Corporate Funding Opportunities

The SAMSUNG Global Research Outreach (GRO) Program is an important part of growing SAMSUNG's academic research engagement and collaboration platforms. World-class university researchers have been annually invited since 2009 to propose novel research ideas and to work with our R&D teams to foster technological innovation. This has resulted in actively collaborative relationships with over 150 leading universities worldwide. Selected GRO projects will be funded with one year. This project may be extended up to three years, based on annual research outcomes and necessity for further research partnership determined by SAMSUNG. Joint research proposals from multiple universities are welcome and acceptable. The GRO Program represents an opportunity for SAMSUNG and universities to build a mutually beneficial research relationship and we look forward to your participation.

2025 research areas include:

• System architecture
• New computing
• Semiconductor materials
• Semiconductor metrology
• Next generation catalyst
• Environment tech. for sustainability

More information: https://semiconductor.samsung.com/sait/event/global-research-outreach/ 

The NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship Program provides funding in the amount of up to $60,000 per award to PhD students who are researching topics that will lead to major advances in accelerated computing and its applications. NVIDIA particularly invites submissions from students pushing the envelope in artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and related fields.

More information: https://research.nvidia.com/graduate-fellowships#page-top-

Pfizer and the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) are collaborating to offer a new grant opportunity seeking proposals for quallity improvement initiatives that will promote the safe management of patients diagnosed with migraine in the emergency department setting. We seek to support projects focused on clinical program development that overcome barriers to safe, evidence-based management, disposition, and follow up of this patient population. Funded projects will describe the proposed clinical initiative’s efficacy with outcome measures that demonstrate improved management of migraine patients, patient safety, physician satisfaction, and/or patient satisfaction. 

More information: https://www.pfizer.com/about/programs-policies/grants/competitive-grants

This competitive program seeks to support educational projects that focus on addressing knowledge and practice gaps specific to the diagnosis, severity assessment, treatment, and overall care management of Alopecia Areata (AA) for the adult and adolescent (aged 12-17 years) patient population with comorbidities. 

More information: https://www.pfizer.com/about/programs-policies/grants/competitive-grants

As part of one of the world's most innovative and recognizable brands, we are committed to support university research and innovation in the U.S., Canada, India, and select European countries, while also fostering partnerships with university faculty and researchers. The Sony Research Award Program provides funding for cutting-edge academic research and helps build a collaborative relationship between faculty and Sony researchers. With awards up to $150,000 USD per year for each accepted proposal, both the Faculty Innovation Award and Focused Research Award create new opportunities for university faculties and research institutions to engage in pioneering research that could drive new technologies, industries and the future.

The 2025 Sony Research Award Program RFP will be released on July 15. 

More information: https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/research-award-program/#Overview 

Through the E2 Energy to Educate grant program, Constellation offers students from sixth grade through college opportunities to address the energy challenges of today and tomorrow. Grant funds support projects designed to enhance students’ understanding of science and technology and inspire them to think differently about energy. Since the program's inception in 2010, nearly $5,500,000 in grant dollars have supported 269,000 students' learning nationwide.

Applications for future cycles are anticipated to open each August.

More information: https://www.constellationenergy.com/our-esg-principles/community/e2-energy-to-educate.html 

AWS offers a broad and deep set of tools for businesses to create impactful AI solutions faster. Our mission is to share our learnings and AI capabilities as fully managed services, and put them into the hands of every scientist and developer.

AWS Agentic AI aims to advance agentic AI research by funding development of open-source tools and research that benefit the AI community at large, or impactful research related to agents.

We seek proposals related to agentic AI in the areas below:

1. Development and application of no-code / low-code solutions for agentic AI, which facilitate the rapid deployment and management of AI agents at scale
2. AI-enhanced productivity applications, which enable seamless human-AI collaboration and improve automation
3. Multi-agent systems and collaborations, which enable agents to work together securely and effectively

Other topics related to agentic AI development and applications are also welcome, including, but not limited to:

• Safety and responsible AI for agentic behavior
• Model customization and optimization frameworks
• Vector-based data integration and retrieval systems
• Enterprise-scale agent operations and governance
• Application domains, including but not limited to, software engineering, enterprise, healthcare & life sciences, finance, media & entertainment, consumer agentic assistants

More information: https://www.amazon.science/research-awards/call-for-proposals/aws-agentic-ai-call-for-proposals-fall-2025

At Amazon, we aim to advance innovations that solve some of the most challenging problems in information security. We are seeking to fund AI research on the following topics:

• Trustworthy and reliable agentic AI for security operations, including methodologies for evaluating AI agents in security use cases
• Threat, intrusion, and anomaly detection in agentic AI systems and cloud environments
• Building and optimizing foundation models through pre-training, post-training, fine-tuning, and other techniques to improve performance on security tasks
• Security of agentic AI systems, including securing toolchains, securing frameworks, solutions for confused deputy in delegated agent behaviors, and so forth
• Securing generative AI and foundation models, including securing training data content, anonymization, semantic differential privacy, preventing data leakage from trained models, and so forth
• Vulnerability detection and remediation using agentic AI
• AI-powered incident response: from human collaboration to full automation
• Reinforcement learning for information security
• Scalable and efficient graph modeling and anomaly detection on graphs
• Learning with limited/noisy labels and weakly supervised learning
• AI for malware analysis and detection, with a focus on cloud environments or devices
• AI-assisted secure code generation and security enhancement of existing codebases
• Generative AI for cloud infrastructure compliance
• AI agent access control, including conditional scoped roles in authentication and authorization

Timeline

More information: https://www.amazon.science/research-awards/call-for-proposals/ai-for-information-security-call-for-proposals-fall-2025

Amazon is committed to helping customers achieve the highest levels of security, availability, and robustness in the cloud. We use automated reasoning, the application of mathematical logic to answer questions and prove properties, to increase assurance about critical computer systems. In particular, automated reasoning is applied to analyze policies and configurations, show that protocols and programs work as intended, and to analyze generative AI output. Such applications improve AWS services, and increasingly, are provided as customer-visible features.

