Funding Opportunities

MnDRIVE Environment supports research and partnerships that develop sustainable solutions to environmental grand challenges, enhancing quality of life and economic vitality in Minnesota and beyond. Our funding programs support research that advances sustainable solutions to three major environmental grand challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

Letter of Intent: January 27, 2022
Deadline Date: March 3, 2023

Read the description for more details.

This Request for Proposals (RFP) is part of a multi-year initiative, during which IonE will competitively award grants and professionally support teams of faculty, staff, and non-University partners working on:

IonE’s current Impact Goals – becoming carbon neutral, defining a sustainable land use, and achieving clean drinking water for all; Practices and innovations at the intersection of healthy and sustainably-produced food, with attention to consumer choice and public policy; Another specific sustainability objective or outcome, including campus sustainability, that is clearly articulated as a sustainability goal and identifies the barriers that must be overcome to achieve it.

These research funds support interdisciplinary teams conducting engaged scholarship that contributes new research and associated outcomes.

Letter of Intent: February 13, 2023
Deadline Date: March 14, 2023

Read the full Request for Proposals.

The College of Science and Engineering is delighted to announce a strategic seed grant program targeted at supporting new research collaborations that bring together faculty from our science and engineering programs to address significant challenges with high potential to attract substantial future funding and to make a significant research impact.

Deadline Date: April 4, 2023

Read the full proposal description for more details.

UMII Seed Grant funds are intended to promote, catalyze, accelerate and advance UMN-based informatics research so that UMN faculty and staff are well prepared to compete for longer term external funding opportunities.

Deadline Date: April, 28, 2023

View the UMII Seed Grant application page for more information on the program.

Building upon the National Science Foundation's (NSF) investments in foundational research, the NSF's Convergence Accelerator program, within the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships or TIP, supports use-inspired solutions toward societal impact. The NSF's Convergence Accelerator program model comprises three phases: topic ideation, followed by convergence-research Phases 1 and 2. Teams funded by the Convergence Accelerator include multiple disciplines, a wide range of expertise, and cross-sector partnerships to stimulate innovative ideas and develop long-lasting, sustainable solutions to societal and economic challenges that are organized around the program's research track topics.

The goals of the NSF's Convergence Accelerator are to accelerate use-inspired convergent research in areas of national importance and societal and economic challenges, and to initiate convergent team-building capacity around exploratory, potentially high-risk proposals addressing selected convergent research topics. The following topics have been selected to be included in the 2023 solicitation that is expected to be published in the coming months.

Track K: Equitable Water Solutions
Track L: Real-World Chemical Sensing Applications

Due dates have not been announced.

Read the complete Dear Colleague Letter dated March 3, 2023 (NSF 23-066), for more information.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), in their report "Environmental Engineering for the 21^st Century: Addressing Grand Challenges," identified five critical challenges we must address as a society: sustainably supply food, water, and energy; curb climate change and adapt to its impacts; design a future without pollution and waste; create efficient, healthy, and resilient cities; and foster informed decisions and actions.

The report further states, "The challenges provide focal points for evolving environmental engineering education, research, and practice toward increased contributions and a greater impact. Implementing this new model will require modifications in educational curriculum and creative approaches to foster interdisciplinary research on complex social and environmental problems." This solicitation will support projects that tackle these grand challenges using a convergent research model that seamlessly integrates fundamental knowledge and expertise from the fields of chemical process, transport, and biological science and engineering with that of the sustainability and environmental engineering fields. A brief review of convergence research concepts and models can be found on the NSF website - Convergence Reports and References.

Accordingly, the Environmental Convergence Opportunities in Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (ECO-CBET) solicitation will support fundamental research activities that confront vexing environmental engineering and sustainability problems by developing foundational knowledge underlying processes and mechanisms such that the design of innovative new materials, processes, and systems is possible. Projects should be compelling and reflect sustained, coordinated efforts from highly interdisciplinary research teams. A key objective of the solicitation is to encourage dialogue and tightly integrated collaborations wherein members of the chemical process systems, transport phenomena, and bioengineering research communities engage with environmental engineering and sustainability experts to spark innovation and arrive at unanticipated solutions. Furthermore, training the future workforce to successfully engage in discipline-transcending research will support continued innovation toward surmounting the complex environmental and sustainability challenges facing our global community.

