Questions about any of the funding opportunities listed below can be addressed to research_development@fas.harvard.edu.
Internal Opportunities
See list of recurring internal funding opportunities.
- Star-Friedman Challenge for Promising Scientific Research
- Dean’s Competitive Fund (DCF) for Promising Scholarship
- Salata Climate Research Clusters Program
Limited Submission Opportunities
- DOE Data Reduction for Science
- DOE Accelerated Research in Quantum Computing
- NSF Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE)
External Opportunities
- NSF Responsible Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies (ReDDDoT)
- NIH Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Project Grant (R01)
Internal Opportunities
See list of recurring internal funding opportunities.
Star-Friedman Challenge for Promising Scientific Research
Deadline: February 15, 2024
Award Amount: $80,000-$150,000
The Star-Friedman Challenge for Promising Scientific Research invites eligible faculty members to apply for seed funding for work within the life, physical, and social sciences in their research programs. Projects that take the investigators in directions that are new for them are encouraged. Ladder faculty members from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (The Harvard Chan School), Harvard Medical School (HMS), Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM), and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) are eligible to submit single- or multi-investigator proposals for consideration.
The Star-Friedman Challenge for Promising Scientific Research aims to fund cutting-edge scientific projects that may not receive support through traditional funding channels. With a focus on novel work and new directions, Challenge grants will ordinarily range from $80,000-$150,000. In truly exceptional circumstances, larger awards can be considered.
A review committee of tenured faculty members from the participating Schools will select award recipients, who are then invited to refine their projects and discuss their ideas with the Harvard community at a Challenge event in Spring 2024. The committee will be looking to fund projects that can attain demonstrable results within one year. Longer-term projects should provide milestones of success for assessment upon a one-year review.
Spring 2024 Dean’s Competitive Fund (DCF) for Promising Scholarship
This fund is a targeted program that provides funding of up to $75,000 in the following categories:
- Bridge funding, to allow faculty to continue work on previously funded research, scholarship, or creative activity that does not currently have external funding. Faculty who apply in this category should demonstrate that efforts have been made or will be made to obtain new external funding.
- Seed funding, to encourage faculty to launch exciting new scholarship or research directions that might not yet be ready to compete in traditional funding programs.
- Enabling subventions, to provide small funds to purchase (or upgrade) critical equipment. Applicants for such funds must have no existing startup funds on which they could draw for this purpose.
To submit an application and learn more about this opportunity, please visit the Dean’s Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship website.
This program is open to FAS and SEAS assistant, associate, and tenured faculty; professors in residence and professors of the practice are also eligible. Applications will be accepted through March 15, 2024.
Salata Institute Climate Research Clusters Program
Concept Proposal Deadline: April 1, 2024
Award Amount: up to $600,000 per year, for a period of up to three years
The purpose of the Climate Research Clusters Program is to produce useful and impactful solutions to climate problems. Research clusters are intended to be ambitious, interdisciplinary, cross-School efforts to take on climate problems that are narrow enough to ensure that concrete solutions emerge, but broad enough that the solutions represent significant progress in meeting the world’s climate challenge.
Research clusters will comprise Harvard faculty, post-docs, and students, and they may include visiting scholars, practitioners, and external collaborators. An accepted and launched Climate Research Cluster must have co-PIs representing at least two Schools, and ideally the Cluster ought to span multiple disciplines. Preliminary concept proposals do not need to have co-PIs from multiple Schools but should explain what other School(s) and other disciplinary area(s) could be part of the Cluster. Cluster activities should include external engagement, for example, through conferences and/or convenings. The final result should be a concrete proposal or proposals to address an aspect of the climate crisis based on the new knowledge that the research cluster produces.
The Salata Institute has created a consultative process to facilitate the development of strong proposals to the Climate Research Clusters Program. The Salata Institute’s Research Committee will engage with first-round proposers to explore collaboration across other proposed clusters, and, if necessary, to modify the scope of the proposal. The process may yield a revised proposal (step 2). From these revised proposals, a small number of clusters will be invited to prepare a detailed proposal (step 3).
