Featured Opportunities

February 12, 2025

• • Cargill is looking for cocoa butter alternatives usable in combination with cocoa butter or as a full substitute. Ideal solutions would mirror the structure of cocoa butter, specifically symmetric di-saturated triglycerides (SUS type: Saturated-Unsaturated-Saturated). However, we are also open to considering other structures that would lead to a steep melting profile, such as those found in certain lauric oils, like palm kernel stearin. While current alternatives derived from palm mid fraction and shea butter perform relatively well in replicating the functional properties of cocoa butter, these sources are produced predominantly in tropical regions far from major confectionery markets, which not only increases the carbon footprint associated with long-distance transport but also exposes supply chains to potential disruptions. Addressing these challenges with a regional supply approach that reduces CO2 emissions while ensuring more resilient and sustainable sourcing is a key driver behind this request for proposals.
  • The Kansas Grain Sorghum Commission is requesting proposals in three areas. First--Markets and Value--Market oriented projects shall address one of the following: diversification of end-uses, identify and define differentiated value for sorghum, or develop high-value, specialty markets. All investments must address barriers to commercial impact including feasibility of the technology, and the production and adoption of the technology. Second--Emerging Management and Agronomy--Respond and provide management guidance regarding emerging management questions. Specialists in the fields of agronomy, physiology, soil fertility, irrigation, grain quality, entomology, weed science, and pathology are encouraged to develop proposals that address emerging management questions of priority to Kansas sorghum growers. Third--Transformational Breakthroughs--Can you re-think sorghum? Innovations that transform the value or productivity of sorghum are invited. Proposals presenting breakthrough ideas shall clearly distinguish from incremental improvements of sorghum. The transformational idea must be aligned with a disciplined scientific approach, including testable hypotheses, milestones for evaluation, and reasonable timelines. Funding is also available for projects to generate a proof-of-concept scope to leverage for future grant funding requests.
  • The American Antiquarian Society/National Endowment for the Humanities (AAS-NEH) Long-Term Fellowships are tenable for four to twelve months each year. These fellowships offer splendid opportunities for collegiality with and mentoring from the staff, other visiting fellows, and the academic community in and near Worcester, Massachusetts. AAS-NEH fellows are expected to be in regular and continuous residence at the Society. They must devote full time to their study and may not accept teaching assignments or undertake any other major activities during the tenure of their award. Fellows may hold other major fellowships or grants during fellowship tenure, in addition to sabbaticals and supplemental grants from their own institutions. Other NEH-funded grants may be held serially, but not concurrently.
  • 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. This program began in 1995 with a grant to AAS from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. Fellowship projects may include (but are not limited to): historical novels, performance of historical music or drama, poetry, documentary films, television programs, podcasts, plays and libretti, screenplays, magazine or newspaper articles, costume designs, set designs, illustrations and other graphic arts, book designs, sculpture, paintings, other works of fine and applied art, non-fiction works of history designed for general audiences of adults or children, and choreography.
  • The Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Form’s (ACSF) Lindsay Jones Memorial Research Fund (LJMRF) was established in 2021 through a generous gift from the late Lindsay Jones. Lindsay was a groundbreaking scholar of Mesoamerican architecture. This program funds research on the meaning and significance of the built environment. The LJMRF is intended as seed funding to support long-term scholarly agendas. The ACSF encourages applicants and proposals from a range of built environment disciplines (e.g., architecture, landscape architecture, sacred arts, urbanism, interior design, environmental psychology, material culture, phenomenology, etc.). Project proposals should identify one of the four principal areas of the fund: scholarly research, practice, service, or teaching. Successful applications might propose projects in a range of venues and media including, but not limited to, scholarly writing, film or other broadcast media, built works or projects, community engagement programs, or educational innovation.We are especially interested in projects that advance the ACSF Mission and its vision that the design and experience of the built environment can assist in the spiritual development of humanity in service of addressing the world’s most pressing problems.
