Featured Opportunities

February 19, 2025

• The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research opened the Rapid Outcomes from Agricultural Research (ROAR) program, making available up to $150,000 in matching funds per one-year grant to combat new or emerging pest and pathogen outbreaks that threaten the U.S. food and agriculture systems. The spread of a pest or pathogen can cause immediate and severe damage to multiple industries across the value chain. Last year, avian influenza outbreaks caused the loss of an estimated 50 million birds nationwide and $1 billion in damage, including 8,000 jobs lost, in Iowa alone. The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research designed the ROAR program to accelerate initial research and outreach response to potential emergencies by pre-establishing teams of experts, agreements and funding sources. Research funded through ROAR will enhance the nation’s capacity to mitigate, contain and prevent outbreaks by reviewing and responding to emergency grant proposals within one week of submission and rapidly issuing research and outreach funds to serve as a bridge to traditional funding sources. ROAR is structured around commodity consortia. Participating groups will enter into an agreement with FFAR to facilitate rapid proposal review and response in the event of a pest or pathogen outbreak affecting the commodities of interest to the particular consortium.
• The American Musicological Society’s (AMS) Career Development Grants in American Music program provides grants of $800 and complimentary Annual Meeting registration to students and educators who have a special interest in American music. The purpose of the program is to support participation in Annual Meeting programming that deepens participants’ knowledge of American music and strengthens professional networks. Grant recipients will participate in relevant activities at the upcoming AMS Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL as part of a cohort of twelve.
• As energy costs rise and natural disasters become more frequent, humanities organizations - such as museums, libraries, archives, historic sites, and colleges and universities - face an enormous task: to anticipate operational, physical, and financial impacts of climate-related events on their institutions, while also reducing their own impact on the environment. The National Endowment for the Humanities’ Climate Smart Humanities Organizations supports these efforts by offering federal matching funds for comprehensive organizational assessments that lead to strategic climate action and adaptation plans. Through the Climate Smart program, your humanities organization can undertake activities such as energy audits, risk assessments, and meetings with consultants. The resulting climate smart plan helps you establish goals and prioritize actions that reduce your organization’s impacts on the environment through mitigation and vulnerability from extreme events through adaptation. Together, mitigation and adaptation can inform a robust road map that addresses climate challenges, protects assets, and facilitates collaboration between internal and external stakeholders. Strategic planning for climate change is an essential part of sustaining humanities organizations’ operations and activities—becoming climate smart. This is a limited submissions program. If you are interested in applying to this program you must first notify (working title, team list, 2 to 3 sentence synopsis) the Office of Research Development by 5 pm on June 1, 2025 via orslimitedsubs@ksu.edu.
• For the 2026 grant cycle, Creative Capital through its Grant Program invites professional artists to propose experimental, original, bold new works in Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Film, and Literature. Multidisciplinary, technology, and/or socially engaged projects are welcome in all disciplinary categories. Creative Capital seeks project proposals for formally and/or conceptually innovative works in all disciplines, including, but not limited to, painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video and multimedia, dance, theater, playwriting, jazz, opera, music, experimental film, documentary and narrative film, poetry, and fiction. Creative Capital welcomes a full range of artistic approaches and thematic inquiries, including boundary-pushing formal explorations, as well as projects that engage urgent social issues of our time. Creative Capital also seeks new projects or works addressing subjects that Creative Capital has not previously funded. For example, for this grant cycle, Creative Capital also seeks strong visual arts projects dealing with fentanyl, veterans/military, or wealth inequality.
• The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Geospace Cluster (GC) in the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (AGS) supports fundamental and solutions-oriented research, technology development and education related to the Earth's near-space environment (including the mesosphere, thermosphere, ionosphere, exosphere, magnetosphere and radiation belts) and the inner heliosphere and solar atmosphere. The GC advances knowledge of the Sun--Earth system, including how various parts of the system are coupled through dynamical, electrodynamical and chemical processes. The GC supports research on the societal impacts of these processes including space weather and upper atmosphere climate change, with the aim of increasing resilience to such natural hazards. The GC supports research that uses ground-based or space-based observational facilities and instruments as well as data centers and a broad range of theoretical, modeling, observational, data analyses and laboratory activities.
