Funding Opportunities

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Critical & Emerging Technologies (CET) released a Request for Information (RFI) to seek public input on DOE’s Frontiers in AI for Science, Security, and Technology (FASST) initiative. The FASST initiative intends to build the world’s most powerful integrated scientific AI models for scientific discovery, applied energy deployment, and national security applications. The RFI seeks public input to inform how DOE can leverage its existing assets at its 17 national labs and partner with external organizations to support the FASST initiative. 

The full RFI can be found on Federal Register here. 

How to respond to the RFI: Submit electronic attachments to fasst@hq.doe.gov 

When: Nov. 11, 2025; no later than 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time 

https://www.energy.gov/cet/articles/request-information-frontiers-ai-science-security-and-technology-fasst

UF Advancement, in partnership with UF Strategic Research Development, promotes non-governmental funding opportunities like the one below that may interest you, or a colleague.  Please forward to others at UF who might be interested.

Check with your local research administrator to determine if the project requires entry into the UFIRST system. In cases where the funder requires a letter of intent, please follow these UF Research guidelines.   Also note that any opportunities for which UF may submit only a limited number must adhere to the published guidelines on InfoReady Review. 

Amazon Research Awards

Amount: up to $100,000 (cash and/or AWS credits)

Due: Nov. 12 by 11:59pm PT; awards announced February 2025

Program areas:

• AI for Information Security – advancing possible solutions for some of the most challenging problems in information security
• AWS Agentic AI — advancing the frontiers of AI
• Automated Reasoning – systems assurance by mathematical proof
• Build on Trainium: Responsible AI — Building the future of AI with AWS Trainium
• AWS Cryptography – setting the standard for cryptography at Amazon
• Cybersecurity Research and Anti-Abuse Technologies — Advancing innovative technologies and solutions to protect the Web from sophisticated cybercrime, abuse, and fraud at scale.
• Sustainability – Data-driven solutions for devices sustainability: Optimizing manufacturing and use phase impacts.
• Think Big — Advancing the frontiers of science through transformative ideas. We encourage proposals in areas of societally relevant technical challenges, such as generative AI, health and medical sciences, sustainability, and hardware.

Proposals will be reviewed for the quality of their scientific content, creativity, and their potential for impact at scale. Proposals related to theory, practice, and novel new techniques are all welcome.

Amazon contacts:  Funded projects are assigned an Amazon research contact who offers consultation and advice along with opportunities to participate in Amazon events and training sessions. Recipients are encouraged to publish outcomes and commit related code to open-source repositories.

Award details: Awards are structured as one-year unrestricted gifts to the principal investigator’s academic institution or organization.  Awards are often a mix of cash and AWS Promotional Credits. Exact amounts vary by program area and can reach $100,000 cash, but are typically $70K-$80K cash and no more than $20K-$50K AWS Promotional credits. The budget should include a list of expected costs specified in USD, and is not expected to include administrative overhead costs. A proposed cash budget is generally expected to support one to two graduate students (or a post-doctoral researcher) for one year, plus some conference travel and equipment. The final award amount will be determined by the awards panel. Please refer to the CFP for specific budget guidelines.

Eligibility: Before applying, researchers are encouraged to visit the ARA website and read the frequently asked questions for more specific program information.

Learn more about the CFP and how to apply.

If you’d like assistance, our team can help you to network with program staff, fine-tune proposals to match a funder’s interests, and gather required application materials, plus other pre-award activities that aim to increase the competitiveness of applications.  Reach out to me or to researchdevelopment@research.ufl.edu with any questions.  

Kim Kruse  (she/her/hers)
Senior Director of Advancement, Corporate and Foundation Relations 

University of Florida Advancement
352-392-0838 (o) | 352-871-0574 (c) | ktk@ufl.edu
1938 W. University Ave., Gainesville, FL 32603 

NSF invites supplemental funding requests to current NSF awardees in certain NSF directorates to support the expansion of K-12 resources for AI education.

Due: December 1, 2025

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has made extensive investments in fundamental research, center-scale institutes, technology transition, outreach, and education related to the science and applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) seeks to build upon these investments to advance the goals of the Executive Order on Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth by providing resources for K-12 AI education. To advance the goals of the executive order, NSF will accept supplemental funding proposals from existing awardees with K-12 AI or computer science education experience to refine, scale, evaluate, and/or implement established K-12 activities. Further information about eligible awardees specific to their NSF Directorate can be found at the end of this DCL. Supplement proposals should be for specific and focused educational efforts at the K-12 level that address age-appropriate AI education/literacy, and/or the use of technologies in AI education to facilitate adoption by educational partners. Activities with the potential to be implemented in classrooms within 12 months of the supplement award date will be prioritized for funding.

DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO) for Advanced Technologies for Combat Casualty Care (CCC)  DARPA received $100 million for Combat Casualty Care in the reconciliation bill, so this RFI will help guide and shape that opportunity.  The RFI is seeking information on “the most advanced medical sensing, computational, modeling, actuation, therapeutic and robotics technologies that could transform continuum of care in contested, resource-constrained environments.”   There will be some significant engineering and AI/ML opportunities with this one, so well beyond the typical life sciences/medical topics. 

This RFI is directly aligned with UF’s active AI, robotics, medical, and engineering research portfolio and will be of high interest to a wide array of UF researchers and faculty engaged in digital health, smart sensing, advanced intervention, and decision-support research.

Due: Dec. 3, 2025; no later than 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time 

Who Should Respond or Collaborate at UF

• Faculty and research leads working on:
  • Advanced field medical imaging and sensing
  • Computational and AI-powered medical decision support (including digital twin modeling)
  • Robotics for intervention or autonomous care in the field
  • Real-time biochemical/immune monitoring and sensor integration for CCC
  • AR/VR/MR medical guidance and simulation for field use
  • Integration of AI, secure data, and human-machine teaming in medical evacuation and casualty care scenarios
• Engineering deans or associate deans for research, who coordinate cross-college, multi-PI, and multi-institute proposals

A key focus of the design of modern computing systems is performance and scalability, particularly in light of the limits of Moore’s Law and Dennard scaling. To this end, systems are increasingly being implemented by composing heterogeneous computing components and continually changing memory systems as novel, performant hardware surfaces. Applications fueled by rapid strides in machine learning, data analysis, and extreme-scale simulation are becoming more domain-specific and highly distributed. In this scenario, traditional boundaries between hardware-oriented and software-oriented disciplines are increasingly blurred.

Due: Fourth Monday in January annually.

The Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) 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.

Due: March 15th annually

The U.S. National Science Foundation has announced two new Dear Colleague Letters (DCL) and one program solicitation that implement key elements of the Trump administration’s executive order, “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth.” The new opportunities will take decisive steps to expand resources for K-12 AI education, enhance teacher training and harness AI tools and services to improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teaching and learning.

“For decades, NSF has invested in research projects designed to transform STEM teaching and learning to meet emerging needs like AI. Integrating AI into education systems helps to prepare both young and adult learners to contribute to an AI-driven society,” said NSF Assistant Director for STEM Education James L. Moore III. “With these new funding mechanisms, NSF will fast-track its efforts to provide early exposure to AI, scale AI curricula, expand services that support the use of AI in education, advance teacher professional development and improve knowledge sharing in AI education to help sustain the nation’s leadership in technological innovation.”

Website: https://www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-announces-new-funding-opportunities-advance-ai-education