging Bioethics Research & Policymaking opportunity

This program aims to support projects draw on the potential of longitudinal data to drive innovation in early identification of anxiety, depression and/or psychosis. Successful teams will integrate advanced analytics of longitudinal data with experimental research to enable more precise and effective early interventions Applicants should be teams that include At least one mental health scientist and one data scientist with expertise relevant to the proposed work.

 Explore the Mental Health Award opportunity

This award will fund innovative projects that combine computational and experimental neuroscience approaches to improve understanding of symptoms of anxiety, depression, and psychosis, including their development, maintenance, or resolution. Researchers must take a symptom-based approach rather than looking solely at diagnostic categories. Projects must have a computational component and an experimental component to examine research questions at multiple scales of analysis. They must have a collaborative plan of work that includes mental health practitioners as well as neuroscientists, and they must involve lived experience expertise unless there is a strong justification for not doing so. Research proposals must describe how, if successful, the project would contribute to translational work (either directly or over time) supporting real-world application.

Applications from diverse and interdisciplinary teams, with collaborations covering multiple areas of expertise are encouraged. Teams can have 2 to 8 members.

Explore the Mental Health Award—Applying Neuroscience to Understand Symptoms in Anxiety, Depression, and Psychosis opportunity

Career Catalyst Research Grants provide opportunities for scientists who have held faculty positions for no more than five years. This program supports hypothesis-driven research projects that have significant potential to advance our understanding of breast cancer, lead to reductions in incidence and mortality, and move us toward the goal of a world without breast cancer.

Visit the Career Catalyst Grants website

This program aims to stimulate the growth of new connections between scholars working in largely disconnected fields who might together change the course of climate change’s impact on human health. Proposals will be accepted on a rolling basis through July 2026. Upcoming application deadlines include: 

• Oct 23, 2025 
• Jan 22, 2026
• April 23, 2026
• July 23, 2026

 Explore the Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants opportunity

CZI seeks to support up to 15 Imaging Scientists who will work at the interface of biology, microscopy hardware, and imaging software at imaging core facilities around the world. “Imaging Scientists” might be engineers, physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, or biologists who have focused on technology development in either light or electron microscopy, medical imaging, or data analysis fields. The primary goal of the program is to increase interactions between biologists and technology experts. The Imaging Scientists will have expertise in microscopy hardware and/or imaging software.

View the Imaging Scientists opportunity

The Foundation provides support to emerging investigators to promote scientifically based and clinically relevant research related to the effectiveness of physical therapy practice. Research projects in any specialty may be supported. The Foundation supports only those intervention studies in which the interventions are provided by physical therapists, or selected components of the interventions are provided by physical therapist assistants under the direction and supervision of physical therapists.

Opportunities in 2025:

• Acute Care Research Grant - Studies must be directly related to acute care physical therapy and relevant to acute care in addressing one or more priorities in APTA's research agenda ($80,000)
• Cardiovascular and Pulmonary - TBD ($40,000)
• Education - Research methods for promoting the uptake of research findings into physical therapy education and design educational interventions to address the gap between evidence and practice ($40,000)
• Foundation - Emerging investigators evaluate the effectiveness of interventions in any relevant physical therapy discipline ($40,000)
• Geriatrics - Address a high-impact and priority for improving physical therapy treatment practices for aging adults consistent with the priorities in the APTA Academy of Geriatrics Research Agenda ($40,000)
• Moffatt Geriatric - Evaluate the effectiveness of physical therapists' examinations and/or interventions in geriatric populations ($40,000)
• Orthopaedic Physical Therapy - Emerging investigators explore clinical outcomes of physical therapy Pratice for patients with musculoskeletal conditions ($40,000)
•  Pelvic Health - Advance pelvic health physical therapy, which covers abdominal and pelvic concerns of individuals across the gender spectrum and lifespan ($40,000)
• Synder - Emerging investigators research the effectiveness of clinical physical therapy services and the development of new interventions that will be relevant and effective ($40,000)

The program aims to reduce nuclear dangers, by funding projects focused on:

• Emerging and Disruptive Technologies and Nuclear Dangers
• Future of Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Disarmament
• Open-Source Information and Strategic Risk Modeling
• Next-Generation Capacity Building
• Crisis Management, Stability, and Escalation Control

Concept notes are due Ju;y 31, 2025. If invited full proposal are due September 11, 2025.

