Featured Opportunities

April 2, 2025

• The National Science Foundation’s Plant Genome Research Program (PGRP) supports genome-scale research that addresses challenging questions of biological, societal and economic importance. PGRP encourages the development of innovative tools, technologies, and resources that empower a broad plant research community to answer scientific questions on a genome-wide scale. Emphasis is placed on the scale and depth of the question being addressed and the creativity of the approach. Data produced by plant genomics should be usable, accessible, integrated across scales, and of high impact across biology. Training, broadening participation, and career development are essential to scientific progress and should be integrated in all PGRP-funded projects. Two funding tracks are currently available: 1) RESEARCH-PGR TRACK: Genome-scale plant research to address fundamental questions in biology, including processes of economic and/or societal importance, and 2) TRTech-PGR TRACK: Tools, resources, and technology breakthroughs that further enable functional plant genomics.
• The Oak Spring Garden Foundation’s Plant Science Research Fellowship is awarded annually to one outstanding, early-career plant scientist, with preference given to scientists working in organismal plant biology. The goal is to provide advanced graduate students, post-docs, and beginning faculty, working in organismal plant biology, with an extended a stay of 2 - 5 weeks on the Oak Spring estate to undertake independent writing and thinking, away from the day-to-day demands of their other responsibilities. The Fellow will be scheduled to visit when there are other Interdisciplinary Residents or Fellows on-site. This scheduling will allow the Fellow to join in communal meals, and optional activities and field trips with other artists, ecologists, researchers, or scholars working on projects related to OSGF’s mission. Beyond time to develop their projects, a Fellow’s typical day at Oak Spring might include a walk to enjoy the landscape or birds; an appointment to visit the Oak Spring Library; and/or a morning spent volunteering at the BCCF or in the formal garden. These optional activities provide Fellows time to learn from, and interact with our staff.
• The Esperantic Studies foundation (ESF) announces its 2025 competition for the Marjorie Boulton Research Fellowships in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, particularly as they relate to interlinguistics, linguistic justice, intercultural communication, Esperanto, and related phenomena. Interdisciplinary work is welcome, and primary disciplines might include, but are not limited to, linguistics, sociology, history, anthropology, communication, or media studies. Open to candidates worldwide, with a preference for candidates in North America and the global south, the fellowships may be held concurrently with other awards or fellowships and are non-renewable. These fellowships honor the legacy of the late Marjorie Boulton, a prolific author of plays, poems, and prose in Esperanto, as well as the leading biographer in English of L. L. Zamenhof.
• The Bodleian Libraries’ Gale Scholar Asia Pacific, Digital Humanities Oxford Fellowship supports a short period of research into any topic and in any field of study, using the special collections or Centre for Digital Scholarship of the Bodleian Libraries. Fellowships may be awarded for a period of up to 3 months. Gale Scholar Asia Pacific, Digital Humanities Oxford Fellows will be expected to present their work at a seminar or other event and can propose to develop a digital resource or other innovative output during their time at Oxford. Gale is a world-leader in the digitisation of historic materials through its Gale Primary Sources programme. Data from more than 160 million pages of these collections can be mined and analysed in the Gale Digital Scholar Lab, a cloud-based digital humanities environment. Fellows will have privileged access to Gale Primary Sources, the Gale Digital Scholar Lab and support from members of the Gale team as part of their fellowship. Applications are encouraged from active scholars conducting their work in the Asia Pacific region*, and should be focused in methodologies and subjects relating to digital humanities. However, applications may be considered from outside the Asia Pacific region in any given year.
• The Spencer Foundation’s Racial Equity Research Grants program supports education research projects that will contribute to understanding and ameliorating racial inequality in education. We are interested in funding studies that aim to understand and disrupt the reproduction and deepening of inequality in education, and which seek to (re)imagine and make new forms of equitable education. Thus, we are 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. this program supports rigorous, intellectually ambitious, and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in relation to racial equity in education. In this cycle of funding, we will continue to fund scholarship focused on a range of communities and issues with respect to equity. We encourage proposals from across the methodological spectrum, including qualitative methods, mixed-methods, and quantitative methods. Proposals in the following areas are especially encouraged: (1) youth and educator mental health that explores possibilities that promote resilience, center healing, and foster well-being; (2) current political challenges in Pre-K-12 and higher education around diversity, equity, and inclusion; and (3) youth civic education and engagement across learning contexts. Additionally, and as part of The Spencer Foundation’s Initiative on AI and Education, we will fund an additional set of Racial Equity grants specifically focused on AI and racial equity.
