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External Funding Opportunities

The Research Development Office (RDO) strives to identify external funding opportunities that may be of interest to the NC State research community. New opportunities will be added to this page as they are identified and announced through our funding listserv.

Current Funding Opportunities

A selection of key opportunities is listed by agency below. Please view the agency website for each opportunity for additional information.

Department of Defense (DOD)

The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) has issued a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for various research and development topic areas including but not limited to hydraulics, dredging, coastal engineering, instrumentation, oceanography, remote sensing, geotechnical engineering, earthquake engineering, soil effects, vehicle mobility, self-contained munitions, military engineering, geophysics, pavements, protective structures, aquatic plants, water quality, dredged material, treatment of hazardous waste, wetlands, physical/mechanical/ chemical properties of snow and other frozen precipitation, infrastructure and environmental issues for installations, computer science, telecommunications management, energy, facilities maintenance, materials and structures, engineering processes, environmental processes, land and heritage conservation, and ecological processes. 

Closing date: Rolling

ONR seeks a broad range of applications for augmenting existing and/or developing innovative solutions that directly maintain and/or cultivate a diverse, world-class Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workforce to maintain the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ technological superiority. The goal of proposed efforts must provide solutions that establish, build, and/or maintain STEM educational pathways and workforce opportunities for diverse U.S. citizens directly relevant to ONR science and technology areas. Project scope may range in size and complexity. While not a formal requirement or program focus of this FOA, applicants are strongly encouraged to consider under-represented and under-served populations including women and minorities in project plans. Special audience priority areas may include, but not be limited to, military connected students, veteran initiatives, and education systems integral to naval science and technology.

Closing date: 3/31/2023

DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office is accepting proposals for cutting-edge research in the areas of human performance; materials, sensors, and processing; ecosystem and environmental science; biosecurity, biodefense, and biosafety; and biomedical and biodefense.
 
Full proposal deadline: 4/20/2023 

Department of Energy (DOE)

The Office of Science (SC) of the Department of Energy (DOE) hereby announces its continuing interest in receiving grant applications for support of work in the following program areas: Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Basic Energy Sciences, Biological and Environmental Research, Fusion Energy Sciences, High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics, Isotope R&D and Production, and Accelerator R&D and Production. See the RFP for full details regarding each program area.
 
Closing date:
 9/30/2022

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

NIBIB, NCI, NIA, and NEI solicit applications from research partnerships formed by academic and industrial investigators to accelerate the development and adoption of promising bioengineering tools and technologies that can address important biomedical problems. The objectives are to establish these tools and technologies as robust, well-characterized solutions that fulfill an unmet need and are capable of enhancing our understanding of life science processes or the practice of medicine. Awards will focus on supporting multidisciplinary teams that apply an integrative, quantitative bioengineering approach to developing technologies. The goal of the program is to support technological innovations that deliver new capabilities which can realize meaningful solutions within 5 – 10 years.

Application deadlines: 5/26/2022, 9/26/2022, 5/26/2023, 9/26/2023, 5/24/2024, 9/26/2024

The Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science (CEGS) program establishes academic Centers for advanced genome research. Each CEGS award supports a multi-investigator, interdisciplinary team to develop integrated, transformative genomic approaches to address a biomedical problem. A CEGS project will address a critical issue in genomic science, genomic medicine, or computational genomics, proposing a highly innovative solution that would be a major advance. The research will entail substantial risk, balanced by outstanding scientific and management plans and very high potential payoff. A CEGS will focus on the development of novel technological or computational methods for the production or analysis of comprehensive data sets, on a genome-scale biomedical problem, or on other ways to develop and use genomic approaches for understanding biological systems or furthering the application of genomic knowledge, data, and methods towards clinical applications. Each CEGS will nurture genomics by facilitating the interaction of investigators from several disciplines. Along with its scientific goals, CEGS will also expand the pool of genomic scientists and engineers that can use and apply the novel methods, concepts, and knowledge developed by the CEGS by providing education and outreach experiences to scientists at all career levels.

Application deadlines: 6/22/2022, 6/22/2023, 6/21/2024

The goal of the Innovative Programs to Enhance Research Training (IPERT) initiative is to enable the scientific community to develop and implement innovative educational activities to equip diverse cohorts of participants with technical, operational or professional skills required for careers in the biomedical research workforce. 