Explore the Reducing Nuclear Dangers opportunity.

The Beckman Young Investigator Program provides research support to the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences, particularly to foster the invention of methods, instruments, and materials that will open up new avenues of research in science.

The BYI program funds scientists early in their careers who have not yet received a major award from another organization and are pursuing projects that are truly innovative, high-risk, and show promise for contributing to significant advances in chemistry and the life sciences. 

To be eligible, candidates must have achieved a tenure track appointment after 1/1/2021 and before 8/1/2025.

LOIs are due August 1, 2025. If selected invitations for full proposals will be sent in November 2025.

Explore the Young Investigator Program opportunity

The Foundation seeks to support projects to develop and test the feasibility of new programs for promoting positive cognitive and/or achievement outcomes for children (birth through 18 years) from underserved groups and/or low-resourced communities (minority ethnic groups, low-income families), as well as projects that evaluate the effectiveness of such programs.

Grants have ranged from $25,000 to $790,000.

LOIs are due August 1, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due December 1, 2025.

Explore the Brady Education Foundation opportunity

Engaged Research Grants support research partnerships that empower those who have historically been among those researched in anthropology, rather than researchers themselves.  These partnerships bring together scholars and their interlocutors in the mutual production of anthropological knowledge aimed at combatting inequality and promoting the flourishing of human and more than human worlds.  The program supports projects that promise to make a significant contribution to anthropological conversations through collaborations in which engagement is a central feature of a project from the very start.  

Explore the Engaged Research Grant - Anthropology opportunity

This program offers support for organizations to plan and/or present exhibitions drawn from the institution’s permanent collections. This grant can be used to cover planning and implementation costs. Funding this grant can also be used to support related staff positions (up to 25% of the award amount). The Terra Foundation supports visual arts projects with a focus on art of the United States and Indigenous art of North America that question and broaden understandings of American art and transform how its stories are told. This grant can be used to cover planning and implementation costs.

LOIs are due August 4, 2025. If invited, proposals are due October 6, 2025.

Explore the Collection Grants opportunity.

The W. T. Grant Foundation funds research that increases our understanding of the programs, policies, and practices that reduce inequality in youth outcomes, and strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit youth.

Explore the Research Grants to Reduce Inequality and Improve the Use of Research Evidence opportunities

The Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards Program supports the research and teaching careers of talented young faculty in the chemical sciences. Based on institutional nominations, the program provides discretionary funding to faculty at an early stage in their careers. Criteria for selection include an independent body of scholarship attained within the first six years of their appointment as independent researchers, and a demonstrated commitment to education, signaling the promise of continuing outstanding contributions to both research and teaching. 

Internal proposals' deadline is TBD. If selected, the sponsor proposal will be due August 7, 2025.

Explore the Teacher-Scholar Awards opportunity

This pre-clinical program seeks to accelerate the path of the therapeutic pipeline towards clinical results through the support of ambitious and scientifically robust pre-clinical studies aiming at developing and testing treatments and interventions that can address the unmet needs of people with PD. The Therapeutics Pipeline Program is only open to industry and industry-academia collaborations. 

LOIs are accepted on a rolling basis. Invited full proposals will be due August 7, 2025.

Explore the Therapeutic Pipeline Program opportunity

This program aims to stimulate the development of strong research, education, and public communications connections between fields that aim to understand and mitigate the impact of climate change on human health. The Climate + Health Excellence Centers Award will support institutions or consortia that are already moving toward establishing themselves as centers of excellence for understanding climate change’s impact on human health and for leadership in climate education OR public communication around climate and health.

Explore the  CHEX Award opportunity.