We invite research proposals in the following categories:

• Sound neurosymbolic reasoning that combines large language models, automated solving, and proof checking to improve the efficiency of reasoning about problems in mathematics or the behavior of computing systems, including their correctness, security, efficiency, resilience, etc.
• Interfaces between large language models, solvers and interactive theorem provers.
• Applications of symbolic reasoning to the auto-formalization and auto-informalization of system specifications and requirements, including the detection and removal of sources of ambiguity, vacuity and inconsistency in the interpretation of informal descriptions.
• Improvements to automated solvers including SAT, SMT, and CHC solvers. Improved automation and performance of quantifier reasoning is particularly welcome.
• Static analysis of software systems, including dataflow analysis, taint checking, and abstract interpretation.
• Software model checking.
• Improvements to correct-by-construction software methods such as Dafny and Verus.
• Provable approaches to privacy, security and cryptography, including side-channel properties.
• Sound and automated software synthesis and transformation, particularly optimization.
• Verification of distributed protocols and systems.
• Foundations for reasoning about software systems in theorem provers such as Lean. Including programming logics and semantics for languages such as Rust, Dafny, Python, Go, Java, TypeScript, C, and assembly languages.
• Verification of randomized algorithms.
• Applications of automated testing techniques such as model based testing, property based testing and differential testing as complements to automated reasoning. For example, to validate assumptions or demonstrate conformance between a verified model of a system and its actual behavior.

More information: https://www.amazon.science/research-awards/call-for-proposals/automated-reasoning-call-for-proposals-fall-2025

What is Build on Trainium?
Build on Trainium is a $110MM credit program focused on AI research and university education to support the next generation of innovation and development on AWS Trainium. AWS Trainium chips are purpose-built for high-performance deep learning (DL) training of generative AI models, including large language models (LLMs) and latent diffusion models. Build on Trainium provides compute credits to novel AI research on Trainium, investing in leading academic teams to build innovations in critical areas including new model architectures, ML libraries, optimizations, large-scale distributed systems, and more. This multi-year initiative lays the foundation for the future of AI by inspiring the academic community to utilize, invest in, and contribute to the open-source community around Trainium. Combining these benefits with Neuron software development kit (SDK) and recent launch of the Neuron Kernel Interface (NKI), AI researchers can innovate at scale in the cloud. The program can also support model inference on AWS Trainium chips and the closely-related AWS Inferentia chips.

What are AWS Trainium and Neuron?
AWS Trainium is a purpose-built AI chip developed by AWS for accelerating building and deploying machine learning models. Built on a specialized architecture designed for deep learning, Trainium accelerates the training and inference of complex models with high output and scalability, making it ideal for academic researchers looking to optimize performance and costs. This architecture also emphasizes sustainability through resource-efficient design, reducing environmental impact. Amazon has established a dedicated Trainium research cluster featuring up to 40,000 Trainium chips, accessible via Amazon EC2 Trn instances. These instances are connected through a non-blocking, petabit-scale network using Amazon EC2 UltraClusters, enabling seamless high-performance ML training. Trn instances is optimized to deliver substantial compute power for cutting-edge AI research and development. This unique offering not only enhances the efficiency and affordability of model training but also presents academic researchers with opportunities to publish new papers on underrepresented compute architectures, thus advancing the field.

Focus on Responsible AI (RAI)
The focus of this CFP is on Responsible AI (RAI) - a major field of AI research that is critically needed for greater adoption of AI technology. Broadly speaking, AWS defines RAI to include the dimensions of 1/ Fairness, 2/ Explainability, 3/ Privacy and Security, 4/ Safety, 5/ Controllability, 6/ Veracity and robustness, 7/ Governance, and 8/ Transparency. Within RAI the five topics below are priority topics for research, based on their expected benefits to builders, customers and the scientific community.

Please develop your grant proposal addressing one or more of these topics, or make a strong case for another topic within RAI.

1. AI safety and alignment. It is critical to ensure that artificial intelligence systems remain beneficial, controllable, and aligned with human values as AI becomes increasingly capable and autonomous. We seek proposals that utilize Trainium to advance:
   
   1. Robustness and Reliability: ensuring AI systems perform consistently and safely under all conditions, including adversarial attacks, distribution shifts, and edge cases
   2. Alignment and Value Learning: ensuring AI systems understand and act in accordance with human values and intentions, including inverse reinforcement learning, reward modeling, superalignment and preference learning
   3. Scalable oversight: maintaining meaningful human control over AI systems as they become more capable to include reasoning, tool usage and distributed across agents.
   4. Fairness, privacy protection and bias mitigation: Training foundation models and multi-agent AI systems with inbuilt fairness objectives, bias mitigation and protection of privacy
2. Multi-lingual language models. Humans worldwide speak thousands of languages, but only a small fraction of these languages are used to natively train LLMs. There is a growing demand for advanced AI solutions for every human language. We seek work that:
   
