Limited Submission Opportunities Portal

The Research Program seeks to benefit humanity by supporting fundamental projects in two specific areas (1) medical research and (2) science and engineering, that are distinctive and novel in their approach, question the prevailing paradigm, or have the potential to break open new territory in their field.
Applicants should have unsuccessfully attempted to secure funding from conventional sources and be able to share formal or informal feedback indicating the project's breakthrough, high-risk nature.

Managing Unit: VPDoR

The NSF Ecosystem for Low-dimensional Electronics: Growth, Assembly, Nanoelectronics, and Translation (NSF ELEGANT) is a translational program, not a research program. Every activity funded under ELEGANT must be in service of an industry-adoptable Translational Endpoint, the industry adoptable deliverable against which performers are selected and held accountable. Strong and sustained industry participation is a central program requirement. NSF will conduct two parallel competitive selection processes for: (i) the Ecosystem Coordinator; and (ii) Expert Performer Teams.

The Ecosystem Coordinator will be accountable for the effective support and coordination of the ELEGANT ecosystem, including supporting NSF oversight, facilitating collaboration among Expert Performer Teams, and ensuring progress toward meeting program objectives and Translational Endpoints throughout the period of performance.

Expert Performer Teams execute the technical translation activities of one of the following themes. Teams conduct translational R&D, deliver against program milestones, maintain technical documentation, and coordinate with NSF and the Ecosystem Coordinator on knowledge sharing, milestone tracking, and cross-theme alignment.

Theme 1: Manufacturable Materials Platform
Theme 2: Process Technology and Process Design Kit (PDK)
Theme 3: Device, Circuit and Full-Chip Demonstration
Theme 4: Manufacturing Readiness and Transition
Theme 5: AI-Enabled Acceleration

Managing Unit: VPDoR

The Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards Program supports the research and teaching careers of talented early career faculty in the chemical sciences. The award is based on an independent body of scholarship attained in the early years of their appointment, and a demonstrated commitment to education, signaling the promise of continuing outstanding contributions to both research and teaching.

Managing Unit: VPDoR

Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research (Rally) aims to support the development of independent research of highly qualified individuals still early in their careers. The application must address at least one of the following priority areas related to cancer in children, adolescents and/or young adults up to age 24: Innovative approaches to research that could lead to advanced studies, better delivery of treatment or clinical translation, Basic science studies likely to lead to a new discovery, Under-studied cancer types, Quality of life, survivorship and palliative care studies, Personalized, targeted, alternative or integrative research proposals, Data utilization through data standardization, collection, storage, analysis and sharing.

Managing Unit: SCI (Stanford Cancer Institute)

The Frontiers Planet Prize is an international competition addressing the planetary crisis by mobilizing researchers engaged in transformational, breakthrough science with the greatest potential to stabilize Earth's ecosystems within the Anthropocene.

Launched in 2022 by the Frontiers Research Foundation, the Frontiers Planet Prize recognizes and awards exceptional scientists for enhancing understanding of planetary health and devising tangible and actionable solutions to bring us back into a safe operating space. The prize focuses on research exploring any one of the 9 planetary boundaries:

Atmospheric aerosol loading
Biogeochemical flows
Biosphere integrity
Climate change
Freshwater change
Land system change
Novel entities
Ocean acidification
Stratospheric ozone depletion

Managing Unit: VPDoR

The Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists recognizes exceptional research in Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Chemical Sciences.

The award honors individuals whose work is innovative, impactful, and addresses critical challenges. Nominees must demonstrate how their research advances their field and opens new areas of exploration, supported by evidence like peer-reviewed publications and major grants.

Additionally, nominees should highlight their leadership, mentorship, and efforts to promote diversity in STEM, reflecting the program's commitment to inclusivity.

Managing Unit: VPDoR

The NSF AI Infrastructure Hubs program aims to expand access to the compute required for AI-enabled scientific discovery and to transform the research, education, and training opportunities offered by institutions of higher education. AI Infrastructure Hubs will connect researchers to new compute infrastructure that leverages contributions from state governments, research institutions, industry, and philanthropy, accelerating AI-enabled discovery across science and engineering and developing a skilled technical workforce for AI use in the scientific enterprise.
Each AI Infrastructure Hub will be organized as a flexible state or regional consortium of state and local governments, research institutions, philanthropies, and the private sector. Consortia will be responsible for all funding for new or expanded computing, data, and AI resources, whether on-premises or cloud-based. NSF will fund each Hub’s consortium coordination, AI infrastructure workforce development, and faculty training and coursework development in leveraging AI for science.

Managing Unit: VPDoR

The foundation anticipates that the work of the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program will explore the many ways political polarization in the United States and abroad manifests itself in society and suggest ways that it may be mitigated. Studies of polarization in other countries should offer lessons that can be applied to the United States, such as those listed below. Projects based in disciplines across the humanities and social sciences are welcomed.
- What has been the relationship between populism and polarization in other countries?
- How have some countries managed to avoid polarization?
- What can we learn from countries that have undergone periods of polarization, such as South Africa, Colombia, and Northern Ireland?
- Under what conditions has polarization escalated into political violence?
- Under what conditions has polarization taken root/accelerated/declined in other countries?

Managing Unit: CFR

NSF X-Labs represent a bold, flexible, and outcomes-driven initiative designed to build and accelerate novel platform technologies capable of unlocking entirely new sectors, including new fields of scientific inquiry. The program will support full-time research and development (R&D) teams focused on use-inspired scientific breakthroughs and foundational platform technologies that traditional university and industry labs cannot easily address. NSF X-Labs teams will benefit from ambitious R&D goals, operational autonomy, milestone-based funding, and the ability to engage across academia, industry, national laboratories, and nonprofit sectors.

The AI for Physical Systems Topic Announcement aims to move beyond software-only and incremental advances toward entirely new ways for AI to operate in real-world environments

Managing Unit: VPDoR

The mission of the DARPA DSO is to identify and spearhead the next generation of scientific discovery to fuel innovation in research and development (R&D) for the Department of War (DoW). DSO serves DARPA by developing and executing an aggressive and forward-leaning portfolio that expands the art of the possible across a broad set of technical areas. DSO aims to create strategic surprise advantage for the DoW by pushing technology toward its fundamental scientific limits. We work to prevent technological surprise by understanding the path commercial R&D is taking, anticipating that our adversaries will exploit available technology to develop new capabilities in the coming decades. Additionally, DSO looks for transformative trends at the global scale and their potential impact on our nation.

In support of this mission, the DSO Office-wide BAA invites proposers to submit innovative basic or applied research concepts or studies and analysis proposals. Proposals in novel areas DSO has not considered are welcome. However, if the proposal addresses one or more of the following technical thrust areas, please indicate which one(s) in your submission: (1) Materials, Manufacturing, and Energy Systems, (2) Sensing, Measuring, and Affecting, (3) Math, Computation, and Processing, and (4) Complex, Dynamic, and Intelligent Systems. Each thrust area description below (in Section B) includes a list of example research topics highlighting several (but not all) potential areas of interest. Proposals must investigate innovative research approaches that enable revolutionary advances. DSO is explicitly not interested in approaches or technologies primarily resulting in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice or are for manufacturing scale-up.

Managing Unit: VPDoR