RWJF’s Policies for Action (P4A) program funds research that can move policy toward the goals of dismantling structural racism and injustice and promote health equity and wellbeing. The goal of this call for proposals is to build the evidence base investigating how preemption policies at the state level may affect racial justice and health equity. Research should focus on how state-level preemption impacts local authority; apply a racial equity lens to the policy research processes and outcomes; and include community groups and/or members, especially those from historically marginalized communities, as leaders or partners in all stages of the research. Research findings are intended to inform and guide legislators; public agencies; public policy advocates; racial and other justice organizations; community organizers; and others who are developing and implementing policies to create thriving, healthy, equitable communities.

Examples of policy research questions are in scope, for example:

• What is the impact of new state preemption policies (passed since 2020) on racial equity?
• For policies (and policy environments) that seek to optimize racial justice and health equity, what might be the right balance between state and local authorities; what issues should states consider in regard to this balance; what state preemptive policies might promote goals relating to this balance; and what state preemptive policies might promote racial justice and health equity?
• How does preemption interact with civic engagement efforts such as voting and access to ballot measures? And how are coalitions in the fields of civic engagement, democracy-building, and public health impacted by preemption?

 The research questions can be applied to one or more specific policy areas that impact racial justice, such as: public health, health, and safety; employment and labor practices; housing policies; public education; infrastructure and environmental policies; policies relating to other issues and populations; and more.

Note that current PIs or co-PIs of P4A grants, or those who have finished their P4A funding in the past two years are not eligible.

Explore the Policies for Action-Effects of State Preemption Policies on Racial Justice and Health Equity opportunity

In partnership with the McKnight Brain Research Foundation, AFAR will make up to two awards to support studies focusing on clinical translational research and another award toward understanding basic biological mechanisms underlying cognitive aging and age-related memory loss. The major goal of the program is to build a cadre of outstanding research scientists across the United States to lead transformative research in the field of cognitive aging.

Research studies at the intersection of age-associated cognitive changes and disease-related cognitive impairment may be considered if a strong case can be made for their relevance to cognitive aging and age-related memory loss. However, research that is primarily focused on neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease) will not be supported.

Eligibility criteria include:

• Completed training prior to the beginning of this award (October 1, 2025):
  • PhD candidates: no more than 7 years from the completion of formal post-doctoral research training post-PhD,
  • MD or combined degree candidates: no more than 12 years from the date when finished residency.
• Independent investigator at the rank of Assistant Professor or Associate Professor (appointed no earlier than October 1, 2021), who has received R01 funding (or equivalent)
• Be tenure-track faculty or equivalent in an academic or non-profit institution with evidence of long-term institutional support as indicated by commitment of resources including independent laboratory space, start-up research funds and personnel. Candidates not in a tenure-track position are also eligible and should demonstrate similar evidence of long-term institutional support and not be in a time-limited appointment
• Have a proven track record of research accomplishments in cognitive aging as indicated by their publications in high-impact journals, awards, and other metrics of peer recognition
• Provide evidence of institutional matching funds as described in a form completed by the Dean or Department Chair
• Be in full time employment at an academic or non-profit research institution in the United States.

Please review the RFP for additional eligibility criteria.

Explore the McKnight Brain Research Foundation Innovator Awards in Cognitive Aging and Memory Loss opportunity

This funding opportunity will support a multifaceted research project that yields recommendations for actionable Asian American subgroup categories to be applied in the collection and analysis of race and ethnicity data. The goal of this award is to develop community-informed and evidence-based recommendations for how researchers should cluster the diverse Asian American population into smaller subgroups in ways that are feasible for real-world implementation. 

Brief proposals are due August 13, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due October 9, 2024.

Explore the Developing Recommendations for Disaggregating Data Within the Asian American Population opportunity

This program funds the collaborative planning of innovative, methodologically diverse, interdisciplinary research on education that contributes to transforming education systems for equity. Vision Grants are research planning grants to bring together a team, for 6 to 12 months, to collaboratively develop ambitious, large-scale research projects focused on transforming educational systems toward greater equity.

Being awarded a Vision Grant is also a prerequisite for applying to theTransformative Research Grant program (TRG, $3.5 million), which are designed for large-scale research projects that transform education systems for equity.

PIs and Co-PIs may apply for a Vision Grant if they have another active research grant from the Spencer Foundation or if they have another Spencer grant proposal in review.

