Limited Submission Funding Announcements

These research funding opportunities have a submission limit, meaning only a certain number of applications can be submitted. Faculty interested in applying must submit a preliminary proposal for review by an internal selection committee. Below are the available funding opportunities along with their respective internal submission deadlines.

NSF Accelerating Research Translation Program │ November 6

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Accelerating Research Translation (ART) Program seeks to accelerate and scale the path from fundamental academic discovery to meaningful real-world outcomes. It is not designed to support isolated, individual investigator research projects, but rather institutional efforts to build or grow infrastructure, systems, and partnerships that enable discoveries to move into practice.

NSF’s definition of research translation and technology transfer go beyond a traditional focus on lab-to-market pathways to grow capacity at Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) to achieve the full range of translational impacts emanating from research discoveries and innovations by including civic entrepreneurship; informing standards-setting, policy, and regulatory bodies; scaling rigorous and engaging curricula, instructional material, and pedagogies; and more.

The ART Program is built around the following five distinct yet interconnected tracks. BU is eligible to submit one proposal under the following Tracks:

Track II: Growing Capacity for Research Translation (GROW)
- For institutions with strong research activity but modest translation infrastructure.
- Supports efforts to significantly elevate research translation capacity and establish sustainable systems that foster innovation and economic and collective impacts.
- Proposals must identify a Mentoring Institution.
Track III: Technology Transfer Resource Centers (RESOURCE)
- Launches regional Technology Transfer Resource Center that promote technology transfer and development by leveraging IHEs with high research translation capacity to provide guidance, training, education, and services to other IHEs in a region who have a low RTRL.
- BU proposals must demonstrate very high RTRL standing.

FUNDING INFORMATION:

Track II (GROW): Up to a total of $6M over four years
Track III (RESOURCE): Up to $8M over four years

ELIGIBILITY: BU may forward one proposal for either Track II or Track III (not both). BU will select a single institutional lead proposal based on submitted expressions of interest.

The PI, co-PIs, and other senior/key personnel must hold an appointment at an eligible organization. Researchers with primary appointments at overseas branch campuses of U.S. institutions of higher education are not eligible.

Researchers from foreign academic institutions who contribute essential expertise to the project may participate as senior/key personnel or collaborators but may not receive NSF support.

BMC INVESTIGATORS: Investigators who believe their work may be a fit or who have questions about eligibility are encouraged to contact Carolina Giudice, Program Manager of Strategic Research Growth, at carolina.giudice@bmc.org, by November 6. If you are unsure whether your grants are managed by BU or BMC, please consult the BUMC Home Institution Finder.

INTERNAL SELECTION PROCESS: Medical campus interested investigators should submit an expression of interest with the following information via InfoReady Review by November 6.

Proposal Abstract describing your interest in the program, relevant experience or connections and information relevant to the track you are interested in applying (maximum 300 words)
List of Collaborators, including any individuals, organizations, potential Mentor Institution (for Track II), and/or industry partners

Research Development will coordinate the BU team submitting proposals in response to this call and will contact all faculty who express interest.

DEADLINES:

Expression of Interest Due: Thursday, November 6, by 11:59 p.m. ET
Anticipated Notification Date: Friday, November 21.
Full Proposal Due – Track II: Thursday, January 15, 2026
Full Proposal Due – Track III: Thursday, March 12, 2026

In requesting to be considered for this limited submission funding opportunity, you are making a commitment, if selected, to submit your proposal to the sponsor in a timely manner and to Sponsored Programs in accordance with the Proposal Submission Policy

Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation Research Grant │ November 14

The G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation Research Grant supports innovative, high-risk high-reward basic science ideally with translational applications. Some examples of currently funded research areas are immunology, microbiome, structural biology, cellular physiology, cancer biology, genetics, genomics, microbiology and infectious diseases, stem cell biology and neuroscience. In general, the Mathers Foundation reviewers look for innovative, novel proposals, which have scientific merit with an established published proof of concept and which may not be fundable at the federal level.

The foundation will not fund work related to COVID-19, Plant Biology Research, Oceanography, Space Exploration, Global Warming related research, medical imaging technology related projects and/or electrical engineering technology development. The foundation will also not fund work conducted with human subjects or requests for clinical trials, drug discovery or research projects it considers pre-clinical drug development. Preference will be given to research that has not been federally supported. This grant program is highly competitive.

FUNDING INFORMATION: Up to $700,000 for three years (including 10% maximum IDC) may be requested. Mathers funding is intended to support only the actual investigation and may not be used to purchase capital equipment. The maximum allowed for student tuition or equipment is $5,000.