• NSF’s Electronics, Photonics and Magnetic Devices Program supports innovative research on novel devices based on the principles of electronics, optics and photonics, optoelectronics, magnetics, opto- and electromechanics, electromagnetics, and related physical phenomena. EPMD’s goal is to advance the frontiers of micro-, nano- and quantum-based devices operating within the electromagnetic spectrum and contributing to a broad range of application domains including information and communications, imaging and sensing, healthcare, Internet of Things, energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing. The program encourages research based on emerging technologies for miniaturization, integration, and energy efficiency as well as novel material-based devices with new functionalities, improved efficiency, flexibility, tunability, wearability, and enhanced reliability.
• NSF’s Biophotonics program is part of the Engineering Biology and Health cluster, which also includes: 1) the Biosensing program; 2) the Cellular and Biochemical Engineering program; 3) the Disability and Rehabilitation Engineering program; and 4) the Engineering of Biomedical Systems program. The goal of the Biophotonics program is to explore the research frontiers in photonics principles, engineering and technology that are relevant for critical problems in fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Fundamental engineering research and innovation in photonics is required to lay the foundations for new technologies beyond those that are mature and ready for application in medical diagnostics and therapies. Advances are needed in nanophotonics, optogenetics, contrast and targeting agents, ultra-thin probes, wide field imaging, and rapid biomarker screening. Low cost and minimally invasive medical diagnostics and therapies are key motivating application goals.
• NSF’s Geospace Cluster (GC) in the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (AGS) supports fundamental and solutions-oriented research, technology development and education related to the Earth's near-space environment (including the mesosphere, thermosphere, ionosphere, exosphere, magnetosphere and radiation belts) and the inner heliosphere and solar atmosphere. The GC advances knowledge of the Sun--Earth system, including how various parts of the system are coupled through dynamical, electrodynamical and chemical processes. The GC supports research on the societal impacts of these processes including space weather and upper atmosphere climate change, with the aim of increasing resilience to such natural hazards. The GC supports research that uses ground-based or space-based observational facilities and instruments as well as data centers and a broad range of theoretical, modeling, observational, data analyses and laboratory activities.
• In 2021, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) was associated with 4.7 million deaths, predominantly impacting low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), but the 2024 GRAM report projections indicate that development of novel antibiotics targeting Gram-negative bacteria would lead to a reduction in AMR burden. In response to this global health priority, the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF), Wellcome, and the Gates Foundation (GF) are jointly launching a new initiative, Gram-Negative Antibiotic Discovery Innovator (Gr-ADI), to drive innovation in early drug discovery for Gram-negative pathogens. Gr-ADI will function as a consortium, working collectively across multiple funders, research institutions, and industry partners. The consortium will be formed through this Grand Challenges request for proposals (RFP), 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. This Grand Challenges RFP will be a first step to build a collaborative portfolio of Gr-ADI projects across multiple sectors, all working towards a common goal and unifying efforts of early antibiotic discovery by fostering cooperation and synergy among researchers. 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 [See Cooperation and Data-Sharing Principles].
• The American Cancer Society’s Research Scholar Grants (RSG) provide support for independent, self-directed researchers. Applicants' institutions must provide space and other resources customary for independent investigators. Grant proposals are investigator-initiated and may pursue questions across the cancer research continuum, as long as they fit within an American Cancer Society (ACS) priority research area. These grants typically contribute to the cost of salaries, consumable supplies, and other miscellaneous items required in the research.
• The Russell Sage Foundation’s (RSF) core program on Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context merges its long-standing program on Behavioral Economics and its special initiative on Decision Making and Human Behavior in Context. This program encourages perspectives from multiple disciplines, including economics, psychology, political science, sociology, law, public policy, and other social sciences, to further our understanding of economic, social, political, and psychological decision-making processes, attitudes, behaviors, and institutional practices in public and private contexts such as policing/criminal legal systems, employment, housing, politics, racial/ethnic relations, and immigration.
• The Russell Sage Foundation’s program on the Future of Work supports innovative research on the causes and consequences of changes in the quality of jobs for low- and moderately paid workers and their families in the U.S. We seek investigator-initiated research proposals that will broaden our understanding of the role of changes in employer practices, the nature of the labor market and public policies on employment, earnings, and job quality. We are especially interested in proposals that address questions about the interplay of market and non-market forces in shaping the wellbeing of workers. RSF prioritizes analyses that make use of newly available data or demonstrate novel uses of existing data. We support original data collection when a project is focused on important program priorities, projects that conduct survey or field experiments and qualitative studies. RSF encourages methodological variety and inter-disciplinary collaboration. Proposed projects must have well-developed conceptual frameworks and rigorous research designs. Analytical models must be well-specified and research methods must be appropriate.