Preliminary proposal due annually on September 17.
Full proposal due annually on January 31.

Read the full NSF solicitation for more information.

DMREF seeks to foster the design, discovery, and development of materials to accelerate their path to deployment by harnessing the power of data and computational tools in concert with experiment and theory. DMREF emphasizes a deep integration of experiments, computation, and theory; the use of accessible digital data across the materials development continuum; and strengthening connections among theorists, computational scientists (including data scientists), and experimentalists as well as those from academia, industry, and government. DMREF is committed to the education and training of a next-generation materials research and development (R&D) workforce that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive; well-equipped for successful careers as educators and innovators; and able to take full advantage of the materials development continuum and innovation infrastructures that NSF is creating with partners in other federal agencies.

This is a recurring opportunity in odd-numbered years, i.e. 2023, 2025, etc. The 2023 submission window is February 27, 2023-March 13, 2023.

View NSF's full solicitation (NSF 23-530) for more information. Email DSI (csedsi@umn.edu) if you would like to see a slide set from an NSF 23-530 informational briefing.

View the map of awards from from previous DMREF solicitations. This includes two UMN awards: Collaborative Research: Machine learning exploration of atomic heterostructures towards perfect light absorber and giant piezoelectricity (1921629) and Collaborative Research: The Search for Novel Superconductors in Moire Flat Bands (192216).

"US President Joe Biden has selected Renee Wegrzyn, a biologist and former government scientist, as the inaugural director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency created by his administration to find innovative solutions to biomedical problems."

"Launched in March with a US$1 billion budget, ARPA-H aims to shake up the conventional model of funding biomedical research — deemed too slow and conservative in its scope and approach by some critics — by funding high-risk, high-reward research in the life sciences." 

See this article from Nature for an update on the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).

View the ARPA-H website for more information on the organization.

DSI will provide information on funding opportunities and deadlines as they become available.

The DOE SC program in Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) hereby announces its interest in research applications to explore potentially high-impact approaches in the development and use of scientific machine learning (SciML) and artificial intelligence (AI) in the predictive modeling, simulation and analysis of complex systems and processes. Relevant domains include materials, environmental, and life sciences; high-energy, nuclear, and plasma physics; and the DOE Energy Earthshots Initiative, for examples. 

Pre-application deadline: March 1, 2023 (pre-application required)
Final submission deadline: April 12, 2023

Read the full solicitation for DE-FOA-0002958 from the Department of Energy or the synopsis for more information.
Award ceiling: $1,200,000. Award floor: $300,000.

The goal of the Design for Environmental Sustainability in Computing (DESC) program is to address the substantial environmental impacts that computing has through its entire lifecycle from design and manufacturing, through deployment into operation, and finally into reuse, recycling, and disposal. 

Application deadline: March 17, 2023

Read NSF's full solicitation for more information.

F.15 High Priority Open-Source Science solicits proposals to support NASA's Open-Source Science Initiative (OSSI) and that will advance the goals of increasing transparency, accessibility, inclusion, and reproducibility of research in the SMD scientific community. Specifically, this program element supports innovative open-source tools, software, frameworks, data formats, and libraries that will have a significant impact on the SMD science community. Proposals for work to support the OSSI may include increasing the accessibility and usability of new technology as defined by the Strategy for Data Management and Computing for Groundbreaking Science 2019-2024 and/or supporting the development of technology in alignment with the goals of NASA’s Transform to OPen Science (TOPS) project.

ROSES-2022 Amendment 73 releases final text and due dates for F.15 High Priority Open-Source Science, which had previously been listed as “TBD”. This program element will have a rolling deadline, and proposals may be submitted at any time until March 29, 2023. A virtual meeting for prospective proposers will occur January 19, 2023, 1-2 pm ET. Connect information for this meeting will be posted under other documents on the NSPIRES page for this program element no later than December 19, 2023.

Application deadline: March 29, 2023

The 2024 ENRTF (Environmental and Natural Resources Trust Fund) Request for Proposal is now posted. The LCCMR welcomes proposals for projects of all sizes that address the priorities and requirements described within their RFP and that aim to protect, conserve, preserve, and enhance Minnesota’s air, water, land, fish, wildlife, and other natural resources. The LCCMR reviews applications and makes funding recommendations to the Minnesota Legislature from the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (ENRTF). Approximately $79 million is available from the Trust Fund through this RFP for projects beginning July 1, 2024. Most projects funded are two to three years in duration. 

