Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship
VBFF Informational Webinar: July 27, 2024 3:00pm-4:00pm (register here)
Sponsor White Paper Deadline (required): September 29, 2023
OSP Deadline (if invited): February 2, 2024. Departments or areas may require additional time for proposal review and submission. Please discuss a timeline with your grants administrator.
Sponsor Full Proposal Deadline (if invited): February 9, 2024
Award Amount: $3M over five years

The Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF) program supports innovative basic research within academia, as well as opportunities intended to develop the next generation of scientists and engineers for the defense workforce. This FOA seeks distinguished researchers for the purpose of conducting unclassified basic scientific and engineering research in areas of interest to the DoD and fostering long-term relationships between the VBFF Fellows and the DoD. Faculty with tenure at the time of proposal submission, with a record of substantial scientific contributions and the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to conduct the proposed research as the principal investigator (PI), are invited to submit an application. The PI must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. This FOA is for single investigator grant proposals. VBFF Fellows and their students are provided with opportunities that are designed to enhance their understanding of DoD’s critical research needs and interact with DoD senior Science and Technology (S&T) program leaders.

VBFF is oriented towards bold and ambitious “blue sky” research that may lead to extraordinary outcomes such as revolutionizing entire disciplines, creating entirely new fields, or disrupting accepted theories and perspectives. This FOA is seeking proposals in the following research areas:

• Area 1: Applied Mathematics and Computational Science
• Area 2: Networks and Artificial Intelligence
• Area 3: Neuroscience and Fundamentals of Cognition and Intelligence
• Area 4: Fundamentals of Bioengineering
• Area 5: Quantum Information Science
• Area 6: Electronics, Photonics and Quantum Materials
• Area 7: Material Science
• Area 8: Soft Materials and Multiscale Structures
• Area 9: Other Fields of Research

White Papers are mandatory. Access to the RunGrants white paper submission portal can be found at: https://dod-basicresearch.nvision.noblis.org/program/vbff. Registration on RunGrants is mandatory and can be accomplished at the time of white paper submission, but applicants are strongly encouraged to register prior to the deadline for white paper submission. 

Recent Harvard recipients include Jennifer Lewis (SEAS, 2021, Programmable Assembly of Functional Human Tissues), Adam Cohen (CCB, 2018, Synthetic Bioelectrical Materials for Sensing, Pattern Formation, and Computation), Marcus Greiner (Physics, 2018, Many-Body Quantum Dynamics with Microscope Control - A New Research Frontier), Phillip Kim (Physics, 2018, Quantum Engineered Van Der Waals Heterostructures for Topological Electronic Structures Towards Novel Device Applications), Michael Brenner (SEAS, 2017, Theory-Driven Biomimetic Design of Novel Optical Metamaterials), Jennifer Lewis (SEAS, 2016, Programmable Architected Materials), and Hongkun Park (CCB and Physics, 2016, Nanostructured Surfaces for Integrated Optoelectronics. Plasmonics, and Quantum Optics), and Mikhail Lukin (Physics, 2015, Quantum Sensing and Metrology: Novel Methods and Applications).