Featured Opportunities

October 15, 2025

• The goal of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Mid-Sale Research Infrastructure 1(Mid-Scale RI-1) is the fulfillment of a research community-defined need that enables current and next-generation U.S. researchers to be competitive in a global research environment. In order to solve the most pressing scientific and societal problems of the day (such as those called out in National Academies reports and decadal surveys, identified through research community planning and prioritizing exercises, or called out as other national priorities), the use of new technologies, techniques, and concepts is encouraged in this competition. Mid-scale RI-1 focuses on innovative, potentially transformative projects. The scientific justification should demonstrate how the proposed infrastructure provides more advanced research capabilities relative to what is generally available to the general U.S. research community; investigators whose preliminary proposals are for capabilities similar to those currently available to the U.S. research community are unlikely to be invited to submit full proposals. With the exception of design awards, infrastructure acquired or developed with support from the Mid-scale RI-1 Program is expected to be operational by the end of the award period to enable the research for which the infrastructure was proposed. This solicitation calls for Mid-scale RI-1 projects from $4 million up to but not including $20 million in total project costs for implementation projects and $400,000 up to but not including $20 million for design activities. Note the preproposal due date is not until September 2026. This program has been included now because these proposals take a large amount of planning and preparation time. It is never too early to start.
• The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies’ (I Tatti) Fellowship in the Digital Humanities aims to support the work of scholars in the humanities or social sciences, librarians, archivists, and data science professionals whose research interests or practice cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries and actively employ technology in their work. Projects can address any aspect of the Italian Renaissance, broadly understood historically to include the period from the 14th to the 17th century, and geographically to include transnational dialogues between Italy and other cultures (e.g. Latin American, Mediterranean, African, Asian, etc.). Projects should apply digital technologies such as mapping, textual analysis, visualization, or the semantic web to topics in fields such as art and architecture, history, literature, material culture, music, philosophy, religion, and the history of science.
• The National Endowment for the Humanities’ Scholarly Editions and Translations program provides grants to organizations to support collaborative teams who are editing, annotating, and translating foundational humanities texts that are vital to generating new scholarship but are inaccessible or only available in inadequate editions or translations. Works from any humanities field may be the subject of an edition. Since the program’s inception in 1966, the NEH has funded editions and translations of some of the most significant historical, literary, philosophical, and music texts. The program supports continuous full-time or part-time activities during the period of performance of one to three years. Typical project expenses include salary for editorial and research activities, travel to collections to verify source material, and consultant fees for translation, editorial work, and the implementation of a digital edition. Editions and translations may be print, digital, or a combination of both, but all editions and translations must contain additional and new scholarly material such as introductions, annotations, and critical apparatus. The Scholarly Editions and Translations program includes three funding levels: Planning, Implementation, and Chairman's Special Awards in American History and Culture.
• The National Endowment for the Arts’ Grants for Arts Projects (GAP) provide funding for public engagement with the arts and arts education, for the integration of the arts with strategies promoting the health and well-being of people and communities, and for the improvement of overall capacity and capabilities within the arts sector. We welcome applications from first-time and returning applicants; from organizations serving rural, urban, suburban, and tribal communities of all sizes; and from organizations with small, medium, or large operating budgets. We strongly encourage applications for arts projects that incorporate one or more agency funding priorities. The program funds arts projects in the following disciplines: Artist Communities, Arts Education, Dance, Design, Film & Media Arts, Folk & Traditional Arts, Literary Arts, Local Arts Agencies, Museums, Music, Musical Theater, Opera, Our Town, Presenting & Multidisciplinary Works, Theater, and Visual Arts. The previous Our Town program must be applied for through this program. Note this is a limited submission with notifications (work title, team, 2 to 3 sentence synopsis) due to the Office of Research Development (ORD) by 5 pm November 1, 2025 via ordlimitedsubs@ksu.edu.
• The American Philosophical Society’s Lewis and Clark Fund encourages exploratory field studies for the collection of specimens and data and to provide the imaginative stimulus that accompanies direct observation. Applications are invited from disciplines with a large dependence on field studies, such as archaeology, anthropology, biology, ecology, geography, geology, linguistics, paleontology, and population genetics, but grants will not be restricted to these fields.