• Schmidt Sciences, a philanthropic initiative created and funded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, has launched a new program – the Humanities and Artificial Intelligence Virtual Institute (HAVI) – to support research at the intersection of AI and the humanities. 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. HAVI seeks to produce these outcomes by encouraging foundational, collaborative contributions from humanities scholars working together with AI researchers. We expect complementary research teams working in close collaboration to produce advances both in AI and in the humanities. Humanities scholars should play integral roles in the development and use of AI methods, and AI researchers should develop a deeper understanding of data, models, and problem spaces from a humanistic perspective and for humanistic applications. HAVI expects that this collaborative approach will deepen our understanding of fundamental constraints and limitations of current approaches, leading to the advancement of future systems and breakthrough results in both AI and humanities scholarship.
• The M. Keck Foundation’s Research Program seeks to benefit humanity by supporting Medical Research and Science & Engineering projects that are distinctive and novel in their approach, question the prevailing paradigm, or have the potential to break open new territory in their field. Past grants have been awarded to major universities, independent research institutions, and medical schools to support pioneering biological and physical science research and engineering, including the development of promising new technologies, instrumentation or methodologies. The Research Program employs a two-phase application process with optional pre-application counseling. All communication with the Foundation, including submitting applications, proposals and reports must be via the institution’s designated liaison. Please see the liaison guidelines for more information on this role. This is a limited submission with one-page project abstracts due to the Office of Research Development by 5 pm June 15, 2025 to allow selection of a project to allow for a pre-application counseling session with the Foundation.
• The National Science Foundation, Kansas EPSCoR First Award program helps early career, tenure-track faculty become more competitive for funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) by 1) encouraging early career faculty to submit proposals to the NSF (or other federal funding agency) as soon as possible after their first faculty appointment, and 2) by accelerating the pace of their research and the quality of their subsequent proposals. The research focus area is research in resiliency and smart infrastructure. First Awards are intended as single-investigator awards to support the principal investigator's (PI) research at their institution. While including Co-PIs, other senior personnel, and sub-awards to other institutions is prohibited, applicants are encouraged to include collaborators or mentors from the ARISE team in their proposal. Applicants are allowed to contact team members to discuss how project ideas may relate to the current ARISE project.
• The Department of Health and Human Services, AHRQ’s Health Services Research Demonstration and Dissemination Grants (R18) seeks health services research grant applications focused on AHRQ research priorities, including improving healthcare quality and patient safety, improving healthcare delivery and practice improvement, and enhancing whole-person healthcare delivery. AHRQ supports research in all healthcare settings, including the hospital, long-term care, ambulatory care, home healthcare, pharmacy, and care transitions between settings. Research may involve many partners and other groups, including patients, families, clinicians, non-clinical healthcare staff, policymakers, payers, healthcare organizations, providers and accreditors, local and State governments, the Federal Government, and others.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Solve’s 2025 Global Climate Challenge seeks exceptional solutions that leverage technology to address any aspect of the climate crisis with a particular interest for 2025 in solutions that: 1) Drive a shift towards a low-carbon and nutritious global food system, across large and small-scale producers plus supply chains; 2) Build zero-carbon and resilient cities, including through better construction or retrofitting of multi-family or commercial buildings, enabling non-car transportation, and managing extreme weather; 3) Enable rapid deployment of distributed renewable energy and adaptation measures, such as community-scale solar, ecosystem restoration, or cooling/dehumidification; or 4) Strengthen a low-carbon blue economy, including sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, marine industry, or ecosystem conservation.
• NSF’s Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) Core supports research and training on evolutionary and ecological processes acting at the level of populations, species, communities, ecosystems, macrosystems, and biogeographic extents. DEB encourages research that elucidates fundamental principles that identify and explain the unity and diversity of life and its interactions with the environment over space and time. Research may incorporate field, laboratory, or collection-based approaches; observational or manipulative studies; synthesis activities; phylogenetic discovery projects; or theoretical approaches involving analytical, statistical, or computational modeling. Proposals should be submitted to the core clusters (Ecosystem Science, Evolutionary Processes, Population and Community Ecology, and Systematics and Biodiversity Science).
• The William T. Grant Foundation’s Research Grants on Reducing Inequality program funds research studies that aim to build, test, or increase understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25 in the United States, along dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, sexual or gender minority status, language minority status, or immigrant origins. The fund: 1) Descriptive studies that describe, explore, or explain how programs, practices, or policies reduce inequality; 2) Intervention studies that provide causal evidence on the effectiveness of programs or policies for reducing inequality; and 3) Measurement development studies that can enhance the work of researchers, practitioners, or policymakers to reduce inequality.
• 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. The purpose of the program is to strengthen the U.S. community of scholars and researchers conducting policy analysis in these fields. The Foundation will award at least three research grants of $60,000 each to enable the recipients to research and write a book. Within the academic community, this program supports junior or adjunct faculty, research associates, and post-docs who are engaged in policy-relevant research and writing. Within the think tank community, the program supports members of the rising generation of policy thinkers who are focused on U.S. strategic and foreign policy issues.