   1. Introduces novel deep learning architectures, techniques, data and software that advance multi-lingual LLMs
   2. Trains models that excel in rarer human languages and releases datasets and tools, such as data preparation and tokenization tools for non-Latin alphabets
   3. Trains multilingual small language models (SLMs) for applications like guardrails for Asian languages
   4. Develops standardized benchmarks in knowledge, reasoning and other competencies in non-English languages with a focus on fairness and cultural inclusion
3. Representation engineering (RE). RE is focused on understanding, analyzing, and manipulating the internal representations learned by artificial neural networks. This field investigates how models encode, transform, and utilize information to make decisions. We seek proposals that utilize Trainium for RE, including:
   
   1. Analysis and Visualization: techniques for understanding how neural networks encode information, including feature visualization, attribution methods, and dimensionality reduction approaches
   2. Transparency and Interpretability: methods for explanation generation, decision verification, and model inspection
   3. Modification and Control: steering how models learn representations, including architecture design, training objectives, and direct manipulation of learned representations and unlearning
   4. Security and Counter-Hallucination: detection and prevention of adversarial attack or hallucinations using RE, including through data path injections.
4. Sustainability, Efficiency and Small Language Models (SLMs). The rapid advancement of generative AI technologies has raised resource consumption and environmental impact to a top concern of decision makers and application developers. Meanwhile, advances in SLMs enable more efficient and performant LLMs. Using cost and resource allocation as a proxy for carbon emissions offers benefits both to reduce carbon and to increase access to AI. We seek proposals that advance:
   
   1. Training and inference efficiency: improving the efficiency of training and inference using novel architectures, training curriculum and schedule optimization, LLM Ops and other techniques
   2. Novel SLMs: novel architectures, datasets and training strategies that advance the state of the art in SLMs such as pruning, matrix factorization, quantization, neural architecture search, and other strategies.
   3. Resource consumption of existing GenAI solutions: utilizing tools such as the Neuron SDK and Neuron Kernel Interface, research novel approaches to reduce computational overhead. Develop new algorithms, refine model architectures, and create software optimizations that significantly improve efficiency without compromising AI capabilities
   4. Real-time monitoring and optimization techniques for GenAI resource consumption: design intelligent systems capable of dynamically adjusting resource allocation based on workload demands and resource constraints. Predictive models for resource usage, adaptive algorithms for power management, and innovative approaches to balance performance and efficiency in live GenAI environments
5. Deep learning models for synthetic data generation. VAEs, GANs and other techniques can generate fully-synthetic data such as text, images and even entire databases. These datasets can accelerate application development while protecting privacy and is indispensable for high-risk and regulated industries. The related techniques of data augmentation can accelerate the training of neural models. We seek proposals that utilize Trainium for:
   
   1. Foundational research: conceptual breakthroughs in realism, efficiency, scale and user control over model developer for synthetic data generation
   2. Hierarchical, multimodal and structured data: novel techniques for using models to generate fully-synthetic hierarchical and logically-constrained data as found in relational databases or multimodal and time-dependent data
   3. Advanced data augmentation: novel data augmentation methods and models for single- and multi-modal data

More information: https://www.amazon.science/build-on-trainium-responsible-ai-call-for-proposals-fall-2025

Amazon’s mission is to provide customers with the world’s most secure computing environment. We are the stewards of cryptography engineering within Amazon, and we set the standard for the use and implementation of such technologies across the organization. Cryptography builds and maintains customer trust by protecting users’ applications and data in use, in transit, and at rest.

We seek proposals in these areas:

Primitives and protocols

• Formal proof of security properties for cryptographic primitives.
• Practical optimizations for cryptographic transport protocols.
• Cryptanalysis of standard algorithms and protocols.
• Wide-block ciphers and new efficient symmetric encryption modes based on existing primitives.
• MPC-friendly symmetric primitives.
• Novel cryptographic constructions using quantum resistant primitives, including threshold signatures and oblivious pseudo-random functions.

Implementation, verification, and open source

• Formal, static verification of open source cryptographic software, including verification of freedom from side-channel attacks.
• Verified optimization of cryptographic code, particularly for 64-bit x86, Armv8.x, and Armv9.x ISAs and their associated micro-architectures.
• Hardware acceleration of FHE and MPC libraries.
• Verification of randomized algorithms.

Theory and novel applications

• Fundamental research of the feasibility of a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer.
• Addressing adversarial behavior in the AI space, including watermarking and provenance mechanisms for AI-generated content.
• characterization of the privacy guarantees enforced by various differential privacy budget regimes when applied to specific classes of ML attacks.
• Improved practical FHE bootstrapping algorithms for cloud environments.
• Compilers and development tools for FHE and MPC.
• Formal specification and implementation of a production-quality math library for FHE.
• Pseudo-random correlation generators and the implementation.
• Architectures and protocols for cloud-based collaboration of multiple organizations.

More information: https://www.amazon.science/research-awards/call-for-proposals/aws-cryptography-call-for-proposals-fall-2025

Amazon participates in a complex network - of individuals, processes, technologies, and organizations collaboratively safeguarding networks, devices, and data from cybersecurity threats. We seek to invest in research initiatives that effectively bridge the gap between internal fraud prevention measures and broader external security enhancements. We invite proposals in the following key areas:

• Advanced tools and methodologies for combating online fraud and abuse, including counterfeit detection and mitigation of AI-enabled misconduct.
• Innovative approaches and technologies for identifying and preventing identity-related fraud and abuse, such as detection of digital footprint manipulation.

Research proposals should prioritize the development of novel insights and defensive frameworks that elevate security standards against bad actors. We particularly value proposals demonstrating potential for broad impact and viable implementation of defensive technologies in the cybersecurity space.