ELIGIBILITY:

Applicants must be independent investigators with their own fully functional and equipped labs and must be nominated by an institutional representative.

Collaborative research projects with other US based organizations are acceptable. However, research collaborations between US based organizations and organizations based outside the US are not encouraged and will be given lower priority.

INTERNAL SELECTION PROCESS: The internal selection process depends on whether your grants are managed by BU or Boston Medical Center (BMC). If you are unsure whether your grants are managed by BU or BMC, please consult the BUMC Home Institution Finder. Use that information to guide which of the following processes you follow.

BU Process

BU can nominate up to three applicants. Medical campus interested investigators should submit the following materials via InfoReady Review by November 23.

Project Aims Statement describing experimental aims and sub-aims (2,000 characters maximum, including spaces).
Proof of Concept Statement providing evidence/validation for the proposed project; it should indicate whether the evidence for the project is “preliminary” and whether proof of concept has been published in any journals (2,000 characters maximum, including spaces).
Project Summary intended for a highly educated lay audience and a scientific review board describing the project’s nature and scope. If your project includes collaborators, include their names, affiliation and contributions within the text (7,000 characters maximum, including spaces).
Up-to-date CV or Biosketch for the PI.

A faculty committee drawn from both campuses will review internal proposals and select nominees. Foundation Relations will work with the selected applicants to complete their institutional nominations and portal registration by January 30, 2026.

BMC Process

BMC can nominate up to three applicants. If you are a BUMC faculty member who works in BMC space or you are a fellow whose faculty advisor is a BMC investigator, please contact the Program Manager of Strategic Research Growth, Carolina Giudice at carolina.giudice@bmc.org by November 14 for instructions on next steps.

DEADLINES:

BMC Internal Deadline: Friday, November 14.
BU Internal Deadline: Sunday, November 23, by 11:59 p.m. ET.
Anticipated Notification Date: Friday, January 9, 2026.
Portal Registration Due: Friday, January 30, 2026 by 8 p.m. ET.

NSF Safety, Security, and Privacy of Open-Source Ecosystems (Safe-OSE) │ November 17

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Safety, Security, and Privacy of Open-Source Ecosystems (Safe-OSE) program solicits proposals for awards in the form of cooperative agreements to fund impactful, mature open-source ecosystems to address important classes of safety, security and privacy vulnerabilities. In this context, mature signifies that the ecosystem in question has already established a robust community of contributors, an extensive group of users, a managing organization that steers the development of the product and the essential infrastructure needed to keep the ecosystem running.

This program solicits proposals from OSEs, including those not originally funded by NSF’s Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program, to address significant safety, security and/or privacy vulnerabilities, both technical (e.g., vulnerabilities in code and side-channels) and socio-technical (e.g., supply chain, insider threats and social engineering).

Proposals to this program should provide clear evidence that OSE team leaders have established a thorough understanding of the threat landscape, vulnerabilities and/or failure modes for the open-source product(s) managed by the OSE. Proposals should describe, where appropriate, what other products depend upon the safe, secure and privacy-preserving functions of the OSE.

Funds from this program should not be directed toward fundamental research or at readily resolvable, known bugs/issues, but rather toward strategies, methods and actions that will fundamentally improve the open-source product’s safety, security and privacy stance. Funds from this program can also be directed at efforts to bolster the OSE’s resiliency for recovering from future incidents. Thus, the proposal should articulate how Safe-OSE funding will improve the broader national, societal and/or economic impacts of the OSE by hardening it against adverse events over the long term.

FUNDING INFORMATION: Up to $1.5M for two years with annual budgets as follows: Year one maximum $500,000; Year two maximum of $1M.

ELIGIBILITY: Any PI, co-PI, or other senior/key personnel must be at a US-based campus of an Institution of higher education (defined by NSF) and hold one of the following:

a tenured or tenure-track position.
a primary, full-time, paid appointment in a research or teaching position.
a staff leadership role in an open-source program office or equivalent position.

Exceptions are granted for family or medical leave, as determined by the submitting institution. Researchers from foreign academic institutions who contribute essential expertise to the project may participate as senior/key personnel or collaborators but may not receive NSF support.

BMC INVESTIGATORS

Although BMC is eligible for this limited submission opportunity, a review of funding guidelines indicates that the focus of this opportunity may not closely align with the current research portfolios of BMC investigators. Investigators who believe their work may be a fit or who have questions about eligibility are encouraged to contact Carolina Giudice, Program Manager of Strategic Research Growth, at carolina.giudice@bmc.org. If you are unsure whether your grants are managed by BU or BMC, please consult the BUMC Home Institution Finder.