• The overarching goal for NSF’s Accelerating Research Translation (ART) program is to advance the U.S. scientific and economic leadership by building capacity and increasing the number of robust translational research ecosystems in Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) that span across the full geography of our nation. Innovations can occur anywhere and can be opportunities for creating sustained impacts in every single region of the United States. Achieving translational outcomes as a mechanism to drive sustained economic impacts is the primary aim of the "Accelerating Research Translation" (ART) program. The ART program is aimed at providing resources that will ultimately facilitate a wide range of IHEs to achieve research translation, accelerate technology transfer, and create sustained economic and collective impacts across the U.S. It is understood that, like technology readiness levels (TRLs), there is no one measure or a combination of measures that can be used to describe the capacity of or measure the research translation readiness level (RTRL) for an IHE.
• The Department of Commerce, NIST, through its CHIPS Research and Development Office (CRDO Broad Agency Announcement, is soliciting proposals from eligible applicants for research, prototyping, and commercial solutions that advance microelectronics technology in the U.S. The objective of this program is to grow U.S. leadership in semiconductor technology and accelerate the pace of commercialization to enable technology dominance in the industries of the future, in areas including advanced microelectronics research and development with a nexus to Artificial Intelligence (AI), Quantum Technology, Biotechnology, Biomanufacturing, Commercialization of Innovation, and/or Standards Development.
• The Department of Defense, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award (YFA) program aims to identify and engage rising stars in junior research positions in academia and equivalent positions at non-profit research institutions, particularly those without prior DARPA funding, to expose them to Department of Defense (DoD) needs and DARPA’s mission to create and prevent technological surprise for national security. The YFA program will provide high-impact funding to researchers early in their careers to develop innovative new research that enables transformative DoD capabilities. Ultimately, the YFA program is developing the next generation of researchers focused on national security issues.
• The Gitlab Foundation, through its AI for Economic Opportunity—Demonstration & Scaling, is inviting bold proposals that show how AI can meaningfully transform the systems that shape economic opportunity. Examples include reimagining service delivery, unlocking new forms of personalized education and training, improving efficiency at scale, or creating entirely new ways to connect people with income, skills, benefits, and opportunity. We welcome both transformative approaches and incremental applications, so long as they hold the potential to drive lasting, meaningful change. Selected grantees will receive $250,000 in catalytic funding to prototype solutions and demonstrate progress, six months of cohort-based technical support from OpenAI engineers and other experts, API credits, and access to a network of leading practitioners and funders advancing AI for economic mobility. All awardees will also be eligible for a larger infusion of scaling grant capital through project partners.
• The NSF Plasma Physics program supports research that can be categorized by several broad, sometimes overlapping, sub-areas of the discipline, including: magnetized plasmas in the laboratory, space, and astrophysical environments; high energy density plasmas; low temperature plasmas; dusty, ultra-cold, and otherwise strongly coupled plasmas; non-neutral plasmas; and intense field-matter interaction in plasmas. The focus of the Plasma Physics program is to generate an understanding of the fundamental principles governing the physical behavior of a plasma via collective interactions of large ensembles of free charged particles, as well as to improve the basic understanding of the plasma state as needed for other areas of science and engineering.
• The Health and Human Services, NIH’s Toward Translation of Cancer Nanotechnology Interventions (TTNCI, R01) is designed to enable the translation of nanotechnology-based cancer interventions relying on nanoparticle formulations and/or nano-devices. Through the TTNCI initiative, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) encourages applications for advanced pre-clinical research, supporting translation of nanotechnology-based cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. TTNCI awards are expected to mature experimental nanomedicines designed for highly relevant cancer clinical objectives with a strong potential to improve cancer treatment effectiveness. It is expected that improvement of treatment effectiveness will occur due to the combination of nanoparticle/nano-device structural design and/or therapeutic/diagnostic cargo which is delivered. TTNCI awards are expected to enable further development of proposed nanotechnology-based interventions to the stage in which they could continue on a developmental path towards the NCI Experimental Therapeutics (NExT) and other NCI translational programs.
• The National Science Foundation (NSF) is dramatically reducing its vital support for scientific research. Principal Investigators who were conducting or facilitating economic research under a grant terminated by NSF can now apply for rescue funds to mitigate disruptions of work that promises to provide significant societal benefits. The Economic Research Fund will provide $25k to $250k as bridge funding to PIs whose grants were terminated by NSF. Eligibility for Rescue Funding through this program is, for now, limited to projects in which the original NSF proposal contains the CV of at least one practicing PhD economist. The Economic Research Rescue Fund is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and administered by the Social Science Research Council.