More information: https://www.amazon.science/research-awards/call-for-proposals/cybersecurity-research-and-anti-abuse-technologies-call-for-proposals-fall-2025

At the forefront of sustainable device technology advancement, we seek proposals that help optimize device life cycle energy consumption and product carbon footprint through innovative technical solutions. Of particular interest are projects that illustrate measurable impact reduction in device manufacturing phase through supply chain decarbonization innovations or use phase through energy efficient compute or AI-assisted optimization techniques. The proposed solutions should demonstrate clear potential for industry-wide adoption and include comprehensive validation methodologies for measuring and verifying associated carbon impact reductions.

More information: https://www.amazon.science/research-awards/call-for-proposals/sustainability-call-for-proposals-fall-2025

Amazon invites ambitious research proposals that align with our commitment to transformative innovation. Guided by our leadership principle to Think Big - looking around corners and creating bold direction that inspires results - we seek proposals across all scientific disciplines with visionary, pioneering ideas. While proposals must be grounded in rigorous scientific methodologies with practical or scalable solutions, we challenge researchers to transcend current paradigms and envision revolutionary applications.

This call specifically targets research that might be considered speculative or contains potential for outsized impact. We welcome proposals including, but not limited to, ideas that:

• Challenge fundamental assumptions in your field
• Propose novel frameworks for solving long-standing problems
• Enable order-of-magnitude improvements over current approaches
• Have the potential to create new technical capabilities
• Open unexplored frontiers in science and technology
• Leverage multidisciplinary collaboration on complex problems, challenge fundamental assumptions, and propose novel frameworks

While we welcome proposals from all scientific disciplines, we encourage proposals in areas of societally relevant technical challenges, such as generative AI, health and medical sciences, sustainability, and hardware.

This Think Big track complements our standard Amazon Research Awards program. If your Think Big idea aligns with an open Amazon Research Awards call for proposals, submit your proposal directly through that CFP. We welcome proposals here for all topics not covered by open Amazon Research Awards calls for proposal.

More information: https://www.amazon.science/research-awards/call-for-proposals/think-big-call-for-proposals-fall-2025

The Microsoft Research AI & Society fellows program aims to catalyze research collaboration between Microsoft Research and eminent scholars and experts across a range of disciplines core to discussions at the intersection of AI and its impact on society.

Microsoft recognizes the value of bridging academic, industry, policy, and regulatory worlds and seeks to ignite interdisciplinary collaboration that drives real-world impact.

Through a global, open call for proposals targeting a specific set of research challenges, Microsoft will facilitate strategic collaborations, catalyze new research ideas, and contribute publicly available works to benefit scholarly discourse and benefit society more broadly.

More information: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/ai-society-fellows/ 

To further its commitments as enshrined in its Global CSR Policy, HCLTech will be granting $5 million over five years to impact-focused, Americas-based not-for-profit organizations to supercharge their replicable, scalable and sustainable projects focused on climate action. Three organizations will be selected each year—first place will receive $500,000 and two runners-up will receive $250,000 each for a one-year project.

More information: https://americas-grant.hcltech.com/ 

The Microsoft Research Fellowship creates opportunities for academic scholars (faculty, PhD students, and postdocs) to collaborate with Microsoft Research on open research challenges that advance scientific understanding, drive innovation, and deliver societal benefit.

In an era of rapid innovation, this fellowship brings together academia and industrial researchers across disciplines to shape the future through open research collaborations. Academic collaboration is foundational to advancing scientific discovery, and today, it’s more critical than ever. Academic institutions contribute deep domain expertise, novel perspectives, and a culture of exploration. Microsoft Research’s global labs offer deep technical expertise, cutting-edge academic inquiry, and real-world application. By working together, we believe we can accelerate innovation, promote responsible development, and address complex challenges that can best be solved through interdisciplinary exploration.

More information: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/microsoft-research-fellowship/

Sanofi is committed to collaborating with partners to advance cutting-edge discoveries. The Sanofi Innovations in Data Exploration and Analytics (iDEA) Awards program, launched in 2018, provides seed funding to innovators at research centers and early start-ups across North America to transform breakthrough digital, data science tools and new technologies into solutions that accelerate the R&D pipeline and improve people’s lives. In 2022, the iDEA awards (NA) and iTECH awards (Europe) merged into the Sanofi global iDEA-TECH awards.

Examples of Partnering Opportunities:

• Predict patient outcomes
• Predict & track disease progression & drug effects
• Maximize drug value in the real world
• Optimize clinical trial design
• Drug target enabling platforms
• Biomarker Identification
• Test new digital/AI solutions
• High throughput screening approaches
• Analytic tools to understand drug mechanism or product quality

The applications for this aware are expected to open each November.

More information: https://www.sanofi.com/en/our-science/scientific-collaboration/north-america/idea-itech 

Up to $50,000 in direct costs will be provided to ESI Seed Grant recipients for one year for research in areas related to AR within the ARLG scope. Individuals who are MD, PhD, or Pharm D students, graduate or post-graduate trainees, or those with a faculty appointment of less than five years are eligible to apply. Applicants who work at a US domestic institution for the duration of the award irrespective of citizenship or visa status are eligible to apply. The clinical research project may be conducted in the US or internationally.

More information: https://arlg.org/esi-seed-grant-applicants/ 

The Research Scholar Program aims to support early-career professors who are pursuing research in fields relevant to Google. The Research Scholar Program provides unrestricted gifts to support research at institutions around the world, and is focused on funding world-class research conducted by early-career professors, in areas such as:

• Algorithms and optimization

• Applied sciences

• Health research

• Human-computer interaction

• Machine learning

• Machine perception

• Natural language processing

• Networking

• Privacy, safety, and security

• Quantum computing

• Software engineering and programming languages

• Systems

More information: https://research.google/programs-and-events/research-scholar-program/ 

As a corporate foundation, our giving furthers the philanthropic goals of the business, with a narrow focus on programs that support first responders and technology and engineering education.

