Below is a list of funding mechanisms and standing programs available through federal agency sponsors to support collaborative and team science. Please note that this list does not include new or anticipated programs.
Department of Defense
Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) Program (FY 2020)
Deadline: Summer
- Synopsis: DoD’s MURI program addresses high risk basic research and attempts to understand or achieve something that has never been done before. The program was initiated over 25 years ago and it has regularly produced significant scientific breakthroughs with far-reaching consequences to the fields of science, economic growth, and revolutionary new military technologies. Key to the program’s success is the close management of the MURI projects by Service program officers and their active role in providing research guidance. Topics areas vary each year. Budgets are approximately $7.5 million over 5 years.
Minerva Research Initiative
Deadline: August
- Synopsis: DoD’s Minerva research initiative is a university-led defense social science program seeking fundamental understanding of the social and cultural forces shaping US strategic interests globally, particularly projects aligned with and in support of National Defense Strategy. DoD identifies a series of topics for each competition. Team submissions are encouraged. Budgets are up to $5 million over 5 years.
Department of Energy
Energy Frontier Research Centers Program
Deadline: Next deadline is anticipated 2023
- Synopsis: The EFRC program aims to accelerate such transformative discovery, combining the talents and creativity of our national scientific workforce with a powerful new generation of tools for penetrating, understanding, and manipulating matter on the atomic and molecular scales. Priority topics vary with each solicitation.
National Institutes of Health
| Center Core Grants (P30) | Center core grants that support shared resources and facilities for categorical research by a number of investigators from different disciplines who provide a multidisciplinary approach to a joint research effort or from the same discipline who focus on a common research problem. The core grant is integrated with a center’s component projects or program projects, though funded independently from them. |
| Biotechnology Resource Grants (P41) | Supports biotechnology resources available to all qualified investigators without regard to the scientific disciplines or disease orientations of their research activities or specifically directed to a categorical program area. |
| Specialized Center (P50) | Specialized centers that support research and development activities, from the very basic to clinical, and that focus on a multidisciplinary attack on a specific disease entity or biomedical problem area. Centers may serve as regional or national resources or special research purposes. |
| Collaborative Program Grant for Multidisciplinary Teams (RM1) | To support highly integrated research teams of three to six PD/PIs to address ambitious and challenging research questions that are important for the mission of NIGMS and are beyond the scope of one or two investigators. Collaborative program teams are expected to accomplish goals that require considerable synergy and managed team interactions. Project goals should not be achievable with a collection of individual efforts or projects. Teams are encouraged to consider far-reaching objectives that will produce major advances in their fields. |
| Research Program–Cooperative Agreements (U19) | To support a research program of multiple projects directed toward a specific major objective, basic theme or program goal, requiring a broadly based, multidisciplinary and often long-term approach. A cooperative agreement research program generally involves the organized efforts of large groups, members of which are conducting research projects designed to elucidate the various aspects of a specific objective. Substantial Federal programmatic staff involvement is intended to assist investigators during performance of the research activities, as defined in the terms and conditions of award. The investigators have primary authorities and responsibilities to define research objectives and approaches, and to plan, conduct, analyze, and publish results, interpretations and conclusions of their studies. Each research project is usually under the leadership of an established investigator in an area representing his/her special interest and competencies. Each project supported through this mechanism should contribute to or be directly related to the common theme of the total research effort. The award can provide support for certain basic shared resources, including clinical components, which facilitate the total research effort. These scientifically meritorious projects should demonstrate an essential element of unity and interdependence |
| Resource-Related Research Projects–Cooperative Agreements (U24) | To support research projects contributing to improvement of the capability of resources to serve biomedical research. |
| Specialized Center–Cooperative Agreements (U54) | To support any part of the full range of research and development from very basic to clinical; may involve ancillary supportive activities such as protracted patient care necessary to the primary research or R&D effort. The spectrum of activities comprises a multidisciplinary attack on a specific disease entity or biomedical problem area. These differ from program project in that they are usually developed in response to an announcement of the programmatic needs of an Institute or Division and subsequently receive continuous attention from its staff. Centers may also serve as regional or national resources for special research purposes, with funding component staff helping to identify appropriate priority needs. |
| Common Fund’s NIH Director’s Transformative Research Projects Program (T-R01) | The NIH Director’s Transformative Research Awards complement NIH’s traditional, investigator-initiated grant programs by supporting individual scientists or groups of scientists proposing groundbreaking, exceptionally innovative, original and/or unconventional research with the potential to create new scientific paradigms, establish entirely new and improved clinical approaches, or develop transformative technologies. Little or no preliminary data are expected. Projects must clearly demonstrate the potential to produce a major impact in a broad area of biomedical or behavioral research |