Applications must be submitted online at lccmrprojectmgmt.leg.mn by March 31, 2023 at 4:30 PM.

Read the full RFP for more information including 2024 funding priorities.

The Global Centers program is an NSF-led effort, implemented in partnership with like-minded international funders, to encourage and support large-scale collaborative research on use-inspired themes in climate change and clean energy. Here, the "used-inspired" nature of the research refers to project outcomes leading to foreseeable benefits to society. These outcomes should help the assessment and/or mitigation of climate-change impacts on society, people, and communities, and/or the development of clean-energy solutions. NSF partner countries in this inaugural Global Centers competition are Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

This solicitation launches an ambitious new program to fund international, interdisciplinary collaborative research centers that will apply best practices of broadening participation and community engagement to develop use-inspired research on climate change and clean energy. This program will prioritize research collaborations fostering team science, community-engaged research, and use knowledge-to-action frameworks. The proposed research work should maximize the benefits of international, interdisciplinary collaborations.

Climate change is a global threat that impacts the natural and human world through changes in regional weather patterns, acceleration of species extinctions, alteration of the structure and function of ecosystems as well as by affecting human societies, the built environment, and processes in urban and rural areas around the globe. Given the complexity of the problem and the cascading nature of impacts, climate change demands convergent, interdisciplinary research collaborations that bring together studies of any number of topics such as greenhouse gas emissions, atmospheric and oceanic circulation drivers, impacts of natural and built environment, human behavior, and policy constraints, coupled with innovative artificial intelligence (AI), computational and data science solutions, to help assess or mitigate community impacts and/or lead to technology developments.

Deadline Date: May 10, 2023

Read the full NSF solicitation for more information.

The AFRI Foundational and Applied Science Program supports grants in six AFRI priority areas to advance knowledge in both fundamental and applied sciences important to agriculture. The six priority areas are:

• Plant Health and Production and Plant Products
• Animal Health and Production and Animal Products
• Food Safety, Nutrition, and Health
• Bioenergy, Natural Resources, and Environment; Agriculture Systems and Technology [This includes Water Quantity and Water Quality.]
• Agriculture Economics and Rural Communities.

Research-only, extension-only, and integrated research, education and/or extension projects are solicited in this Request for Applications (RFA)

Deadlines vary from August to November 2023. See RFA (page 2) for table of deadlines.

Read the full Request for Applications for details.

The ExLENT program will support inclusive experiential learning opportunities designed to provide cohorts of diverse learners with the crucial skills needed to succeed in emerging technology fields and prepare them to enter the workforce ready to solve our Nation’s most pressing scientific and societal challenges. Furthermore, the ExLENT program will directly support NSF’s priority to build a diverse workforce in emerging technologies to assure the Nation’s competitiveness in STEM.

Application deadline: March 2, 2023 (Pivots and Beginnings tracks only)

Read NSF's full solicitation for more information.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) supports innovative research and development in biomedical informatics and data science. This funding opportunity focuses on biomedical discovery and data-powered health, integrating streams of complex and interconnected research outputs that can be translated into scientific insights, clinical care, public health practices, and personal wellness. The scope of NLM's interest in these research domains is broad, with emphasis on new and innovative methods and approaches to foster data driven discovery in the biomedical and clinical health sciences as well as domain-independent, scalable, and reusable/reproducible approaches to discovery, curation, analysis, organization, and management of health-related digital objects.

Application deadline (Cycle 1): February 5, 2023

Read NIH's full solicitation for more information.

NSF seeks to establish a Synthesis Center for Molecular and Cellular Sciences (SCMCS) that will advance our ability to explain and predict complex molecular and cellular phenomena through innovative synthesis and integration of available biological data and related scientific knowledge. The Center will provide the vision, infrastructure, and expertise to support communities in drawing together information, including data, methods, conceptual frameworks, theories, and models that are currently dispersed across different scientific domains, in order to address compelling, multi-scale questions and open new avenues of inquiry in the molecular and cellular biosciences.

Preliminary proposal (required) deadline: January 13, 2023
Full proposal deadline: July 7, 2023

Read NSF's full solicitation for more information.

