Featured Opportunities

September 16, 2026

Agriculture

• The Department of Agriculture, NIFA’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Field Program requests applications to support research, extension, and integrated activities. These activities aim to increase the number of individuals from rural areas who will pursue and complete a postsecondary degree in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The goal is for these individuals to join the agricultural workforce to make contributions in research, education, extension related activities, and other areas. This STEM program will support projects that increase participation from rural areas. NIFA intends for this program to address educational needs through research and extension activities within broadly defined areas of the food and agricultural sciences and their allied disciplines. Projects must focus on an audience of K-14 students (kindergarten through twelfth grade plus two years of postsecondary schooling (e.g., vocational technical institutions or community or junior colleges). NIFA strongly encourages Project Directors to limit student stipends, tuition, or educational costs of the award to citizens, nationals, or permanent residents of the United States. This ensures grant supported training activities directly contribute to strengthening the domestic workforce pipeline. (Note the release date for this opportunity was September 4, 2026 and the due date was September 14, 2026. This opportunity is included for next-year’s planning given how short the submission window was.)
• The Agriculture and Applied Economics Association’s Sylvia Lane Mentor Fellowship provides an opportunity for early career women scholars working on food, agricultural, or resource issues to collaborate with an established expert at another university, institution, or firm. At least one (1) Fellowship of up to $2,500 will be awarded for use during the 2026 calendar year. The funding is designed to cover the costs of travel and expenses for the awardee to work directly with the mentor on a specific project. Preference will be given to new mentoring relationships as opposed to continuing an existing one.

 

Arts and Humanities

• Humanity AI, an initiative spearheaded by 10 leading philanthropies, is investing $10 million in innovative U.S.-based work, through its Open Call for Proposals: Communities Leading on AI, that supports communities’ collective power to shape how AI is built, governed, and used. There is widespread concern about AI’s impact on people’s lives, jobs, and communities. This public anxiety is rooted in the question of who gets a say in how AI is built, governed, and used to ensure that it works for the common good. They are looking for efforts where communities — from workers to artists to students and educators — are setting the agenda, not just informing it. Through this call, we are open to, and actively seeking, applicants who have not typically seen themselves as playing a role in shaping the impact of AI, whether for themselves or others. This call is focused on community-led efforts in three issue areas central to Humanity AI’s work. By community-led, we mean those most affected by the technological changes are defining the goals, shaping the approach, and driving the work. Issue areas include: Education, Labor and Economy, and Humanities, Arts and Culture.
• The Endowment for the Humanities’ Collections Stewardship program funds projects to preserve and make available physical and digital collections important for research, teaching, and public engagement in the humanities. Awards support the work of libraries, archives, and museums; colleges and universities working on collections access; and organizations that provide preservation services or educate and train students and professionals in collections stewardship.
• The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies’ (I Tatti) Fellowship in the Digital Humanities supports the work of scholars in the humanities or social sciences, librarians, archivists, and data science professionals whose research interests or practice cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries and actively employ technology in their work. Projects can address any aspect of the Italian Renaissance, broadly understood historically to include the period from the 14^thto the 17^th century, and geographically to include transnational dialogues between Italy and other cultures (e.g. Latin American, Mediterranean, African, Asian, etc.). Projects should apply digital technologies such as mapping, textual analysis, visualization, or the semantic web to topics in fields such as art and architecture, history, literature, material culture, music, philosophy, religion, and the history of science. I Tatti offers Fellows the precious time they need to pursue their studies with a minimum of obligations and interruptions together with a maximum of scholarly resources- a combination that distinguishes the Harvard Center from similar institutions. Each year, a limited number of activities organized at I Tatti are reserved for the Fellows, and they are expected to join the wider community at conferences, lectures, and concerts.
• The Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program offers in-residence opportunities for independent research and study related to Smithsonian collections, facilities, and/or research interests of the Institution and its staff. Fellowships are offered to graduate students, predoctoral students, and postdoctoral and senior investigators to conduct independent research and to utilize the resources of the Institution with members of the Smithsonian professional research staff serving as advisors and hosts. Applicants to the Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program must propose to conduct research in a discipline pursued at the Smithsonian and must submit a specific and detailed research proposal indicating why the Smithsonian is an appropriate place to carry out the study. Projects that broaden and diversify the research conducted within these disciplines are encouraged. Fellowships are offered to support research at Smithsonian facilities or field stations. Fellows are expected to spend most of their tenure in residence at the Smithsonian, except when arrangements are made for periods of fieldwork or research travel.
• The National Gallery of Art’s Senior Fellowships provide scholars with the opportunity to conduct full-time research in residence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the Gallery’s Research Institute. Fellows receive an office in the National Gallery’s East Building as well as housing, subject to availability. They have access to the notable resources of the National Gallery, including its library and art collection, as well as those of greater Washington. Fellows participate in lectures, colloquia, and discussions with the Center’s vibrant community of scholars.
• The American Antiquarian Society’s (AAS) Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship includes a manuscript review of the fellow’s work in progress. On behalf of the Hench fellow, the Society convenes a group of leading scholars to read the manuscript and provide feedback on areas where additional research is needed, as well as advice on how to reshape the dissertation for publication. This colloquium takes place during the fellow’s tenure at AAS. Scholars who are no more than three years beyond receipt of the doctorate are eligible to apply for a special year-long residential fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society to revise their dissertation for publication. Any topic relevant to the Society's library collections and programmatic scope--that is, American history and culture through 1900--is eligible. Applicants may come from such fields as history, literature, American studies, political science, art history, music history, and others relating to America in the period of the Society's coverage.
• Fellowships for Creative and Performing Artists and Writers at the American Antiquarian Society are residential fellowships for historical research by artists, writers, film makers, journalists, and other persons whose goals are to produce imaginative works dealing with pre-twentieth-century American history, literature, and culture. The fellowships will provide the recipients with the opportunity for a period of uninterrupted research, reading, and collegial discussion at the Society, located in Worcester, Massachusetts.