• First responder programming
  
  • We support first responders via programs that provide mental wellness and stress management training, scholarships to families of fallen first responders, safety preparedness to schools and leadership development for under-resourced groups.
• Technology & engineering education
  
  • From engaging students through hands-on engineering activities like computer science, coding and robotics to providing scholarship and workforce placement for under-resourced groups, we’re committed to creating opportunities for future innovators.

"The 2027 cycle will kick-off in late-November 2026."

More information: https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/about/motorola-solutions-foundation/annual-grants.html 

Sanofi is excited to announce our 2025-2026 iNext Pitching Competition call for proposals!

The iNext Pitching Competition aims to identify and incubate breakthrough ideas that push the boundaries of traditional R&D and venture investment frameworks. This year, we are looking for early innovative proposals in the fields of either (1) Next-Gen approaches to counter aging related cellular and tissue dysfunction and/or (2) paradigm shifting strategies for targeted delivery of large molecules and nucleic acids.

Selected “Moonshot” ideas will receive up to USD $500,000 per project (inclusive of all costs) to fund an 18-month journey of groundbreaking research, supported by Sanofi’s R&D expertise.

How to Apply: Program Guidelines, Pre-proposal template and Submission portal are accessible on the Application Page

Pre-proposal Submission deadline: January 31^st, 2026

More information: https://sanofi.agorize.com/en/challenges/inext-2026

The purpose of the Agilent Early Career Professor Award is:

• To promote and encourage research excellence on topics of importance to Agilent and the world
• To establish strong collaborative relationships with emerging academic leaders early in their career
• To build the prominence of Agilent as a sponsor of university research

Award Eligibility:

• Professor must hold a tenure-tracked faculty position
• Must have completed Ph.D. or M.D. residency within 12 years of award year

Selection Criteria:

• Alignment with the Focus Topic: Contributions to environmental sustainability through development of green analytical technologies, methods, or laboratory working environments.
• Significant original research contributions enabling solutions of importance to Agilent and the world
  (ref: sustainable lab solutions; my green lab)
• Innovation and outstanding potential for future research contributions

More information: https://www.agilent.com/univ_relation/profaward/index.shtml

This entry is informational only; no competition was run in 2025. 

Across the U.S., many households are facing financial pressures exacerbated by affordability issues. Recognizing the important role of community organizations in helping manage these challenges, the Citi Foundation is announcing a $35 million Request for Proposals to support nonprofits working across the U.S. to advance household financial resilience.

This new round of our Community Finance Initiative supports organizations that help build financial stability, strength and safety in our communities. This can include addressing the immediate difficulties from a rising cost of living — or fortifying and preserving assets so that low-income households are better able to weather future financial strain and have the opportunity to thrive. 

More information: https://www.citigroup.com/global/foundation/apply-for-funding

The Opportunity: Annually, the Ono Pharma Foundation considers proposals from PIs for research that could ultimately transform human health. Although additional areas of research may be added in future years, the Ono Pharma Foundation is only considering proposals for scientific research addressing Chemical Biology at this time.

Chemical Biology is defined as research that deals with the interface between chemistry and biology. The criteria for this field are deliberately broad so as not to disqualify potentially innovative and groundbreaking projects.

Target research of Chemical Biology is not specified by the Ono Initiative. For 2026, subjects of interest include but are not limited to:

• Modulating interactome and cell/tissue crosstalk with chemical induced proximity
• Manipulating biomolecular condensates and protein quality control systems
• Deep understanding and emerging applications of chemical glycobiology
• New concepts of drug delivery and localization to tissue/cell/organelle
• Understanding and leveraging allostery in Biology

More information: https://www.onofound.org/for-applicants#ono-initiative 

The IBM Impact Accelerator is a social innovation program that supports communities facing environmental and economic stress around the world, through technologies like AI and an ecosystem of experts.

To date, the IBM Impact Accelerator has supported 25 global projects across four active cohorts focused on sustainable agriculture, clean energy, water management and resilient cities.

Project examples include:

• AI foundation models and geospatial analytics to discover new insights
• Asset management for public services
• Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for operational and situational awareness
• Open source software to manage electric vehicle ecosystems
• Weather and climate forecasting to predict impacts on natural and built infrastructure

More information: https://www.ibm.com/impact/initiatives/ibm-sustainability-accelerator 

Samsung's START Program aims to identify emerging technologies and conduct frontier research in collaboration with the academic community. As part of SRA's expanding efforts to strengthen industry-academic partnerships, this program enables researchers to work with our R&D teams on early-stage innovations that will shape the future of Samsung devices and experiences.

Research areas of interest:
Our program is dedicated to identifying emerging, frontier technologies fostering solutions that enhance products, services, and user experiences across Samsung’s Device eXperience (DX) division. We are looking for game changing innovations that will impact our entire product portfolio in mobile technology, visual display, digital appliances, and networking. We focus on, but are not limited to, the following key domains:

• Artificial Intelligence
• Digital Health
• 6G
• Camera
• Multimedia
• AR / VR
• Security
• System on Chip
• Big Data
• Robotics
• Medical Tech
• New Emerging Tech

Projects selected will be awarded up to $150,000 for a 1 year project, with the possibility of renewal.