The Human Networks and Data Science program (HNDS) supports research that enhances understanding of human behavior by leveraging data and network science research across a broad range of topics. HNDS research will identify ways in which dynamic, distributed, and heterogeneous data can provide novel answers to fundamental questions about individual and group behavior. HNDS is especially interested in proposals that provide data-rich insights about human networks to support improved health, prosperity, and security.

Application deadline: January 12, 2023

Read NSF's full solicitation for more information.

See DOE announcement for more information.

Deadline: December 21, 2022

The NSF Regional Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) program is a bold new  initiative, committed to creating regional-scale, technology-driven innovation  ecosystems throughout every region of the United States, accelerating  emerging technologies, driving economic growth, addressing key societal  challenges, and maintaining national competitiveness.

Read NSF's full solicitation for research for more information

Type 1 Letter of intent due: August 31, 2022
Type 1 Full proposal deadline: September 29, 2022
Type 2 Letter of intent due: December 15, 2022
Type 2 Full proposal deadline: January 18, 2023

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites applications for new institutional training programs (predoctoral, postdoctoral or both) in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Precision Nutrition (AIPrN) focused on the integration of precision nutrition, AI, machine learning (ML), systems biology, systems science, Big Data, and computational analytics.

Application deadline: December 8, 2022

Read NIH's full solicitation for more information.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) seeks applications for the Data Innovation and Coordinating Hub/Resource Center for the Maternal Health Research Centers of Excellence initiative. This FOA runs in parallel with companion FOAs that seek applications for Research Centers of Excellence (RFA-HD-23-035) and an Implementation Science Hub/Resource Center (RFA-HD-23-037).

Application deadline: December 5, 2022

Read NIH's full solicitation for more information.

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) invites applications for a Measurement Core for the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program. Working collaboratively with the other members of the ECHO Cohort consortium, the ECHO Measurement Core will: 1) develop and refine measures for the ECHO Cohort Protocol, including methods to implement the measures; 2) assist all ECHO Cohort Study Sites, Cores, and Centers in implementing and evaluating the ECHO Cohort Protocol which comprises standardized measures at specified study visits; and 3) lead strategic decision-making to incorporate new and revised measures to advance ECHO Cohort science while moderating participant and staff burden.

Application deadline: November 21, 2022

Read NIH's full solicitation for more information.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites applications seeking to develop novel, transformative artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) strategies and computer automation to integrate, extract, and interpret multi-omic (i.e., genome, epigenome, transcriptome, proteome, metabolome, microbiome, phenome) data sets from human exceptional longevity (EL) cohorts and multiple non-human species that display a wide variation in life span, and to decipher the relationships between DNA, RNA, proteins, metabolites, and other cell variables, as well as links to disease risks and exceptionally healthy aging.

Application deadline: October 21, 2022

Read NIH's full solicitation for more information.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) seeks applications for Partnership for Innovation Research Projects as part of a broader ongoing initiative entitled Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa). The goal of DS-I Africa is to spur new health discoveries and catalyze innovation in healthcare, public health, and health research on the continent through the application of data science.

Application deadline: September 28, 2022

Read NIH's full solicitation for more information.

Since 2003, the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics has helped establish  Minnesota as a world leader in biotechnology and biomedical research. It has awarded over $132M for >125  highly-competitive collaborative projects. 

In 2022, the Partnership’s focus will be on funding projects that specifically present a vision and plan for a  large, highly-competitive center-level team application for funding within 3 years of the Partnership award.

Application deadline: June 10, 2022

View the full solicitation for research for more information.

SAINT PAUL, MN (03/24/2022) - The Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) has issued its 2023 Request for Proposal (RFP) for funding from Minnesota's Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (ENRTF). Approximately $70 million from the lottery-generated fund is available for projects that aim to protect, conserve, preserve, and enhance Minnesota's air, water, land, fish, wildlife, and other natural resources.

View the full solicitation for proposals on the Minnesota legislature's website.

Application deadline: May 26, 2022

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to invite applications for a broad range of research efforts in computational genomics, data science, statistics, and bioinformatics relevant to one or both of basic or clinical genomic science, and broadly applicable to human health and disease.

Deadline Date: October 5, 2021

Read NIH's full solicitation for more information.