This process includes Q&A sessions, a networking reception, presentations of proposed projects, and consultations with prospective project teams. See the list below for dates and RSVP links. While they encourage engagement, participation in these events is optional.
- Q&A Session 1: February 16, 2024, 12–1 PM. Marc Heng Conference Room, Wexner 102, Harvard Kennedy School. RSVP here.
- Q&A Session 2: March 8, 2024, 1 – 2 PM. Harvard University Center for the Environment, 26 Oxford St., 4th Floor: MCZ 440. RSVP here.
- Project Presentations & Networking Event: April 26, 2024. Details to be announced.
To learn more and to apply for funding from the Climate Research Clusters program, use the link above. Please refer to their FAQ page for answers to frequently asked questions.
Interested researchers should also consider the Salata Institute Seed Grant Program in Climate and Sustainability. Proposals for this program, which awards a maximum of $25,000 for multiple categories, will be considered three times per year, with deadlines of the second Friday of January, May, and September.
Questions from FAS or SEAS faculty about these opportunities may be directed to research_development@fas.harvard.edu.
Limited Submission Opportunities
For upcoming competitions, see our list of annually recurring limited submission opportunities.
DOE Data Reduction for Science
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: February 14, 2024
Sponsor Pre-Application Deadline (required, if nominated): March 19, 2024
OSP Deadline (if nominated): April 30, 2024. Departments or areas may require additional time for proposal review and submission. Please discuss a timeline with your grants administrator.
Sponsor Deadline (if nominated): May 7, 2024
Award Amount: $150,000 to $400,000 per year for three years
The DOE SC program in Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) is accepting research applications that explore potentially high-impact approaches in the development and use of data reduction techniques and algorithms to facilitate more efficient analysis and use of massive data sets produced by observations, experiments, and simulation.
Of necessity, many research groups have already begun reducing the size of their data sets via techniques such as compression, reduced order models, experiment-specific triggers, filtering, and feature extraction. Once reduced in size, transporting, storing, and analyzing the data is still a considerable challenge. Further efforts should continue to increase the level of mathematical rigor in scientific data reduction to ensure that scientifically relevant constraints on quantities of interest are satisfied, that methods can be integrated into scientific workflows, and that methods are implemented in a manner that inspires trust that the desired information is preserved.
The DOE's four priority research directions are (1) effective algorithms and tools that can be trusted by scientists for accuracy and efficiency, (2) progressive reduction algorithms that enable data to be prioritized for efficient streaming, (3) algorithms that can preserve information in features and quantities of interest with quantified uncertainty, and (4) mapping techniques to new architectures and use cases. Proposed research should not focus only on particular data sets from specific applications, but rather on creating the body of knowledge and understanding that will inform future scientific advances. Consequently, funding from this opportunity is not intended to incrementally extend current research in the area of the proposed project. Rather, the proposed projects must reflect viable strategies toward the potential solution of challenging problems in data reduction for science.
This is a limited submission opportunity and Harvard may only submit two pre-applications and two applications as the lead institution. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research will conduct an internal competition to select Harvard’s nominees. To be considered for a Harvard nomination, potential applicants must submit an internal pre-proposal by 11:59 PM on February 14, 2024, via the link above.
DOE Accelerated Research in Quantum Computing
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: February 20, 2024 at 10 AM
OSP Deadline, if nominated: March 6, 2024. Departments or areas may require additional time for proposal review and submission. Please discuss a timeline with your grants administrator.
Sponsor Pre-Application Deadline, if nominated: March 13, 2024
Sponsor Application Submission Deadline, if encouraged: May 8, 2024
Award Amount: $250,000 to $3,000,000 per year for 5 years.
The DOE Office of Science (SC) program in Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) announced its interest in receiving applications that advance the field of quantum computing by developing enabling end-to-end software infrastructures. This announcement solicits applications from large cross-disciplinary teams that will advance computer science toward a software stack that is ready to leverage multiple quantum technologies, or will develop mathematical foundations, algorithms, and software tools toward quantum utility demonstration for applications within the DOE mission.