More information: https://sra.samsung.com/collaboration/start/process/

The Foundation was created in 2008 by The Doctors Company, the nation’s largest physician-owned medical malpractice insurer. The purpose of the Foundation is to support patient safety education for healthcare professionals in training and in practice, and patient safety research with clinically useful applications. With this in mind, we focus on innovative projects/activities that develop knowledge, techniques, and tools whose application reduces or eliminates risk of adverse events that cause harm to patients while under care.

The Foundation views innovation as the creation, development, and implementation of a new or significantly improved process, activity, or model, with the aim of measurably improving patient outcomes.

More Information: https://www.tdcfoundation.com/ 

The AXA Chair is a highly selective funding scheme for senior researchers intended to support significant advancements in the development of a research area within a host institution that is in line with its long-term strategy. It aims at creating a full-time academic position in the host institution and fostering a step change in the career of the appointed AXA Professor.

This is a LIMITED opportunity; only one prospective chair holder can be nominated by an institution.

More information: https://institution.axa-research.org/

AI is a critical lever to unlock scientific breakthroughs and understand the fundamental mechanisms of human health and climate systems. Building on the success of the inaugural AI for Science fund, Google.org is launching a supercharged initiative at the intersection of artificial intelligence and scientific discovery. By empowering researchers with catalytic funding and technical expertise, we aim to accelerate our understanding of key scientific questions—achieving Nobel-level breakthroughs and enabling science at digital speed.

The Google.org Impact Challenge: AI for Science is a $30M global open-call designed to empower researchers and organizations with the funding, tools, and technical expertise they need to accelerate scientific breakthroughs. Beyond funding, organizations may participate in a Google.org Accelerator and receive six months of dedicated pro bono technical support from Google experts and access to Google Cloud credits to help bring these projects to life.

More information: https://www.google.org/impact-challenges/ai-science/

Google Ph.D. Fellowships directly support graduate students as they pursue their Ph.D., as well as connect them to a Google Research Mentor.

Nurturing and maintaining strong relations with the academic community is a top priority at Google. The Google PhD Fellowship Program was created to recognize outstanding graduate students doing exceptional and innovative research in areas relevant to computer science and related fields. Fellowships support promising PhD candidates of all backgrounds who seek to influence the future of technology. Google’s mission is to foster inclusive research communities and encourages people of diverse backgrounds to apply.

This is a LIMITED opportunity. Faculty with eligible doctoral students are encouraged to contact the Corporate Relations team for details.

More information: https://research.google/programs-and-events/phd-fellowship/ 

Main Areas of Interest

The Spring 2026 cycle features seven distinct tracks:

• AI for Information Security: Advancing solutions for challenging problems in info-security, including trustworthy agentic AI for security and AI-powered incident response.

• Agentic AI: Focusing on the frontiers of AI agents, multi-agent systems, human-AI collaboration, and enterprise-scale operations.

• Amazon 2030: A high-impact track for scale-driven innovation with the potential for real-world impact within the next 3–5 years (broadly covering AI for science, hardware, and systems).

• Amazon Security: Setting standards for security within Amazon, including secure code generation and large-scale anomaly detection.

• Build on Trainium: Accelerating Post-Training: Research on AWS Trainium for reinforcement learning, alignment techniques, and distributed training systems.

• Build on Trainium: Kernels for ML Acceleration: Low-level research into automated kernel generation, optimization, and debugging tools.

• Robotics: Pursuing the future of robotics research and its practical applications.

More information: https://www.amazon.science/research-awards/call-for-proposals

The TIAA Institute is partnering with the Wharton School’s Boettner Center/Pension Research Council at the University of Pennsylvania to solicit research proposals focused on retirement and behavioral finance. 

More Information: https://www.tiaa.org/public/institute/about/grants

The Global Grants for Gut Health is a competitive funding initiative that supports innovative, investigator-led research focused on the human gut microbiota. Jointly supported by Yakult and Nature Portfolio, the program aims to advance scientific understanding of the critical role the gut microbiome plays in human health.

2025 scope: We invite proposals for one-year research projects, including both laboratory-based investigations and clinical studies, that explore the role of nutrition in modulating the human gut microbiome and barrier function. Studies exploring the interplay between diet, microbial composition and barrier homeostasis are encouraged. Successful projects will demonstrate scientific rigour, originality and the potential to make meaningful contributions to the field of microbiome research.

More information: https://www.nature.com/immersive/gutgrants/index.html 

Advancing science through investigator-sponsored research: The research from Investigator-Initiated Studies (IIS) has the capability to expand understanding of our products and their potential applications. Plus, data from investigator-sponsored research can inform patient care and spark new ideas for further disease-related research. The AbbVie IIS Program provides an opportunity for academic and community-based physicians and researchers worldwide interested in conducting their own research to apply for research support.

Interest areas include:

• Aesthetics
• Eye care
• Immunology
• Neuroscience
• Oncolgy
• Specialty areas

More information: https://www.abbvie.com/science/clinical-trials/investigator-initiated-studies.html 

The AWS Education Equity Initiative expands access to future skills education for underserved learners globally. Amazon is committing up to $100 million in AWS credits and technical expertise to support socially-minded organizations develop innovative digital learning solutions that utilize cloud and AI technologies.

More information: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/our-impact/education-equity-initiative/ 

Independent Research Grants empower the global research community to develop new treatments and technological advancements in ocular health. Research grants have been funded by Bausch + Lomb to improve consumer standards of care, efficacy, patient satisfaction, safety and vision performance.

We welcome unsolicited research study proposals from qualified investigators in our strategic areas of interest:

• Pharmaceuticals
• Surgical
• Vision Care

More information: https://www.bausch.com/product-innovation/independent-research-cme-grants/ 

The Centene Foundation furthers the company mission by partnering with organizations with deep community expertise and history. These partnerships focus on three distinct drivers of health: healthcare access, social services and education. Because transforming the health of communities requires more than one-time contributions, we seek partnerships that can grow over time and position our communities to thrive.