 

Physical and Biological Sciences

• Research Corporation for Science Advancement’s Team Science Accelerator is a two-year pilot program to help faculty adopt team science structures with the goal of amplifying impact, accelerating science, and solving big challenges. Our vision is to build a national network of early- and mid-career leaders who are proficient in team science. The Team Science Accelerator will support three to four competitively selected, interdisciplinary teams of scientists pursuing high-risk, high-reward basic research across the physical sciences and their adjacent fields and subdisciplines. The Team Science Accelerator will provide each successful team with up to $1 million (total cost) over two years to catalyze the effort. Teams will also receive the support systems needed to enhance team performance, including facilitated workshops, mentoring from discipline-based team science experts, and professional team coaching.
• The Department of Health and Human Services, NIH’s Semantic Precision for AI Retrieval of Knowledge (SPARK) PubMed/PMC Challenge aims to advance the biomedical data and tools of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Library of Medicine (NLM), making these resources high-quality, trusted, and widely used for public benefit. NIH/NLM encourages broad use of the resources it generates and treats data shared through its mechanisms as a common foundation for open discovery, freely available for everyone to build upon. Specifically, the volume of biomedical literature reporting the results and conclusions from research endeavors continues to grow exponentially. NLM resources, such as PubMed and PubMed Central (PMC), now index and disseminate tens of millions of abstracts and full-text articles. While this expanding body of literature represents an unparalleled scientific asset, it frequently leaves researchers overwhelmed by the sheer volume and structural complexity of search results, even using the advanced keyword search options. Accordingly, the NIH invites AI-driven solutions capable of intelligent, context-aware, and impact-oriented discovery of biomedical literature within PubMed and PMC. The overarching objective is to move beyond rigid, keyword-based retrieval toward systems that understand scientific meaning, prioritize robust evidence, and accelerate cross-disciplinary scientific discovery.
• To address the limitations in technological development and adoption of quantum-enabled technologies to solve translational biomedical problems, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health (NIH), is announcing the NIH Quantum Computing Challenge, one of two parallel Prize Challenges for the NIH Quantum Biomedical Innovations and Technologies (Qu-BIT) Program, by inviting innovative design solutions to identify and propose novel applications of existing quantum computing approaches to apply toward use cases within clinical, translational, and biomedical problem areas. The three areas of interest for the current Challenge include: 1) Quantum Algorithms for Drug Discovery; 2) Quantum Algorithms for Clinical Risk Predictions, Diagnosis, and Therapeutic; 3) Quantum Algorithms for Biomedical Imaging and Genomic Data Analysis. This Challenge will have two stages: Ideation and Planning followed by Quantum Algorithm Development, and Implementation on Quantum Hardware.
• The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Alternative Fuels and Feedstocks Office (AFFO) announced up to $58 million in funding to advance novel, high-impact chemical technologies that use domestically sourced alternative and waste feedstocks. Projects funded through this initiative will advance new methods of chemical production that maximize the use of America’s vast biomass and waste resources. This funding supports President Trump’s Executive Order, Unleashing American Energy, which calls for targeted federal investment in technology innovation that strengthens the U.S. chemical sector. The Accelerating Scale-up and Pre-piloting of Emerging Chemical Technologies (ASPECT) funding opportunity promotes the development and commercialization of chemical technologies that lower costs, enhance performance, reduce reliance on imports, and unlock strong market growth potential. ASPECT seeks to reduce time to market by moving projects from laboratory research to pre-pilot scale testing with two primary topic areas, BENCH ASPECT and Pre-pilot ASPECT.
• The Department of Defense, Air Force Office of Scientific Research manages the basic research investment for the Department of the Air Force. Conferences and Workshops constitute key forums for research and technology interchange. This office through its Air Force Basic Research Sciences Conferences and Work Shop Support program, provides partial support for conferences and workshops as defined in the DoW Joint Travel Regulations in special areas of science that bring experts together to discuss recent research or educational findings, or to expose other researchers or advanced graduate students to new research and educational techniques in our areas of research interest. Our research interests are described in the most recent version of our general Broad Agency Announcement titled, “Research Interests of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research” posted on Grants.gov.
• The NCI Office of Data Sharing (ODS), within the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health (NIH), is pleased to announce the NCI Office of Data Sharing Impact Prize. ODS serves as NCI's central coordinating office for data management and sharing policy implementation, supporting all 27 NCI Divisions, Offices, and Centers (DOCs) across the full scope of NCI's extramural and intramural research portfolio to increase the utility of NCI-funded research outputs. ODS works in partnership with NCI’s DOCs to ensure that the outputs of their research investments are managed, shared, and made useful to the widest possible audience. In that role, ODS is uniquely positioned to see where promising work is already underway, where gaps in practice persist, and where the highest-value opportunities for future investment lie (read more about the ODS mission and activities in this publication.
• The Department of Defense, DARPA’s Agency-Wide Announcement aims to strengthen the DARPA Program Manager (PM) community by engaging academic researchers capable of addressing DARPA's hard problems. PMs that are passionate about tackling the most complex technical challenges, pushing the boundaries of science and technology, and shaping the future of defense and innovation. Together, through this effort, we will pioneer revolutionary solutions, foster interdisciplinary collaboration, and empower the brightest minds to make the impossible possible. This opportunity also seeks to fund the independent research ideas of these passionate researchers. This opportunity includes research thrust areas in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office, the Defense Sciences Office, the Information Processing Techniques Office, the Multi X Office, and the Tactical Technologies Office.
• The Department of Defense, Air Force Office of Scientific Research’s (AFSOR) Fiscal Year 2027 Air Force Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) intends to support individual early career scientists and engineers who have received their Ph.D. or equivalent degrees by 01 April 2019 or later showing exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research. The program objective is to foster creative basic research in science and engineering; enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators; and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the Air Force and Space Force mission and related challenges in science and engineering.