The Intent to Apply Form is due August 13, 2025. Full proposals are due September 17, 2025.

Explore the Vision Grants program

Discovery Grants support studies that investigate various aspects of hearing and balance disorders related to the inner ear. Priority is given to investigators early in their careers who need seed funds to generate results and data that can be used to support applications for larger grants (i.e., NIH grants) in the future. Both basic and clinical studies may be proposed that investigate aspects of the auditory and vestibular systems including but not limited to genetics, neurotology, anatomy, auditory processing, molecular and cellular biology, therapeutic studies, and investigations of current or experimental devices (i.e., cochlear implants).

The Discovery Grant now encompasses the Foundation’s special interests of Causes of Sudden Hearing Loss and Meniere’s Disease. 

Explore the Discovery Grants - Hearing and Balance Disorders opportunity

Fellowships are available for theoretical and experimental research relevant to the study of cancer and the search for cancer causes, mechanisms, therapies, and prevention. Applicants must have completed at least an MD, PhD, MD/PhD, DDS, DVM, or equivalent. Level 1 applicants (basic and physician scientists) must have received their degrees no more than 21 months prior to the deadline. Level 2 applicants (physician scientists-Mc, MD/PhD, DDS, DVM, or equivalent) must have completed their residencies and clinical training, be board eligible, and able to donate at least 80% of their time to these activities.

Explore the Damon Runyon Fellowship Award opportunity

Research grants support new and innovative studies that are relevant to the cause, pathogenesis, or treatment of the hereditary or sporadic ataxias. Grants are offered primarily as “seed monies” to assist investigators in the early or pilot phase of their studies and as additional support for ongoing investigations on demonstration of need.

LOIs are due August 15, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due December 5, 2025.

Explore the Seed Money Research Grant opportunity

This award was created to encourage young clinical and scientific investigators to pursue a career in the field of ataxia research.

LOIs are due August 15, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due December 5, 2025.

Explore the Young Investigator Awards opportunity

The Templeton Foundation is focused on 6 strategic priorities:

• Character Virtue Development
• Mathematics & Physical Sciences
• Religion, Science & Society
• Individual Freedom & Free Markets
• Life Sciences
• Public Engagement

View the Research Grants opportunity

The goals of the program are: 1) enable basic scientific research, 2) connect key stakeholders, and 3) communicate scientific results. The primary audience of the event must be undergraduate level and above and aimed at the scientific community. The proposed event must take place between October 31,
2025 and October 31, 2026.

Explore the Open Call for Support of Science Events and Gatherings opportunity

The Enlight Foundation along with The Patchwork Collective invite applications from climate organizations with youth leadership defined as individuals aged 15-35 who hold an executive staff position or a board member position in the organization. Organizations must demonstrate experience, impact potential, and measurable results in advancing durable climate solutions in the communities they serve. This program welcomes eligible organizations working across a full spectrum of climate issues and solutions, including but not limited to areas such as education, movement building, climate justice, science/technology, economic opportunity, community resilience, conservation, advocacy, sustainable agriculture, disaster preparedness, and others. 

Individuals must register to apply by August 15, 2025, full applications are due September 22, 2025.

Explore the Emerging Climate Champions opportunity

The Pioneer SCA3 Translational Research Award is annually granted to independent researchers to support outstanding research proposals that aim to make significant advancements in the development of treatments and/or improvements to patient care for Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 3 (SCA3). Proposals must have a predominant focus on SCA3 preclinical, translational, or clinical research.

LOIs are due August 15, 2025. If invited, full proposals are due December 5, 2025

Explore the SCA3 Translational Research opportunity.

Grants awarded through this request for applications (RFA) are intended to advance our understanding of the genetic basis of ASD and the molecular and cellular consequences of genetic risk, and to provide a foundation for the development of treatments for select genetically defined forms of the condition. Proposals are sought in three broad areas:

• Integrative Analyses of Multi-omic ASD Data
• Functional Analysis of Associated Variants
• Genetic Therapies 

The Foundation encourages applications that focus, at least in part, on a subset of 50 genes from the SPARK gene list that SFARI has selected as strong candidates for the development of translational programs, here.

