Find Funding

There is a large network of funding opportunities available to Penn State College of Engineering researchers, including federal, state, and local governments, private foundations, non-profit entities, industry partners, and corporations.

Perusing various funding announcements to identify opportunities with the best match science can be challenging. Our office is here to help! We have compiled the following lists of websites that provide information on internal and external funding sources.

External Funding Resources

Penn State provides faculty and staff with access to Funding Institutional (this service has replaced Pivot). For additional information, see the Funding Institutional Login Quick Guide .

Additional Resources

• Pennsylvania Bulletin (information and rulemaking)
• Department of Environmental Protection
• Federal Business Opportunities
• Federal Register
• Foundation Center
• GrantsNet
• Grants.gov
• National Science Foundation Update E-mail Subscription
• Science.gov

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Penn State Internal Funding

The Penn State Limited Submission Program manages the response to research funding opportunities for which a limited number of submissions are permitted from Penn State.

The Vice President for Research (VPR), in close communication with the college research deans and interdisciplinary consortia directors, is charged with implementing the Penn State Limited Submission Procedure.

Please contact limitedsubs@psu.edu should you have any questions.

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College of Engineering Internal Funding Initiatives

These internal funding initiatives are awarded once per year and are announced by email to all faculty at the opening of the proposal submission period.

Research Opportunities for mid-Career Knowledge EnhancemenT (ROCKET) Seed Grant Program

The College of Engineering’s Research Opportunities for mid-Career Knowledge EnhancemenT (ROCKET) Seed Grant program supports mid-career faculty who want to explore a new area of research and/or jumpstart their research activity. The goal of the seed grant is to provide preliminary results and establish credibility in a new research area that will attract high-impact research funding from the state and federal government, industry, or foundations. The one-year seed grants provide up to $60,000 in support for a faculty member and graduate students, post-docs, and/or staff to conduct preliminary analyses, demonstrate proof of concept, collect preliminary data, and establish the high potential impact of the proposed idea for future proposal submissions. The College will consider proposals from faculty that:

• Explore a new area of research that may potentially be high risk but also provide high reward. We are looking for radical new ideas that would provide exciting new directions for faculty, not small changes in their existing research focus.
• Enable transition from a research portfolio that may have fallen out of favor with funding agencies into a new research area with brighter funding prospects.
• Restart research activity after an extended lapse due to personal, administrative, or service reasons.

The date for the next cycle of the ROCKET Grant Program has not been determined. Details will be announced when they become available.

Grace Woodward Grants

The Grace Woodward Collaborative Research in Engineering and Medicine grants are intended to support projects that create or capitalize upon opportunities for new applications of engineering to problems in the life sciences and medicine. The program is designed to encourage genuine collaborations between engineers and clinicians or biomedical scientists that involve either new avenues of research or the feasibility testing of new medical devices, instrumentation, or other diagnostic or therapeutic modalities.

The Grace Woodward Grants for Collaborative Research in Engineering and Medicine are supported by generous endowments to the College of Engineering and the College of Medicine from the estate of Grace Woodward.

Multidisciplinary Research Seed Grants

The College of Engineering’s Multidisciplinary Research Seed Grant program supports research that will increase the competitiveness of faculty in attracting high-impact multidisciplinary and center-level research funding from the state and federal government, industry, or foundations. The one-year seed grants provide support for:

• two or more faculty members with complementary technical expertise to demonstrate a meaningful collaboration by collecting preliminary data for future proposal submissions
• one or more faculty members to partner with an industrial researcher to conduct early-stage industry relevant research that has the strong potential for direct funding from the company or for joint proposals to other agencies

Biodevices Seed Grant Program

The Penn State Biodevices Seed Grant Program supports collaborations among engineers, scientists, and clinicians. Supported projects focus on biodevices to improve human and animal health, such as implantable, surgical, and wearable devices, as well as environmental sampling and monitoring devices. Seed grants provide teams with funds to generate preliminary data for co-author publications and external grant submissions or to demonstrate feasibility/develop a prototype of a new biodevice.

Applications are considered every spring. While application criteria is updated annually, please view the 2020 call for applications for more information.

industryXchange Seed Grant Program

The industryXchange seed grants fund research that stimulates application-specific development in AI and ML in five areas: cybersecurity, energy, health care, manufacturing and transportation. The goal of these grants is to increase the competitiveness of faculty in attracting high-impact funding from the state and federal government, industry, and/or foundations. The proposal cycle will fund the five seed grants with a start date of June 2020.

The one-year seed grants will help support research teams, with two or more faculty members from at least two colleges or campuses, in each of the five areas.

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