  • The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Collaborations in Artificial Intelligence and Geosciences (CAIG) program seeks to advance the development and adoption of innovative artificial intelligence (AI) methods to increase scientific understanding of the Earth system. The program supports projects that advance AI techniques and/or innovative uses of sophisticated or novel AI methods to enable significant breakthroughs in addressing geoscience research question(s) by building partnerships between experts in AI and Geosciences. The key characteristic of a CAIG project is its potential to both answer important geoscience questions and improve AI techniques while also bringing together experts from both the AI and geoscience fields.
  • The National Academy of Medicine’s (NAM) Catalyst Awards—part of the broader Healthy Longevity Global Competition—reward bold, new, potentially transformative ideas to improve the physical, mental, or social well-being and health of people as they age. The NAM is currently seeking bold, new, and innovative ideas that aim to extend the human healthspan (i.e., the number of years lived in good health), especially approaches that challenge existing paradigms or propose new methodologies or concepts. High-risk ideas that could potentially yield high rewards and, in turn, dramatically change the field of healthy longevity are encouraged. Ideas may focus on any stage of life, as long as they ultimately promote health, functioning, meaning, purpose and/or dignity as people age. Applications may also originate from any field or combination of fields (e.g., biology, chemistry, medicine, engineering, behavioral and social sciences, technology, data science, and policy).
  • NSF’s Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) plan to jointly support foundational mathematical and statistical research on Digital Twins in applied sciences. Recent years have witnessed a significant increase in the demand and interest in applications that involve collaborative teams developing and analyzing Digital Twins to support decision making in various fields, including science, engineering, medicine, urban planning, and more. Both agencies recognize the need to promote research aiming to stimulate an interplay between mathematics/statistics/computation and practical applications in the realm of Digital Twins.  This program encourages new collaborative efforts within the realm of Digital Twins, aiming at stimulating fundamental research innovation, pushing, and expanding the boundaries of knowledge, and exploring new frontiers in mathematics and computation for Digital Twin development, and its applications.  By leveraging this synergy, the program aims to harness science, technology, and innovation to address some of our Society’s most pressing challenges.
  • A long-standing interest of the Huo Family Foundation (HFF) has been the effect and impact of usage of digital technology on young people. The rapid rise and use of this technology has permeated much of society and transformed the way many humans interact. HFF invites applications for special projects in this area. These larger and longer-term research awards would allow researchers of all career stages, collaborating as a multi-disciplinary team with different expertise and skills, to take an integrated approach to tackle the more difficult questions in this domain. Proposals should be tackling key questions within the broad topic of the effects of usage of and exposure to digital technologies on brain development and function (including physiological responses), social behaviour and interactions, and mental health of children and young people. Awarded research grants in this area can be held at colleges, universities and research institutes in the UK and in the US. They are keen to support multi-disciplinary work. These teams may consist of several group leaders from one institution, or different institutions in the UK and the US. This is a limited submission. If you are interested in applying, you must notify (working title, team lists, 2-3 sentence synopsis) the Office of Research Development by 5 pm March 15, 2025 via ordlimitedsubs@ksu.edu.
  • This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the Foundational Science Research Unit (FSRU) of the Department of Defense, Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) solicits new proposals for its fiscal year 2026 program of basic research in behavioral and social science. ARI is the Army’s lead agency for the conduct of research, development, and analyses for the improvement of Army readiness and performance via research advances and applications of the behavioral and social sciences that address personnel, organization, and Soldier and leader development issues. The mission of the Basic Research Program is to execute high-risk, high-reward foundational research to develop state-of-the-art theory, methods, and models to create the innovative concepts required to support the Army’s future capabilities and needs related to personnel readiness. ARI strongly encourages applicants to propose novel, state-of-the-art, and multidisciplinary approaches that address the stated high-priority research questions. A key consideration in the decision to support a research proposal is that its findings are likely to stimulate new, basic behavioral research, which in turn, will lead to improved performance of Army personnel and their units. ARI will not support proposals through this FOA that are primarily applied research projects (e.g., human factors studies, specific-use technology development and validation, or training program evaluations) or primarily focused on physiology, psychopathology, or behavioral health. Collaboration is encouraged among institutions of higher education (IHE), non-profit organizations, and commercial organizations.