View the Genomics of ASD: Pathways to Genetic Therapies opportunity

The Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE) seeks to understand how children grow, learn, and develop across different times, places, and contexts so that they can be supported to thrive in the multitude of experiences they will encounter throughout life. It brings together researchers from around the world to create the first cross-cultural, multidisciplinary open dataset aiming to capture the richness and diversity of child development and learning.

The overarching objective of LEVANTE is to identify how individual variability, group heterogeneity, and contextual variability influence children’s learning and development.

Main applicants should: 

• Have obtained a PhD or equivalent degree at least 5 years prior to the application deadline;
• Be employed by and be part of a research lab at an institution of higher education or research institute;
• Be conducting high-quality research in the area of variability of learning and development;
• Be committed to engaging with and contributing to the activities of both LEVANTE and the Jacobs Foundation.

Letters of Inquiry are due August 19, 2025. If invited, full proposals are due November 19, 2025.

View the Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE) opportunity

This RFP aims to advance technology directed at real-time visualization of biological processes at the level of cells and molecules. Applications in the field of dynamic imaging that will support the development of new tools or significant enhancements of existing tools to monitor biological processes in motion, across time, and across spatial scales are welcome. Priority will be given to proposals for methods developed for imaging in intact tissues or primary cells rather than immortalized cell lines. This opportunity is specifically aimed at technology development; it is not intended to support question-driven basic or translational research, clinical trials, or drug development. See the RFP for complete details.

Explore the Dynamic Imaging opportunity

The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations (AVDF) is accepting letters of intent in two program areas:

• Private Higher Education: This area supports colleges and universities that prioritize undergraduate education and emphasize the liberal arts. Grants typically support projects that improve student outcomes or enhance faculty leadership, particularly in the areas of Advocacy for the Liberal Arts, Civil Discourse on Campus, and Purpose-Oriented Education. The Foundations do not provide grants to support capital projects or endowment. Grants typically range from $25,000-$300,000.
• Interfaith Leadership and Religious Literacy: This program seeks to support organizations that promote religious literacy and create opportunities for courageous multi-faith conversations and collaborations. Proposals are particularly encouraged in the areas of Interfaith Leadership and Religious Literacy on Faith-Based Campuses, Collaborations between Campus and Student Groups, and Religious Inter-Group Dialogue on Campus. Grants typically range from $100,000-$300,000.

LOIs are due August 28, 2025. Invited full proposals will be due November 14, 2025.

Explore the Private Higher Education and Interfaith Leadership opportunity

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund Climate and Health Interdisciplinary Award provides support for collaborative exploratory work that opens new ground for comprehensively assessing or mitigating the impacts of climate change on human health. This program will support both individual scientists and multi-investigator teams. Early career faculty and postdoctoral fellows nearing their transition to independence are especially encouraged to apply, whether individually or within teams.

Through this program BWF will provide flexible funding for conceiving and piloting work that will grow into productive and informative collaborations among researchers approaching connected questions from fields that usually do not interact. Projects must draw on the basic or applied biomedical sciences—disciplines ranging from biochemistry to population health, including public health research focused on social justice and equity—collaborating with disciplines beyond biomedicine, for example field ecology, agricultural sciences, veterinary medicine, law, public policy, other applied social sciences, geological and planetary sciences, architecture, engineering, mathematics, communications, or other relevant disciplines appropriate to the research proposed. 

Examples of projects might include but are not limited to the following:

•  The role of climate change (e.g., floods, heat) in exacerbating vector borne-, and non-communicable diseases (NCDs)
• Using “big data” to predictively model how vulnerable populations, especially those with existing health burdens, are impacted by climate change.
• Engineering or architectural approaches to alleviating
  climate related health risks.
• Developing new research tools at the interface of health
  and climate-informed disciplines.

LOIs are due August 29, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due October 31, 2024.