Application due dates: 10/14/2022, 10/13/2023

The NIH Director’s Pioneer Award Program supports individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose highly innovative research projects with the potential to produce a major impact on broad, important areas relevant to the mission of NIH. For the program to support the best possible researchers and research, applications are sought which reflect the full diversity of the nation’s research workforce. In addition, applications in all topics relevant to the broad mission of NIH are welcome, including, but not limited to, topics in the behavioral, social, biomedical, applied, and formal sciences and topics that may involve basic, translational, or clinical research. To be considered pioneering, the proposed research must reflect substantially different scientific directions from those already being pursued in the investigator’s research program or elsewhere

Application deadline: 9/9/2022

National Science Foundation (NSF)

The Operations Engineering (OE) program supports fundamental research on advanced analytical methods for improving operations in complex decision-driven environments.  Analytical methods include, but are not limited to, deterministic and stochastic modeling, optimization, decision and risk analysis, data science, and simulation.  Methodological research is highly encouraged but must be motivated by problems that have potential for high impact in engineering applications.  Application domains of particular interest to the program arise in commercial enterprises (e.g., production/manufacturing systems and distribution of goods, delivery of services), the public sector/government (e.g., public safety and security), and public/private partnerships (e.g., health care, environment and energy).  The program also welcomes operations research in new and emerging domains and addressing systemic societal or technological problems.  The OE program particularly values cross-disciplinary proposals that leverage application-specific expertise with strong quantitative analysis in a decision-making context.

Full proposal deadline: full proposals accepted anytime

The Science and Technology Studies (STS) program supports research that uses historical, philosophical, and social scientific methods to investigate the intellectual, material, and social facets of the scientific, technological, engineering and mathematical (STEM) disciplines. It encompasses a broad spectrum of topics including interdisciplinary studies of ethics, equity, governance, and policy issues that are closely related to STEM disciplines.

Full proposal deadline: 8/3/2022

The Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Computing in Undergraduate Education (IUSE: CUE) program aims to better prepare a wider, more diverse range of students to collaboratively use computation across a range of contexts and challenging problems. With this solicitation, the National Science Foundation focuses on re-envisioning how to teach computing effectively to a broad group of students, in a scalable manner, with an emphasis on broadening participation of groups who are underrepresented and underserved by traditional computing courses and careers. These groups may include women, persons with disabilities, Blacks and African Americans, Hispanics and Latinos, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Other Pacific Islanders.

Full proposal deadline: 8/18/2022

North Carolina Biotechnology Center (NC Biotech)

NC Biotech has posted the FY2022 deadlines for the programs listed below:

Flash Grant
Innovation Impact Grant (IIG)
Translational Research Grant (TRG)

Foundation and Nonprofit Opportunities

Various funding opportunities are available from foundation and nonprofit grant makers.

NC State’s funding opportunity database, InfoEd Spin, is the best starting point for identifying opportunities. Using the advanced search option, you may restrict sponsor type to foundations and nonprofit organizations while searching for opportunities in your area of interest.

W.M. Keck Foundation

NC State runs an annual internal competition for the Keck Foundation’s Research Program. This is a limited submission opportunity that elicits significant interest from NC State faculty.

The program seeks to benefit humanity by supporting 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.

Still looking for other opportunities?

You can search for additional opportunities of interest using InfoEd SPIN — a large research funding database that the NC State research community can access through a UNC System-wide subscription.

You can also browse other announcements from some of the following major funding agencies:

Funding AgencyType of Agency
Army Research Office (ARO)Federal
Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)Federal
Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP)Federal
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)Federal
DOE: National Energy Techology Lab (NETL)Federal
NIH (Weekly Index - all institutes)Federal
EPA: National Center for Environmental Research (NCER)Federal
DOJ: Office of Justice ProgramsFederal
NC Biotechnology CenterLocal
Institute of Education SciencesFederal
NASA: NSPIRESFederal
DOE: Energy Efficiency and Renewable EnergyFederal
National Science Foundation (NSF)Federal
DOE: Office of ScienceFederal
Office of Naval ResearchFederal
NC Science and Technology Board: Energy Cost-share programState
USDA: National Institute of Food and AgricultureFederal