National Science Foundation
| Research Coordination Networks (RCN) | This program’s goal is to advance a field or create new directions in research or education. Innovative ideas for implementing novel networking strategies are especially encouraged. Groups of investigators will be supported to communicate and coordinate their research, training and educational activities across disciplinary, organizational, geographic, and international boundaries. Proposed networking activities should focus on a theme to give coherence to the collaboration, such as a broad research question or particular technologies or approaches. The RCN program provides review for proposals to participating core programs and directorates listed in the solicitation, excepting Mathematical & Physical Sciences. Proposals involving mathematical and physical scientists will be accepted under the targeted physical/life science interface track. |
| Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (RAISE) | RAISE is a type of proposal by which bold, interdisciplinary projects can be submitted to NSF. Proposals are expected to lie outside the scope of a single program or discipline; the lines of research are expected to generate transformational advances; and because the prospective discoveries reside at the interface of disciplinary boundaries that may not be recognized through NSF’s traditional review mechanisms. |
| Gen 4 Engineering Research Centers(ERC) | The ERC program supports convergent research that will lead to strong societal impact. Each ERC has interacting foundational components that go beyond the research project, including engineering workforce development at all participant stages, a culture of diversity and inclusion where all participants gain mutual benefit, and value creation within an innovation ecosystem that will outlast the lifetime of the ERC. The logical reasoning that links the proposed activities to the identified goals for each ERC should be clear. |
| Science Technology Centers (STC) | The Science and Technology Centers (STCs): Integrative Partnerships program supports innovative, potentially transformative, complex research and education projects that require large-scale, long-term awards. STCs conduct world-class research through partnerships among academic institutions, national laboratories, industrial organizations, and/or other public/private entities, and via international collaborations, as appropriate. They provide a means to undertake significant investigations at the interfaces of disciplines and/or fresh approaches within disciplines. STCs may involve any areas of science and engineering that NSF supports. STCs investments support the NSF vision of advancing discovery, innovation and education beyond the frontiers of current knowledge, and empowering future generations in science and engineering. |
| Expeditions in Computing | Now funded at levels up to $15,000,000 for seven years, Expeditions projects represent some of the largest single investments currently made by the CISE directorate. Together with the Science and Technology Centers and the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes that CISE supports, Expeditions projects form the centerpiece of the directorate’s center-scale award portfolio. With awards funded at levels that promote the formation of large research teams, CISE recognizes that concurrent research advances in multiple fields or sub-fields are often necessary to stimulate deep and enduring outcomes. The awards made in this program will complement research areas supported by other CISE programs, which target particular computer and information science and engineering fields. |
| Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) | This program supports university-based centers and institutes whose collective efforts can enable transformational advances in the most promising research areas. The PFC program is designed to foster major breakthroughs at the intellectual frontiers of physics by providing needed resources such as combinations of talents, skills, disciplines, and specialized infrastructure not usually available to individual investigators or small groups.. Activities supported through the program are in all sub-fields of physics within the purview of the Division of Physics: atomic, molecular, optical, plasma, elementary particle, nuclear, astro-, gravitational, and biological physics. Interdisciplinary projects at the interface between these physics areas and other disciplines and physics sub-fields, e.g., biology, quantum information science, mathematical physics, condensed matter physics, and emerging areas of physics are also included. The successful PFC activity will demonstrate: (1) the potential for a profound advance in physics; (2) creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, diversity, and public outreach; (3) the potential for broader impacts, e.g., impacts on other field(s) and benefits to society; and (4) a synergy or value-added rationale that justifies a center- or institute-like approach. |
| Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers Program (IUCRC) | As a program develops long-term partnerships among industry, academe, and government. The centers, catalyzed by a small investment from the NSF, are primarily supported by industry center members, with NSF taking a supporting role in the development and evolution of the center. An I/UCRC contributes to the nation’s research infrastructure base and enhances the intellectual capacity of the engineering and science workforce through the integration of research and education. As appropriate, an I/UCRC uses international collaborations to advance these goals within the global context |
| Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) | Provide sustained support of interdisciplinary materials research and education while addressing fundamental problems in science and engineering. MRSECs address research of a scope and complexity requiring the scale, synergy, and interdisciplinarity provided by a campus-based research center. They support materials research infrastructure in the United States, promote active collaboration between universities and other sectors, including industry and international institutions, and contribute to the development of a national network of university-based centers in materials research, education, and facilities. A MRSEC may be located at a single institution, or may involve multiple institutions in partnership. |