Explore the Climate and Health Interdisciplinary Awards opportunity

The Templeton Foundation's Ideas Challenge is aimed at exploring novel theoretical, philosophical, or scientific ideas useful for advancing the study of goal-directed, goal-seeking, or goal-suited phenomena in nature. The Foundation invites bold thinking that asks how such exploration might open new avenues for inquiry. A range of topics and disciplines are of interest to the Foundation, including Agency, Life, Mechanisms, Commonalities, Macroevolution, Models, Development, Matter, and Organization. Please see the Challenge call for details on each of these interest areas. The Foundation will also accept ideas outside of these specific interests.

The Foundation may invite winners or entrants to future events and/or to apply for additional grant funding.

View the Ideas Challenge opportunity

The Elsa U. Pardee Foundation funds research directed toward identifying new treatments or cures for cancer.  The average award is $150,000.

Applications are accepted December 31, April 30, and August 31 annually.

Exxplore the Cancer Research Grants opportunity

The Conservation program supports the professional practice of art conservation, especially as it relates to European art of the pre-modern era.

LOIs are due September 1. Invited full proposals will be due October 1.

Explore the Conservation Grants Program opportunity

The Digital Art History Grants program is intended to foster new forms of research and collaboration as well as new approaches to teaching and learning. Support may also be offered for the digitization of important visual resources (especially essential art history photographic archives) in the area of pre-modern European art history; of primary textual sources (especially the literary and documentary sources of European art history); for promising initiatives in online publishing; and for innovative experiments in the field of digital art history. 

LOIs are due annually on September 1. Invited full proposals will be due October 1.

Explore the Digital Art History Grants opportunity

This program is currently on hiatus.

Furthermore grants assist nonfiction books having to do with art, architecture, and design; cultural history, the city, and related public issues; and conservation and preservation. The organization looks for work that appeals to an informed general audience, gives evidence of high standards in editing, design, and production, and promises a reasonable shelf life.

Applications are accepted on March 1 and September 1 annually.

Explore the Grants in Publishing opportunity

The History of Art program supports scholarly projects that will enhance the appreciation and understanding of European art and architecture.

LOIs are due September 1. Invited full proposals will be due October 1.

The Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems program aims to explore how the nervous system adapts to human-caused environmental changes like exposure to pollution, toxins and unpredictable environments. The program will support interdisciplinary and transformation research to reveal chemical, physical and biological principles to understand the impacts. Early career scientists within the fields of cell biology, genetics, neurophysiology, climate science, environmental chemistry, physical modeling, toxicology, among others are encouraged to apply as teams.

Explore the Scialog: Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems opportunity.

This grant program supports creators of publications aimed at public understanding of science and technology. The program funds the creation of:

• Books (up to $60K)
• Radio (up to $600K)
• New Media (up to $250K)
• YouTube & TikTok (not specified)

LOIs for the Books program are submitted via email and invited proposals are due three times a year: January 1, May 1, and September 1.

Explore the Public Understanding opportunity.

These grants are intended to foster the early career development of researchers who have transitioned from graduate work in the physical/mathematical/computational sciences or engineering into postdoctoral work in the biological sciences, and who are dedicated to pursuing a career in academic research. Candidates must have completed at least 12 months but not more than 60 months of postdoctoral research by the date of the full invited application deadline. 
 
Proposals that include deep or machine learning applications of artificial intelligence are particularly encouraged. Special consideration will also be given to proposals that investigate the connection between climate change and human health. BWF strongly encourages applications from persons who have been historically underrepresented in the research enterprise, and is also interested in increasing diversity based on characteristics such as geographical location of institution, personal experiences, and background. 

LOIs are due September 2, 2025. 

Explore the CASI opportunity

The purpose of this program is to encourage the development of medical research in child health by awarding small grants to new researchers. The Fund is open to a wide variety of research topics. They do not focus on a particular disease, but all funded projects deal directly with children's health. Those eligible to apply include physicians who are in a residency/fellowship training program; physicians who completed their residency program no more than one year before the date of submission of the Concept Paper; or postdoctoral researchers who received the doctoral level degree no more than three years prior to the date of submission of the Concept Paper. 

Concept papers are due September 2, 2025. If selected to move forward, full proposals will be due October 23, 2025.

