Researchers looking for funding opportunities can find Penn State limited submission listings as well as occasional calls and announcements from outside of the University.
Funding @ Penn State
Find internal and external funding resources
Upcoming Opportunities
Simons Foundation: 2025 Postdoctoral Fellowships in Marine Microbial Ecology
The Simons Foundation invites applications for postdoctoral fellowships to support candidates who intend to pursue a career in basic research on fundamental problems in marine microbial ecology, with an emphasis on understanding the role of microorganisms in shaping ocean processes, and vice versa. The foundation is interested in applicants with training in different disciplines, including modeling and theory development, as well as applicants already involved in ocean research.
Internal Submission Deadline: Monday, April 29, 2024
https://psu.infoready4.com/CompetitionSpace/#competitionDetail/1935275
Internet Society Foundation: Research Grant Program
The Internet Society Foundation’s Research Program supports global research collaborations that advance understanding of the Internet and its value for all.
Program Objectives
- Promote novel methodologies that generate solutions to Internet-related challenges
- Identify and support a diverse and collaborative group of researchers and research institutions
- Facilitate access to intersectional research that can be applied to decision-making in government and industry
This program is intended for research that is applied and open, meaning the research seeks to answer a real-world question and should be openly published and made available to the scientific community at no cost. The Foundation supports research involving human or animal subjects when the project has been certified by a responsible body to be ethical and in compliance with local law. It is the responsibility of the Principal Investigator of the project to obtain these certifications.
Internal Submission Deadline: Wednesday, May 1, 2024
https://psu.infoready4.com/CompetitionSpace/#competitionDetail/1935936
EREF Research Grants Program
The Environmental Research & Education Foundation (EREF) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and is one of North America's largest funding sources for solid waste research. Our Research Grants Program offers opportunities for pioneering research initiatives focused on sustainable solid waste management practices aligned with at least one of our three strategic research priorities, which are:
- Climate Change Impacts and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- Emerging Contaminants
- Advancing Material Circularity and Recycling
Deadline: May 1, 2024
https://erefdn.org/research-grants-projects/how-to-apply-for-grant/
Electronics Scrap Recycling Advancement Prize (E-SCRAP)
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO) is launching the American-Made Electronics Scrap Recycling Advancement Prize (E-SCRAP) $3.95 million in prizes, this three-phase prize is designed to stimulate innovative approaches that reduce the costs and environmental impact of critical material recovery from electronic scrap (e-scrap). Competitors will optimize, validate, and integrate new and improved approaches along the entire recycling value chain to increase the production and use of recovered critical materials. This prize focuses on innovative approaches, processes, or technologies in service of optimizing and implementing critical material separation and recovery from e-scrap.
Internal Submission Deadline: Wednesday, May 1, 2024 at 4:00 pm
https://psu.infoready4.com/CompetitionSpace/#competitionDetail/1934892
Coastal Ecosystems Climate Resilience Request for Applications (RFA)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as part of its Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, aims to promote scientific progress towards the understanding of coastal ecosystem resilience by seeking applications proposing research to 1) characterize, quantify, and define indicators or metrics of resilience for various types of coastal ecosystems, especially those ecosystems that have climate mitigation and adaptation and/or blue (ocean-stored) carbon sequestration potential (Lovelock and Duarte, 2019); and 2) develop methods and approaches to advance economic valuation of resilience benefits provided by coastal ecosystems.
Deadline: May 1, 2024
https://www.epa.gov/research-grants/coastal-ecosystems-climate-resilience-request-applications-rfa
Simons Foundation: Pivot Fellowship Request for Applications
The Simons Foundation invites applications for the Pivot Fellowship program which will support 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. Mentorship and support are essential for learning a new discipline and culture. In addition to the qualifications and potential of the applicant, the suitability of the mentor and the environment for mentorship will be strongly considered in the application process.
