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Opportunities
Details of Each Opportunity
The Fall 2026 Amazon Research Awards call for proposals is open through Nov. 4, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. PT, creating an opportunity for eligible academic and nonprofit researchers to pursue support for research aligned with Amazon’s current technical priorities. The program supports academic and nonprofit research in nine areas.
- Agentic AI
- AI for Information Security
- Amazon Security
- Automated Reasoning
- AWS Cryptography
- Build on Trainium: Agentic, Recursive Improvement of Kernels and Frameworks
- Multilingual and Contextual AI Evaluation
- On-Device Multimodal Perception
- Synthetic Data Generation for Multimodal Perception
Awards are structured as unrestricted gifts to the recipient’s institution or organization. Amazon retains no intellectual property rights to resulting work and recipients are encouraged to publish outcomes and contribute related code to open-source repositories.
Eligible applicants include full-time faculty members at accredited academic institutions and permanent researchers at qualifying nonprofits. Each principal investigator may submit one proposal during the call period.
Find frequently asked questions and more specific program information on the program website.
Learn more and apply here
Request for Applications.
Funder: Simons Foundation
Deadline: Dec. 1, 2026, at noon ET
Award Amount: There is no maximum for an individual award. The Simons Foundation anticipates funding six to 12 applications from an expected total program budget of $6 million over two years. Requested amounts should reflect the proposed research and must include indirect costs.
Award Period: June 1, 2027–May 31, 2029
Focus: Supports ambitious mathematics and basic science research in computational astrophysics and physics, computational biology, mathematics, neuroscience, computational physical chemistry, or intersections among these fields. Each proposal must develop and utilize foundational machine learning models to address problems of fundamental scientific importance and must detail its use of multinode GPU clusters through Empire AI.
Eligibility: The lead PI must hold a tenure-track or tenured faculty position at an Empire AI consortium member institution, including Columbia University. All applicants and key collaborators must hold a PhD, MD, or equivalent degree and have a faculty position or equivalent appointment at an eligible research institution. Additional PIs from outside the Empire AI consortium may participate through subcontracts. There are no citizenship requirements.
More Information: The official RFA webpage includes the complete eligibility and proposal requirements, application instructions, FAQs, templates, and access to the application portal.
Prospective applicants are encouraged to contact Farhana Mather, Principal Gifts Officer, Foundations ([email protected]), and Dimitra Koutsantoni, Executive Director, University Corporate and Foundation Relations ([email protected]), early in the process.