Explore the Early Career Awards for Children's Health opportunity

The Rainwater Charitable Foundation welcomes applications to participate in the Tauopathy Challenge workshop. The workshop will focus on employing advanced biophysical and bioanalytical approaches to probe the structural and thermodynamic properties of tau protein, its modifications, and interactions with other pathologies. Applications from researchers outside of the field of neurodegeneration are encouraged. Workshop participants will receive $10,000 and are eligible to apply for a post-workshop grant of $500,000 over two years. The Foundation will accept 12 workshop participants and will award 4 post-workshop grants.

 Letters of inquiry to participate in the workshop are due September 2, 2025. Award decisions on the post-workshop grants will be released on July 15, 2026. 

The Mark Foundation Endeavor Awards support collaborative research projects that bring together investigators with diverse areas of expertise to tackle challenges in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. These grants are awarded to teams of three or more investigators to generate and integrate data from diverse lines of research and transform those insights into advances for cancer patients that could not be achieved by individual efforts.

The internal deadline is TBD. Sponsor LOIs are due September 3, 2025. 

*Internal competitions for this award are managed by Feinberg School of Medicine staff*

Explore the Endeavor Award opportunity

Grants provide more experienced researchers with seed funding for Huntington's disease research to enable them to collect the preliminary data on needed to obtain major, long-term funding from other organizations, including the National Institutes of Health.

Letters of inquiry are due September 9, 2025, if invited full proposals are due October 17, 2025.

Explore the Huntington's Disease opportunity.

The Alzheimer's Association offers the following competitions within their International Research Grant Program. 

• Clinician Scientist Fellowship (AACSF), award amount: up to $250,000
• Clinician Scientist Fellowship to Promote Diversity (AACSF-D), award amount: up to $250,000
• Research Fellowship (AARF), award amount: up to $200,000
• Research Fellowship to Promote Diversity (AARF-D), award amount: up to $200,000
• Research Grant (AARG), award amount: up to $200,000
• Research Grant to Promote Diversity (AARG-D), award amount: up to $200,000
• Research Grant--New to the Field (AARG-NTF), award amount: up to $200,000
• Research Grant to Promote Diversity--New to the Field (AARG-D-NTF), award amount: up to $200,000

Explore the Research Grant Program opportunity

The Data Analysis program strives to advance open science and develop research-ready resources that accelerate autism research. This program will fund proposals that use previously collected data that are publicly available, either by open or controlled access, and are relevant to the basic science of autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders. Priority will be given to SFARI-funded datasets, including SPARK, Simons Searchlight, Autism Inpatient Collection, Simons Sleep Project and Simons Simplex Collection, as well as to other datasets funded by SFARI grants (see a partial list here).

Explore the Data Analysis opportunity.

The Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemical Sciences or Chemical Instrumentation Award Program supports advanced research by postdoctoral scholars within the core areas of fundamental chemistry or the development and build of chemical instrumentation. There are two tracks for fellowships:

• Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemical Sciences will allow chemists to pursue advanced research within the core areas of fundamental chemistry, such as chemical physics, chemical engineering, and chemistry of materials research. The fellowship is not intended to fund proposals that are supported by traditional NIH mechanisms in the fields of chemistry, chemical biology, biochemistry.  
• Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemical Instrumentation will allow researchers in chemistry to conceptualize, develop and build instrumentation suitable to advanced research in chemistry, chemical physics, chemical engineering, and chemistry of materials science. 

The award amount is $224,000 over two years for salary, fringe benefits and research expenditures; instrumentation fellowships will receive an additional one-time amount of up to $200,000. Fellows receiving the year 3 renewal award will receive an additional $118,000.

To be eligible, applicants must be 1) a current graduate student anticipated to complete a PhD in the chemical sciences by May 1, 2026 or 2) a current postdoctoral researcher with a granted/conferred PhD in the chemical sciences with no more than 18 months cumulative postdoctoral research experience (at time of application due date).

Explore the Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemical Sciences/Chemical Instrumentation opportunity

Post-doctoral fellowship awards are to serve as a bridge from post-doctoral positions to junior faculty positions. Applicants should have completed at least one year of post-doctoral training, but not more than two at the time of application, and should have shown a commitment to research in the field of Ataxia.