This announcement targets several priority research directions: end-to-end software toolchains to program and control quantum systems and networks at scale, quantum algorithms delivering quantum advantage, and resilience through error detection, prevention, protection, mitigation, and correction. These are key components for the development of a software ecosystem that must be ready to account for modularity and interoperability on one side and for specialization and performance on another. Research proposed in response to this announcement must primarily focus on addressing one of the two topics described below:
- Addresses practical and fundamental bottlenecks that hinder modularity and potential synergy among selected hardware technologies;
- Pursues general approaches to integration that may remain relevant for future technologies;
- Devises ways to embed quantum processors in parallel and distributed computing models; and
- Integrates error management across the software stack.
- Choose generalizable application-inspired target problems;
- Develop algorithms for optimized math kernels and math primitives for selected current (NISQ) and future quantum systems that significantly advance state-of-the-art performance for the selected target problems;
- Adapt, if needed, any level of the software stack for the specific target problems; and
- Estimate quantum resources by employing important complementary metrics, including energy-to-solution.
This is a limited submission opportunity and Harvard, as a single institution, is limited to submitting up to three Pre-Applications (required), and if encouraged, up to three full proposals. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research will conduct an internal competition to select Harvard’s nominees. To be considered for a Harvard nomination, potential applicants must submit an internal pre-proposal by 10:00 AM on February 20, 2024, via the link above. Please note that there is no limitation to Harvard appearing in an application when not the lead.
NSF Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE)
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: February 26, 2024 at 9 AM EST
OSP Deadline, if nominated: April 15, 2024. Departments or areas may require additional time for proposal review and submission. Please discuss a timeline with your grants administrator.
Sponsor Deadline, if nominated: April 22, 2024
Award Amount:
Track 1: $300,000 to $500,000 for up to three years
Track 2: up to $1,000,000 over three to five years
Innovation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduate education is vital to meet the needs of science and society in the 21st century. The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, and potentially transformative approaches to STEM graduate education training. The program supports piloting, testing, and validating novel models or activities and examining systemic innovations with high potential to enrich and extend the knowledge base on effective graduate education approaches.
The program addresses both workforce development, emphasizing broad participation, and institutional capacity-building needs in graduate education. Strategic collaborations with the private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government agencies, national laboratories, field stations, teaching and learning centers, informal science organizations, and academic partners are encouraged.
The IGE program will support proposals in two tracks:
This is a limited submission opportunity and Harvard may only submit two proposals in response to this call under the following participation arrangements:
- Lead organization on a non-collaborative proposal,
- Co-lead on a collaborative proposal, or
- As non-lead or sub-awardee on a collaborative proposal.
External Funding
NSF Responsible Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies (ReDDDoT)
OSP Deadlines: Departments or areas may require additional time for proposal review and submission. Please discuss a timeline with your grants administrator.
Phase 1: April 1, 2024.
Phase 2: April 15, 2024.
Sponsor Deadlines:
Phase 1: April 8, 2024. Planning Grants, Translational Research Coordination Networks, Workshops
Phase 2: April 22, 2024. Project proposals
Award Amount:
Phase 1: Planning Grants: up to $300,000 for no more than 2 years.
Translational Research Coordination Networks: up to
$500,000 each for 3 to 4 years.
Workshops: up to $75,000 each for up to one year.
Phase 2: Project Proposals: $750,000 to $1,500,000 for 3 years.
The Responsible Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies (ReDDDoT) program invites proposals from multidisciplinary, multi-sector teams that examine and demonstrate the principles, methodologies, implementations, and impacts associated with responsible design, development, and deployment of technologies in practice.
In FY 2024, the Planning Grant, Translational Research Coordination Network, and Phase 2 Project proposals should all focus on one or more of the following three technology areas: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, or natural and anthropogenic disaster prevention or mitigation including, but not limited to, climate change mitigation and environmental sustainability. Projects that cover multiple of these priority areas, and/or include other areas in addition to one or more of the priority areas are also welcome. Workshop proposals, on the other hand, may choose foci from the full range of key technology areas and national, societal, and geostrategic challenges described in Section 10387 of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.