INTERNAL SELECTION PROCESS: Bu may forward up to two preliminary proposals. Medical campus interested applicants should submit the following materials via InfoReady Review by November 17.

List of co-PIs and senior/key personnel.
Proposal abstracts briefly describing the current status of the targeted OSE, its national/societal/economic impacts, and targeted classes of safety, security, and/or privacy vulnerabilities to be addressed and the broader impacts of addressing these vulnerabilities (500 words maximum)

As necessary, a faculty review committee will review internal applications and select the institutional nominee(s).

DEADLINES:

Internal Materials Due: Friday, November 17.
Anticipated Notification Date: Wednesday, November 26.
Preliminary Proposals Due: Tuesday, January 13, 2026.
Full Proposals Due: Tuesday, April 28, 2026.

NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) & High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant (S10) │ December 2

The objective of the Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) Program is to make available to institutions high-priced research instruments that can only be justified on a shared-use basis and that are needed for NIH-supported projects in basic, translational, or clinical biomedical and biobehavioral research. The SIG Program provides funds to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, state-of-the-art, specialized, commercially available instrument or an integrated instrumentation system. An integrated instrumentation system is one in which the components, when used in conjunction with one another, perform a function that no single component can provide. The components must be dedicated to the system and not used independently.

Types of supported instruments for SIG include, but are not limited to: X-ray diffractometers, mass spectrometers, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers, DNA and protein sequencers, biosensors, electron and light microscopes, flow cytometers, high throughput robotic screening systems, and biomedical imagers.

The objective of the High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant Program is to make available to institutions high-end research instruments that can only be justified on a shared-use basis and that are needed for NIH-supported projects in basic, translational, and clinical biomedical or biobehavioral research. The HEI program provides funds to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, leading-edge, specialized, commercially available instrument or an integrated instrumentation system. An integrated instrumentation system is one in which the components, when used in conjunction with one another, perform a function that no single component can provide. The components must be dedicated to the system and not used independently.

Types of supported instruments include, but are not limited to: MRI imagers, PET/CT imagers, cyclotrons, photoacoustic imagers, mass spectrometers, NMR spectrometers, electron microscopes, cryo-electron microscopes, X-ray diffractometers, and super-resolution microscopes.

For both grant programs, all instruments and integrated systems must be dedicated to biomedical research only.

FUNDING INFORMATION: Applications will be accepted that request a single, commercially available instrument or an integrated instrumentation system. Awards are made for one year only.

There is no upper limit on the cost of the instrument for either grant, but each award must fall within the following ranges:

SIG: Between $50,000 and $750,000
HEI: Between $750,001 and $2 million

ELIGIBILITY: There are no restrictions on who may be a PD/PI for these grants. Multiple PDs/PIs are not allowed for these grants. The PD/PI should document (in the biographical sketch) technical expertise directly related to the type of requested instrument. The PD/PI does not need to have an NIH research grant or any other research support but is expected to be an expert on the requested instrument.

INTERNAL SELECTION PROCESS: BU may submit more than one application, provided that each application is scientifically distinct and there are no overlaps with existing SIG, HEI, or Basic Instrumentation Grant (BIG) types.

Medical Campus interested investigators should submit the following materials via InfoReady Review by Tuesday, December 2.

One page Grant Statement describing the instrumentation requested and the anticipated user base,
Up-to-date Biosketch.

As necessary, a faculty committee will review internal applications to ensure there is no overlap between proposals.

BMC Investigators

BMC investigators should not submit applications through InfoReady Review for these grant programs.

If you are a BUMC faculty member who works in BMC space, please contact the Program Manager of Strategic Research Growth, Carolina Giudice at carolina.giudice@bmc.org, for assistance. If you are unsure whether your grants are managed by BU or BMC, please consult the BUMC Home Institution Finder.

DEADLINES:

Internal Materials Due: Tuesday, December 2, by 11:59 p.m. EDT.
Anticipated Notification Date: Friday, December 19.
Sponsor Deadline: Monday, June 1, 2026 by 5 p.m.

Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Awards Program │ December 4

The Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards Program supports the research and teaching careers of talented early career faculty in the chemical sciences. The Award is based on an independent body of scholarship attained in the early years of their appointment, as well as a demonstrated commitment to education, signaling the promise of continuing outstanding contributions to both research and teaching.

The Foundation seeks nominees who, as independent faculty members, demonstrate leadership in original scholarly research of outstanding quality, as well as innovation in and dedication to education. Recommendations for awards should be based upon compelling evidence that the nominee’s independent scholarly research has led to important advances in the chemical sciences and will continue to do so.

FUNDING INFORMATION: $100,000 as an unrestricted research grant ($7,500 may be allocated for departmental expenses associated with research and education).