The core of our foundation is helping health-related organizations and causes. Centene will also consider projects or programs aligning with one or more of Centene Corporation’s focus areas:

• Education
• Healthcare Access (Including Social Determinants of Health)
• Social Services

The Centene Foundation accepts charitable grant proposals only during a Spring Grant Cycle (March 1 – May 31) and a Fall Grant Cycle (Sept. 1 – Nov. 29).

More information: https://www.centene.com/who-we-are/centene-foundation.html

Cisco Research is currently accepting research proposals on the following topics. The company continues to update their research foci, and the most current list may be found on their website (see "More information" link below).

• Generative AI
• Web Assembly
• Web3.0: De-Centralized Computing, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency/Virtual Currency
• Sustainability
• Augmented & Virtual Reality
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Low Orbit Satellite Networking and Infrastructure
• Cybersecurity in Emerging Tech Areas
• Contactless Supply Chain
• Quantum Information
• Edge Computing
• Ethics in AI
• Intent-Based Networking for the Enterprise
• Insider Threat
• Semiconductor Reliability
• Threat Mitigation
• Caching, Routing, Security
• 3D IC Integration and Enabling Technologies
• Conference Sponsorships
• Hackathon Sponsorships

More information: https://research.cisco.com/open-rfps 

The Comcast Innovation Fund was created to support technology and public policy research that contributes to the betterment of the Internet, and the continued evolution of connectivity products and services. The fund provides grants to technologists, researchers, and academics to support Internet- and connectivity-focused projects within the fund’s areas of interest, which are updated annually.

General Research Grants provide unrestricted award of funds to support researchers, usually at colleges and universities. These grants are focused on supporting excellent technical research in a wide variety of fields that are relevant to the evolution of the Internet. Targeted Research Grants are more narrowly tailored and typically study more specific issues.

For 2025 our grant funding priority focus areas are:

• End User Application Quality
• Wi-Fi Performance
• Routing Security
• Live Video Streaming
• Edge Computing/Caching
• Policy Issues
• FCC Outage Reporting & E911/988 Reporting
• Quantum Computing-Related Cybersecurity and Privacy
• Wireless & Mobility

More information: https://innovationfund.comcast.com/ 

The CooperVision Science & Technology Award is aimed at fostering groundbreaking research in the field of myopia control. We invite innovative researchers to submit proposals that explore novel technologies and approaches with the potential to disrupt current treatment paradigms. Our goal is to support young and established researchers in pursuing ambitious, forward-thinking projects that push the boundaries of conventional myopia treatment wisdom.

As of spring 2025, CooperVision are Currently Seeking Proposals for the Following Areas of Interest:

• Developing new ideas and technologies that could revolutionize myopia prevention and control
• Identifying biomarkers that could forecast patient’s response to various myopia treatments
• New approaches to understand the underlying mechanisms of myopia onset, progression, and control 
• Exploring structural and optical changes associated with myopia control treatment of young (<7 yr. old) myopes
• Understanding factors influencing therapy selection of patients beginning myopia control treatment

More information: https://coopervision.com/practitioner/science-and-technology-awards 

Through the General Grant Program, the FINRA Investor Education Foundation funds research initiatives and scalable educational projects with unique demonstration value to ensure that people in the United States and U.S. territories have the knowledge, skills and tools to make sound financial decisions throughout life.
 
The Foundation welcomes applications for research or educational projects of approximately $50,000–$100,000 that address financial inequities, especially within communities that experience systemic barriers to financial inclusion.

More information: https://www.finrafoundation.org/general-grant-program 

GenScript Life Science Research Grant Program is a new initiative dedicated to supporting breakthroughs in life science research areas, including but not limited to those indicated below. This program is designed to empower researchers by providing grant funding earmarked explicitly for purchasing GenScript reagents and services. 

GenScript provides comprehensive “one-stop” solutions for projects in the identified research areas through its advanced technologies and platforms. The Life Science Research Grant Program will leverage GenScript’s existing capabilities to accelerate projects by partnering with investigators globally on their proposed projects.

Research areas include:

• Gene and Cell Therapy Development
• Antibody Drug Discovery
• AI Drug Discovery
• Vaccine Development
• Diagnostics

More information: https://www.genscript.com/grantprogram-2025.html 

Gilead provides ISR grants primarily in our therapeutic areas of expertise and based on the scientific merit of the proposal. The research must be intended to contribute knowledge to the medical community. The budget must be reasonable and appropriate for the proposed work. In considering applications for support, Gilead will also consider the expertise of the proposed principal investigator and any sub-investigators, including their experience in the relevant therapeutic area, demonstrated ability to successfully conduct clinical trials, and available resources.

Current/recent RFP areas:

• Virology & Infectious Diseases: HIV, Viral Hepatitis, Emerging Viruses & Fungal Diseases
• Oncology: Solid Tumors
• Inflammation: Inflammatory & Fibrotic Diseases

More information: https://www.gilead.com/science/research/research-funding-programs/external-sponsored-research 

The Kite External Research Program provides support for collaborative and investigator sponsored research in areas of interest to Kite that advance medical and scientific knowledge in cell therapy. External research results are expected to be communicated in appropriate scientific forums, including peer-reviewed publications.

As part of Kite's support of investigator sponsored research, Kite accepts unsolicited clinical and non-clinical study proposals that are developed, designed and conducted by external investigators. Kite supports investigator-sponsored research focused on scientifically rigorous exploration of our therapies which aims to advance science, clinical medicine and patient care.

