Funding Opportunities

Table of Contents
SPIN Funding Search Limited Submission NSF
Grants.gov NIFA OSU Internal Opportunities
DOE NIH Other Sponsors

 

Funding opportunities are available from external sponsors and internally funded programs. The GDSU is committed to supporting faculty in their search for sponsors who will fund their projects in research, education and extension. If you are interested in a working with a foundation, you should contact the OSU Office of Foundation Relations and they can assist you in finding possible funding opportunities.

InfoED SPIN Funding Search

Ohio State utilizes InfoED SPIN to assist in funding searches and alerts. The InfoEd Global suite of products includes: SPIN, a searchable funding database; GENIUS, a tool for creating profiles; and SMARTS, a tool for setting up customized email alerts.

Grants.gov

All discretionary grants offered by the 26 federal grant-making agencies can be found on Grants.gov. There are several ways to search the database, from simple keyword searches to searches by agency to more detailed inquiries.  

Department of Energy

The Energy Frontier Research Centers 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.

The ultimate goal for the three DOE Bioenergy Research Centers is to better understand the biological mechanisms underlying biofuel production so that those mechanisms can be redesigned, improved, and used to develop novel, efficient bioenergy strategies that can be replicated on a mass scale. New strategies and findings emanating from the centers' fundamental research ultimately will benefit all biological investigations and will create the knowledge underlying three grand challenges at the frontiers of biology.

The Hubs will help advance highly promising areas of energy science and engineering from the early stage of research to the point where the technology can be handed off to the private sector. In other words, this work will ultimately lead to new clean energy solutions and new jobs for America's families. Each Hub will foster unique, cross-disciplinary collaborations by bringing together leading scientists to focus on a high priority technology.

NEUP’s goal is to support outstanding, cutting-edge, and innovative research and development (R&D) at United States (U.S.) universities through the following: Administering NEUP R&D awards to support NE’s goal of integrating R&D at universities, national laboratories, and industry/utilities to revitalize nuclear education and support NE’s programs.

Limited Submission Opportunities

Limited Submission opportunities are funding opportunities with limits on the number of applications that can be submitted by Ohio State investigators. The Ohio State University Office of Research coordinates limited submission applications by establishing earlier, internal deadlines to allow the review of candidates and the selection of Ohio State's proposals for submission.

National Institute of Food and Agriculture

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), part of the executive branch of the Federal Government. Congress created NIFA through the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008. NIFA replaced the former Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), which had been in existence since 1994. NIFA is one of four USDA agencies that make up its Research, Education, and Economics (REE) mission area. The USDA-REE agencies provide federal leadership in creating and disseminating knowledge spanning the biological, physical, and social sciences related to agricultural research, economic analysis, statistics, extension, and higher education.

NIFA's mission is to lead food and agricultural sciences to create a better future for the Nation and the world by supporting research, education, and extension programs in the Land-Grant University System and other partner organizations. NIFA doesn't perform actual research, education, and extension but rather helps fund it at the state and local level and provides program leadership in these areas. The broad expectation is that NIFA will enhance the stature and impact of food, agricultural, and natural resource sciences and ultimately grow support for agricultural research, education, and extension.

Search NIFA Grants

National Institutes of Health

The NIH provides financial support in the form of grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts. This assistance supports the advancement of the NIH mission of enhancing health, extending healthy life, and reducing the burdens of illness and disability. While NIH awards many grants specifically for research, they also provide grant opportunities that support research-related activities including: fellowship and training, career development, scientific conferences, resource and construction, and the submission of research applications in these areas, many NIH Institutes and Centers will issue funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) in the form of program announcements (PAs) and requests for applications (RFAs). These FOAs may be issued to support research in an understudied area of science, to take advantage of current scientific opportunities, to address a high scientific program priority, or to meet additional needs in research training and infrastructure. 

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation funds research and education in most fields of science and engineering. It does this through grants, and cooperative agreements to more than 2,000 colleges, universities, K-12 school systems, businesses, informal science organizations and other research organizations throughout the United States. The Foundation accounts for about one-fourth of federal support to academic institutions for basic research.

NSF receives approximately 40,000 proposals each year for research, education and training projects, of which approximately 11,000 are funded. In addition, the Foundation receives several thousand applications for graduate and postdoctoral fellowships.

The agency operates no laboratories itself but does support National Research Centers, user facilities, certain oceanographic vessels and Antarctic research stations. The Foundation also supports cooperative research between universities and industry, US participation in international scientific and engineering efforts, and educational activities at every academic level.

OSU Internal Opportunities

CFAES R&GE Internal Grants Program (IGP) 

The IGP was designed with the goal of reducing the administrative burden on researchers. Internal Grants Program Awards are intended to accomplish the following objectives:

  • Increase the competitiveness of researchers in extramural grant programs
  • Enhance and encourage creative and innovative research needed to prepare competitive extramural proposals
  • Encourage the development of intellectual property
  • Promote the creation of faculty teams to develop competitive extramural grant applications by addressing immediate needs.

OSU Discovery Themes

The Discovery Themes, as announced by Executive Vice President and Provost Joe Alutto, represent areas that already are strengths at OSU: Health and Wellness, Food Production and Security, and Energy and the Environment. The university will invest $400 million — bringing in 500 new tenured or tenure-track faculty — over the next 10 years and make those areas a primary focus of university-wide teaching, research and engagement. 

OSU Food Innovation Center

Seed Grants support the university-wide priority of food discovery. Our Food Innovation Center brings unique broad-based expertise to the university's discovery themes as every Ohio State college has membership in this center. Seed grant proposal ideas must be innovative, create value, and lead to competitive extramural grants. We seek new team research approaches in food discovery consistent with our mission.

The Ohio Sea Grant College Program

The Ohio Sea Grant College Program, as part of the Great Lakes Sea Grant Network, and in cooperation with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Storms Program (CSP), is requesting preproposals for one- to two-year projects related to Great Lakes coastal community storm hazard resiliency.

Mershon Center Research Grant Competition

Each year, the Mershon Center for International Security Studies holds a competition for faculty and students to apply for research grants funds. Applications must be for projects related to the study of national security in a global context. Also of interest are projects that emphasize the role of peace-building and development; strengthen the global gateways in China, India and Brazil; relate to campus area studies centers and institutes; and address the university’s Discovery Themes.

Other Sponsors