 

Social Sciences

• The Princeton University, Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is accepting applications for its IAS Social Science Fellowships. This year’s them is Understanding AI. IAS invites scholars from across the social sciences—anthropology, sociology, political science, law, economics, history, and related fields—to study the uses and implications of AI. What does it mean to be a person, a citizen, a worker, a rights-holder when algorithmic systems increasingly mediate social life? What narratives and imaginaries accompany AI, and how do they authorize particular futures while foreclosing others? How have different historical periods, world regions, and intellectual traditions approached questions of artificial intelligence and human agency? How does the development and deployment of AI intersect with the concentration of capital, geopolitical competition, and the infrastructures of war and empire? Applications are invited for projects that engage these themes across a range of cases, contexts, and methods. Because the questions at stake exceed any single research agenda, collaborative work is integral to the seminar, and applicants should be prepared to engage this dimension of the work. This opportunity is open to junior and senior scholars in the social sciences and related disciplines.
• The Russell Sage Foundation’s Future of Work program examines the causes and consequences of the deteriorating quality of low-wage jobs in the United States. Projects sponsored by the program have examined a wide range of causal factors, from foreign outsourcing and immigration to the decline of unions and technological change, that may have depressed wages of low-education workers. Current research under this program includes a new investigation to re-assess how minimum wage increases affect employment and the broader labor market; a new study of the extent of offshoring of production by U.S. firms and its impact on the economy; and a project that examines the role of job search behaviors on the employment and wage outcomes of women and minorities in the post-recessionary U.S. labor market, among others.
• The Russell Sage Foundation’s Social, Political, and Economic Inequality program focuses on the causes and consequences of social, political, and economic inequalities in the U.S. The program examines the factors that contribute to social, political, and economic inequalities in the U.S., and the extent to which those inequalities affect social, political, psychological, and economic outcomes such as educational and labor market access and opportunities, social and economic mobility within and across generations, and civic participation and representation. Launched in 2001 as the Social Inequality program, it was renamed in November 2018 to better reflect the foundation’s research interests in a broad range of inequalities and their consequences.