The broad goals of the ReDDDoT program include:
- Stimulating activity and filling gaps in research, innovation, and capacity building in the responsible design, development, and deployment of technologies;
- Creating broad and inclusive communities of interest that bring together key stakeholders to better inform practices for the design, development, and deployment of technologies;
- Educating and training the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce on approaches to responsible design, development, and deployment of technologies;
- Accelerating pathways to societal and economic benefits while developing strategies to avoid or mitigate societal and economic harms; and
- Empowering communities, including economically disadvantaged and marginalized populations, to participate in all stages of technology development, including the earliest stages of ideation and design.
A key goal of the program is to support and strengthen collaborations across disciplines and sectors, for example, academia, industry, and non-profits. The program also aims to ensure that ethical, legal, and societal considerations and community values are embedded across technology lifecycles to generate products that promote the public’s well-being and mitigate harm.
In FY 2024, the ReDDDoT program has two deadline dates, one for Phase 1 proposals and the other for Phase 2 proposals.
- Phase 1: Planning Grant, Translational Research Coordination Network, and Workshop Proposals. The objectives for proposals in Phase 1 should be around building transdisciplinary and multi-sector communities and collaborations to explore and prepare for work focusing on the key ReDDDoT program goals.
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Phase 2: Project Proposals. The Phase 2 opportunity is intended for projects with an established track record in the priority areas with teams that have experience in use-inspired and translational activities in responsible design, development, and deployment. Projects covering multiple priority areas and/or including other areas in addition to the priority areas are welcome.
Informational Webinar: The ReDDDoT program is hosting an informational webinar on Friday, February 9, 2024, at 2 PM ET to provide a program overview and answer questions about the funding opportunity. Register for the webinar here.
Office Hours: The ReDDDoT program manager will also host a virtual office hour session onFriday, February 16, 2024, at 2 PM ET to answer questions about the funding opportunity and the proposal submission process. Following the Q&A portion, there will be track/topic-specific breakout sessions – for ReDDDoT, the tracks are AI, biotech, and natural and anthropogenic disaster prevention or mitigation. Register for the virtual office hour session here.
NIH Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Project Grant (R01)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to sponsor deadline. Departments or areas may require additional time for proposal review and submission. Please discuss a timeline with your grants administrator.
Sponsor Deadlines in 2024: January 26, May 29, and September 26
Award Amount: Application budgets are not limited but must reflect the proposed project's actual needs. The maximum project period is 5 years.
Eligibility: Early Stage Investigators. These are Principal Investigators (PIs) who have completed their terminal research degree or end of post-graduate clinical training, whichever date is later, within the past 10 years and who have not previously competed successfully as PI for a substantial NIH independent research award.
The purpose of the Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Project Grant is to provide a new pathway for Early Stage Investigators (ESIs) who wish to propose research projects in a new direction for which preliminary data do not exist. These awards are open to a broad range of scientific research relevant to the mission of the participating NIH Institutes and Centers. Proposed projects must represent a change in research direction for the ESI and should be innovative and unique. A distinct feature of this award is that applications must not include preliminary data.
There are two NOFOs (Notices of Funding Opportunity) for this award:
- PAR-24-075: Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Project Grant (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
- PAR-24-076: Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Project Grant (R01 Basic Experimental Studies with Human Required)
This award is appropriate for ESIs who wish to initiate a research project in an area different from their previous research focus and/or training experience, and therefore have not produced preliminary data. Proposed research projects can rely on the PI’s prior work and expertise as its foundation, but must not be an incremental advancement, expansion, or extension of a previous research effort. The change in research direction could involve, for example, a new approach, methodology, technique, discipline, therapeutic target, and/or new paradigm, different from the ESI’s previous research efforts. Because a change in research direction is heavily dependent upon the area of investigation, potential applicants are strongly encouraged to contact a program director to discuss their proposed project. If the application proposes multiple Principal Investigators (MPIs), all PIs must be ESIs and the research direction must be a change in research direction for all MPIs.
Additional deadlines for this opportunity are January 28, May 28, and September 26, 2025, and January 27, May 27, and September 28, 2026.