The following are not permitted costs: indirect costs or institutional overhead; defrayal of academic year salary (summer salary is permitted).

ELIGIBILITY: The award is open to faculty who meet all the following criteria:

Hold a full-time tenure-track appointment focused on the chemical sciences, including chemistry, biochemistry, materials chemistry and chemical engineering.
Be within the first six years of their independent academic careers at the time the nomination is submitted.
- The Foundation will consider extensions to the window of eligibility for official tenure clock stops, for reasons including but not limited to parental leave, military leave, medical leave and the pandemic.
- Faculty who has received tenure but are still within the first six years as independent faculty are eligible to apply.
Hold a position in a PhD-granting department in which scholarly research is a principal activity and undergraduate education is an important component.

BMC INVESTIGATORS

INTERNAL SELECTION PROCESS: BU may nominate one candidate annually. Medical campus interested applicants should submit the following materials via InfoReady Review by December 4.

Research summary describing the applicant’s research accomplishments as an independent faculty member and future research plans (maximum five pages including references).
- Including at least one graphic is encouraged but not required.
Efforts in education statement illustrating their efforts in chemical sciences education (maximum two pages).
Updated CV including a list of publications in which the corresponding author and undergraduate coauthors are clearly identified. Research support should be indicated (maximum four pages).
Name and Contact Information for:
- One person at BU who would serve as your institutional nominator.
- Three people outside of BU who could provide letters of support.

As necessary, a faculty review committee will review internal applications and select the institutional nominee. Foundation Relations will support the nominee to submit their nomination materials by February 1, 2026.

DEADLINES:

Internal Materials Due: Thursday, December 4, by 11:59 p.m. ET
Anticipated Notification Date: Friday, December 19.
Nominations Due: Sunday, February 1, 2026.

Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award │ December 4

The Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award is designed for early career assistant professors who are independent physician-scientists conducting innovative, disease-oriented cancer research. The award prioritizes candidates whose work involves direct patient interaction, in line with the “Handshake Rule,” although this rule does not apply to pathologists. The program aims to support outstanding young researchers dedicated to enhancing cancer medicine with both research funds and medical school loan repayment.

Funding Information: $600,000 over three years, providing $200,000 annually to support the clinical investigator. Up to $100,000 in medical school loan repayment (according to Foundation policy).

Funds can be used flexibly for the investigator’s stipend, personnel salaries, equipment, supplies, and research-related expenses, but cannot cover indirect costs or institutional overhead.

Eligibility/Restrictions: Only one application is permitted from a mentor or investigator per review session, including co-mentorships.

Applicants must:

Be independent assistant professors (or equivalent) at a U.S. institution with significant institutional support (start-up package, lab space, protected research time).
Have an MD, DO, or MD/PhD, completed subspecialty training, and be U.S. Board eligible, holding a valid U.S. medical license.
Submit their applications within five years of receiving assistant professor appointment (as of July 1, 2022).
Commit to 80% research time, with rare exceptions possible upon compelling justification.
Have a mentor experienced in clinical cancer research.
no more than two candidates can work with the same mentor at once.

Candidates may apply twice during the eligibility period, with one application accepted per mentor per review session.

Candidates with R01 or equivalent grants are ineligible.

For more information about eligibility and application requirements visit the Damon Runyon website.

INTERNAL SELECTION PROCESS: The BU – Boston Medical Center (BMC) Cancer Center can submit up to three nominations. The internal selection process depends on whether your grants are managed by BU or BMC. If you are unsure whether your grants are managed by BU or BMC, please consult the BUMC Home Institution Finder. Use that information to guide which process you follow below.

BU Process

Medical Campus interested investigators should submit the following materials via InfoReady Review by Thursday, December 4.

One page project summary of proposed research.
CV/biosketch for PI and mentor(s).

A faculty committee drawn from the BU Cancer Research Center will review the internal proposals and select nominees.

BMC Process

If you are a BUMC faculty member who works in BMC space or you are a fellow whose faculty advisor is a BMC investigator, please contact the Program Manager of strategic research growth, Carolina Giudice at carolina.giudice@bmc.org by Nov. 12, for instructions on next steps.

DEADLINES:

Deadline to express interest (BMC PIs only): Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Internal Materials Due (BU PIs): Thursday, December 4, 2025 by 11:59 p.m. ET.
Anticipated Notification Date (all PIs): Friday, December 19, 2025
Foundation Deadline: Tuesday, January 20, 2026, by 4 p.m.

If you have any questions about these funding opportunities contact us.

View the list of annually recurring limited submission funding opportunities sorted by anticipated internal deadline.