The Kite External Research Program is currently limited to study proposals about our CAR T cell therapies (axicabtagene ciloleucel and brexucabtagene autoleucel) that address one of the areas listed below, including novel combinations, novel approaches to safety or efficacy, novel conditioning regimens, translational research and real-world data.

• Optimal sequential treatment and bridging therapy approaches for CAR T-cell therapy
• Uses in different settings of care and/or novel approaches to patient care including safety and patient selection
• Proposals for frontline CAR T in LBCL
• Identification of high risk patients categorized by biomarkers / clinical data sets
• Evidence to identify the patients most likely to achieve long term remission from brexucabtagene autoleucel without any further consolidation treatment

More information: https://www.kitepharma.com/cell-therapy/external-research-program 

Investigator-Initiated Studies Program: Research support

• The IIS Program provides support for research that advances scientific and medical knowledge about Medline products and generates promising approaches to medical care. Our support of projects can include direct funding to cover all or a portion of study-related costs, product and study design input. If the Scientific Review Committee approves an application, execution of an agreement is required for disbursement of funds and/or product, which includes milestones and publishing expectations.

Fellowship Grant: Advancing education and training

• Fellowships play an important role in ensuring that fellows are trained in the latest medical procedures and technologies. Applications for awards are submitted by teaching institutions, community hospitals, medical societies, and associations that have a bona fide fellowship program and selection process to determine fellowship recipients.

Educational Grant: Supporting education and patient care

• Financial and product support is available for educational programs and activities that promote health care provider education, enhance the quality of patient care, and align with Medline’s therapeutic and clinical interests. Education proposals that may be considered for financial support include accredited education activities, independent education activities, web-ex programs, national/regional scientific and medical congresses and symposia. Grant recipients maintain independence with respect to the content development and delivery of the funded program or activity.

More information: https://www.medline.com/about-us/sustainability/community-engagement/grant-guide/ 

Driven by Nasdaq’s Purpose to advance economic progress for all, the Nasdaq Foundation works with organizations that promote & support under-resourced communities by reimagining investor engagement and equipping communities with the financial knowledge needed to share in the wealth that markets create. The Quarterly Grant Program allows us to move nimbly to fund & help scale programs that align with the Foundation's mission.

FINANCIAL KNOWLEDGE & CONFIDENCE

Empower organizations that equip under-resourced communities with the financial knowledge and confidence they need to share in the wealth that markets can create. Grants will be given in this area to organizations and programs which deliver impact in one or more of the following ways:

• Enhancing financial literacy among under-resourced communities, with an element of teaching participants how to invest in the capital markets
• Improving access to knowledge and tools for investing and wealth creation among under-resourced communities

STRENGTHEN & SCALE

Support entrepreneurs from under-resourced communities with the resources to strengthen and scale those businesses and contribute to the prosperity of society. Grants will be given in this area to organizations and programs which deliver impact in one or more of the following ways:

• Equipping under-resourced founders with mentoring and resources
• Improving access to capital for under-resourced founders

BUILD & CONTRIBUTE

The Foundation will collaborate with organizations that can help build a deeper, data-led understanding where the challenges are greatest, what existing efforts could be amplified, and how the Foundation can make new and distinctive contributions in its mission to diversify entrepreneurship and empower investors.

More information: https://www.nasdaq.com/nasdaq-foundation/grant-program 

NVIDIA's Academic Grant Program is seeking proposals from full-time faculty members at accredited academic institutions who are using NVIDIA technology to advance work in three interest areas. Applications accepted quarterly: March 31st, June 30th, September 30th and December 31st. 

Areas of interest are subject to change each quarter.

Proposals should incorporate pretrained models from ai.nvidia.com and/or make extensive use of NVIDIA software distributions. Relevant examples include NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo, Omniverse™, CUDA-Q™, Isaac™, NeMo Framework™, NVIDIA Cosmos™, and CUDA-X™ Data Science libraries.

More information: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/industries/higher-education-research/academic-grant-program/

The PNC Foundation's priority is to form partnerships with community-based nonprofit organizations in order to enhance educational opportunities, with an emphasis on early childhood education, and to promote the growth of communities through economic development initiatives.

PNC Grow Up Great is our signature program. It is a $500 million, multi-year, bilingual initiative that began in 2004 to help prepare children from birth to age 5 for success in school and life.

As part of this initiative, the PNC Foundation has earmarked funds for grants to nonprofit organizations that work to improve school readiness by providing support in areas such as: vocabulary development; social-emotional learning; math; science; and the arts.

More information: https://www.pnc.com/en/about-pnc/corporate-responsibility/philanthropy/pnc-foundation.html

"The Westinghouse Charitable Giving Program enables our company to provide financial support to communities in one or more of our strategic areas of giving.

• Education with a focus on STEM
  • Grants defined as education with a focus on STEM are those used to improve knowledge and literacy with a focus in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math among students, teachers and the general public.
• Environmental Sustainability
  • Grants defined as Environmental Sustainability are those used to enrich programs with the goal of preserving or restoring land, air, water or biodiversity. A comfortable standard of living is important to Westinghouse in order to ensure technology advancement and a sustainable planet for future generations.
• Community Safety and Vitality
  • Donations defined as Community Safety and Vitality are those used to improve the overall quality of life within a community by supporting initiatives that enhance safety and public well-being. Safety, health and wellness are vitally important to Westinghouse; our community commitment does not start and stop at the workplace door, but safety, health and wellness continue at home and in our community."

More information: https://westinghousenuclear.com/about/community-and-education/charitable-giving-program/program-details-and-application-process/