Internal Submission Deadline: Monday, May 6, 2024
https://psu.infoready4.com/CompetitionSpace/#competitionDetail/1935294
Amazon Research Awards - Spring 2024 call for proposals
Amazon Research Awards (ARA) is announcing the spring 2024 call for proposals for the AI for Information Security and Sustainability research areas. Proposals will be reviewed for the quality of their scientific content, creativity, and their potential for impact at scale. Proposals related to theory, practice, and novel techniques are all welcome.
ARA provides grant recipients unrestricted funds and AWS promotional credits. Funded projects are assigned an Amazon research contact, and recipients also receive training resources, including AWS tutorials and hands-on sessions with Amazon scientists and engineers.
Internal Submission Deadline: Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at 2:59 am
https://psu.infoready4.com/CompetitionSpace/#competitionDetail/1936617
NSF 24-565: NSF Regional Innovation Engines
The NSF Regional Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) program creates regional-scale, technology-driven, inclusive innovation ecosystems throughout the United States by accelerating key technologies, addressing regional, national, societal, and/or geostrategic challenges, driving economic growth, creating and retaining quality jobs, expanding equitable pathways into careers, and strengthening national competitiveness and security. The mission of an NSF Engine must be clearly rooted in regional interests and reflect the aspiration that a regional innovation ecosystem can help build strong communities where all residents can thrive. This includes the equitable development of regional talent, intentional community engagement, and attention to impacts on a region's identities and cultures. The NSF Engines program is a placed-based innovation funding initiative, where the emphasis on "regions" expresses NSF's aim to stimulate innovation-driven economic growth within a particular place or region of service. The emphasis of the NSF Engines program further includes creating new business and economic growth in sectors that are critical to American competitiveness and in those regions of America that have not fully participated in the technology boom of the past several decades.
Internal Submission Deadline: Wednesday, May 8, 2024 at 4:00 pm
https://psu.infoready4.com/CompetitionSpace/#competitionDetail/1937416
Penn State Inter-Institutional Partnerships for Diversifying Research
The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences in collaboration with the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI), Materials Research Institute (MRI), the Institute of Energy and the Environment (IEE), the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS), the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), and the Cancer Institute (CU), is offering a new interdisciplinary seed grant program aimed at developing new or leveraging existent strategic partnerships and alliances with Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). The goal of the seed grant program is to perform collaborative work that advances research development capability as well as student and faculty training needed to support such research collaborations.
Internal Submission Deadline: Friday, May 10, 2024
Dear Colleague Letter: Research Collaboration Opportunity in Europe for NSF Recipients
This letter invites current NSF recipients to submit supplemental funding requests for research visits to any identified, appropriate ERC-funded European research group. NSF particularly encourages requests from NSF funded researchers who are early in their careers or who are still actively building their careers. Further, the letter gives instructions on how to submit supplemental funding requests and other relevant policies and requirements.
Deadline: May 17, 2024
Center for Nanoscale Science 2024 Seed Competition
The Penn State MRSEC Center for Nanoscale Science invites proposals for the 2024 Seed competition. This competition focuses on nucleating potential new Interdisciplinary Research Groups, looking forward to the upcoming MRSEC re-competition cycle in 2025–26.
“Seed-IRG” proposals should aim to coalesce world-leading interdisciplinary teams focused on an emerging high-risk/high-reward area of materials research, and should seek to demonstrate key results that could underpin a successful IRG in the upcoming NSF MRSEC competition. A town hall on April 23, during and immediately following the Millennium Café, will provide a venue to convey and discuss the qualities of a successful Seed-IRG proposal.
Seed-IRG proposals contain three parts: (1) a project description not to exceed 5 pages total (12 point font, 1” margins; the page limit does not apply to references), (2) a very brief budget description, and (3) CV's of the principal investigators, of any reasonable length. The format of the budget statement is flexible. Seed-IRG projects are anticipated to be funded at 100 to 150K in direct costs over ~18 months. The MRSEC anticipates supporting from one to three Seed-IRGs.
Note that the NSF generally prefers to avoid substantial overlap between the research topics of different IRGs across the MRSEC program, so strong overlap with an existing MRSEC IRG elsewhere should be avoided. Information about these programs can be found at www.mrsec.org. If such overlap exists for your Seed-IRG topic, this should be addressed in your writeup.