LOIs are due September 6, 2024. Invited full proposals will be due December 2, 2024.

Explore the Fellowship Awards opportunity

CZI invites applications for two-year grants from research- and tenure-track imaging scientists to support collaborative projects aimed at accelerating the dissemination and adoption of imaging technologies, methods, platforms, or training resources. Imaging scientists might be engineers, physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, or biologists who have focused on technology development in either light or electron microscopy, medical imaging, or data analysis fields, or work at the interface of biology, microscopy hardware, and imaging software at an imaging core facility. Funds can be requested in the following categories: validation and dissemination of new imaging technologies, building capacity, and training and education.

View the Advancing Imaging through Collaborative Projects opportunity

The Small Research Grants Program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets up to $50,000 for projects ranging from one to five years. This program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, or method. The Foundation's goal for this program is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research. This program supports proposals from multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives, both domestically and internationally, from scholars at various stages in their career.

Explore the Research Grants on Education - Small opportunity

New Directions Fellowships assist faculty members in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who seek to acquire systematic training outside their own areas of formal expertise. The program is intended to enable scholars in the humanities to work on problems that interest them most, at an appropriately advanced level of sophistication. In addition to facilitating the work of individual faculty members, these awards should benefit scholarship in the humanities more generally by encouraging the highest standards in cross-disciplinary research.
 
Applicants must have been awarded a doctorate in the humanities or humanistic social sciences between 2012 and 2018. Research interests must call for formal training in a discipline other than the one in which applicants are expert. This second field of study must be a foray into a new area of intellectual inquiry/subject and not just an enhancement of skills to go further in the primary field. Language study, technical training, or skills acquisition such as GIS mapping do not, by themselves, constitute a new direction. Priority will be given to applications that manifest 1) a strong focus on questions of social justice as they pertain to minoritized populations, or 2) an investment in filling in the gaps left by more traditional narratives in the history of the Americas.
 
Fellows will receive: (1) the equivalent of one academic year’s salary, (2) two summers of additional support, each at the equivalent of two-ninths of the previous academic year salary, and (3) tuition or course fees or equivalent direct costs associated with the fellows’ training programs.

This RFA will support research that aims to directly connect neurodevelopmental changes to ASD-relevant circuit phenotypes in order to advance our understanding of how ASD risk genes contribute to the neurobiology of autism. The Foundation invites proposals that will elucidate the impact of well-defined developmental alterations on the structure, function and/or output of neural circuits relevant to ASD phenotypes. 

Applicants may request up to $300,000 per lab with a maximum total annual budget of $900,000, inclusive of 20 percent indirect costs, over a period of three (3) to four (4) years. 

Explore the Linking Early Neurodevelopment to Neural Circuit Outcomes opportunity

BBRF’s Distinguished Investigator Grant program supports basic and/or clinical investigators working in neuroscience and psychiatry and is designed to stimulate the development of key personnel and resources, to facilitate the rapid initiation of research in innovative areas, and to enable investigators to create unique scientific opportunities. Illnesses that may be addressed include addiction, ADHD, anxiety, autism, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, depression, eating disorders, OCD, PTSD, schizophrenia, as well as research in suicide prevention.

Trans-diagnostic designs involving several disorders are welcome. Some disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease are supported by BBRF but only if primary psychiatric disorders listed above are included in the research design and the proposal emphasizes the work’s impact on our understanding of brain and behavior disorders.

Applicants must be a full professor (or equivalent), and maintain peer-reviewed competitively funded scientific programs.

Explore the Distinguished Investigator Grant opportunity

The Research-Practice Partnership (RPP) Grants Program is intended to support education research projects that engage in collaborative and participatory partnerships with project budgets up to $400,000 and durations of up to three years. The Foundation is open to applications from design-based research teams, network improvement communities, and placed-based research alliances. In addition to pre k-12 school systems, the Foundation especially encourages applications from partnerships that include scholars and institutions of higher education, rural geographic locations, and partnerships that deeply engage community-based organizations and families. 

Applicants must complete the Intent to Apply form by September 13, 2024. Full proposals are due October 31, 2024.