Proposals should be submitted in a single self-contained pdf file to vhc2@psu.edu.
Deadline: May 20, 2024
Advancing Sustainable Chemistry
Chemistry is at the forefront of the transition into a more circular economy and can enable solutions that support the use of clean energy, renewable materials, and materials management. However, current approaches to chemistry can have harmful impacts on human health and the environment. Research is needed on new chemical products and chemical processes that use energy and utilities more efficiently, ensure feedstocks are optimized, are strategically consumed and reused, and provide society with chemicals and manufacturing processes that are less harmful to human health and the environment.
Sustainable chemistry produces compounds or materials with intentional design, manufacture, use, and end-of-life management. Across their lifecycle, sustainable chemicals promote circularity, meet societal needs, and contribute to economic resilience. The introduction of more sustainable chemical products, processes, and technologies are needed to address emerging and growing challenges and opportunities for the economy, climate action, and environmental justice. This Request for Applications (RFA) is soliciting research for data, methods, and systems that lead to actionable, scalable change toward chemistry, chemicals, and products that support sustainable chemistry.
Deadline: May 29, 2024
https://www.epa.gov/research-grants/advancing-sustainable-chemistry
Air Quality Information: Making Sense of Air Pollution Data to Inform Decisions in Underserved Communities Overburdened by Air Pollution Exposures Funding Opportunity
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Research and Development (ORD), as part of the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program and in collaboration with the Air, Climate, and Energy (ACE) research program, is seeking applications proposing community-engaged research in underserved communities to advance the use of air pollution data and communication of air quality information for empowering local decisions and actions that address community-identified air pollution concerns. Specifically, this funding opportunity is soliciting research projects that involve substantial engagement with communities, community-based organizations, and/or Tribes to address both of the following priorities:
- methods and tools for data integration and analysis to characterize community exposures to air pollution in underserved communities
- effective communication of air quality information to communities and decision makers to support actions to address air pollution concerns in underserved communities
This research solicitation supports the Administration’s priorities to address environmental justice (EJ).
Deadline: June 26, 2024
Neurobiology in Changing Ecosystems (NiCE) (NSF 24-044)
Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie neural, physiological, and behavioral responses to anthropogenic environmental change is of vital importance in today's rapidly evolving world. The nervous system serves as an interface between an organism and its environment, and through it, perceives, responds, and adapts to change. Anthropogenic stressors such as noise pollution, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, temperature fluctuation and other human-generated environmental perturbations pose severe threats to organisms, thereby affecting biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Internal Submission Deadline: Monday, September 30, 2024 at 4:00 pm
https://psu.infoready4.com/CompetitionSpace/#competitionDetail/1930966
XPRIZE Foundation Healthspan
XPRIZE Healthspan is a 7-year, $101M global competition announced in December 2023 and ending in 2030, to revolutionize the way we approach aging. People around the world are living longer, but not necessarily in better health. To tackle this challenge, competing teams will develop and test therapeutic target biological aging to improve function and extend healthy life. This globally collaborative effort will bring together scientists, clinicians, policymakers, industry experts and non-governmental agencies to drive new science and create a future where healthy aging is made possible for all.
Internal Submission Deadline: Thursday, October 31, 2024
https://psu.infoready4.com/CompetitionSpace/#competitionDetail/1925105
XPrize Foundation Revolutionizing Desalinization for Global Water Use
XPRIZE Water Scarcity is a 5-year global competition set to drive a step change in desalination technologies - reimagining systems, methods, and materials. Thereby facilitating the widespread use of desalination in a manner that supports greater socio-economic equity and environmental sustainability.
This competition will address issues across desalination and water scarcity in three ways:
- through encouraging new desalination systems to be more robust, affordable, and sustainable;
- by supporting novel membrane materials to make existing desalination more robust, affordable, and sustainable; and
- by exciting innovators across the globe to get involved in developing public perception campaigns to address water scarcity from a broader perspective.
Internal Submission Deadline: Monday, January 6, 2025
https://psu.infoready4.com/CompetitionSpace/#competitionDetail/1933862