Find Funding
NEH will not be running a competition for the Summer Stipends program in 2025. Contact the Research Development Office if you are interested in finding similar funding opportunities.
Description
The NSF MRI Program serves to increase access to multi-user scientific and engineering instrumentation for research and research training in institutions of higher education. An MRI award supports the acquisition or development of a multi-user research instrument that is, in general, too costly and/or not appropriate for support through other NSF programs.
Eligibility
UNCW is restricted in the number of allowable proposals:
- Track 1: $100,000 to $1.4M – limited to two
- Track 2: $1.4M to $4M – limited to one
- Track 3: $100,000 to $4M (conserve/reduce helium consumption) – limited to one
Required Documents for Internal Application
The InfoReady application deadline is July 18, 2025 and should include the following:
- Abstract (2-page maximum) outlining the proposed instrumentation, the need for the instrumentation, the potential impact of the instrumentation, and a description of the proposed development process for the instrumentation if applicable. Indicate the targeted funding Track and whether the project is Acquisition (award duration up to 3 years) or Development (award duration up to 5 years)
- Broader Impacts Statement (1 page)
- Overview of Budget and Justification (1 page)
- List of collaborators, including CVs for senior/key personnel using the NSF biographical sketch format
- Letter of Support from Department Chair or School/Center Director
Unallowable Expenses
The MRI program will NOT support proposal requests that include the following:
- Construction, renovation, or modernization of rooms, buildings, or research facilities. This category refers to the space where sponsored or unsponsored research activities (including research training) occur, whether "bricks-and-mortar", mobile, or virtual;
- Large, specialized experimental facilities that are constructed with significant amounts of common building material using standard building techniques. In general instruments can be decoupled from the structure or environment that contains them;
- General purpose and supporting equipment; this category includes (but is not limited to) general purpose ancillary computers or laboratory instruments. Supporting equipment refers to basic, durable components of a research facility that are integral to its operation (e.g., fume hoods, elevators, laboratory casework, general-purpose computational or data storage systems). It also includes supporting facilities such as vehicle charging stations;
- Sustaining infrastructure and/or building systems. This category includes (but is not limited to) the installation of or upgrades to infrastructure related to the supply of power, ventilation, water or research gases, routine multi-purpose computer networks, standard safety features, and other general-purpose systems (e.g., toxic waste removal systems and telecommunications equipment.);
- General-purpose platforms or environment. This category may include (but is not limited to) general-purpose fixed or non-fixed structures as well as manned or unmanned vehicles, the purpose of which is to host, support or transport an instrument, which is not an integral part of the research instrument and/or which can be re-purposed for non-scientific uses.;
- Instrumentation used primarily for science and engineering education courses.
Proposals seeking support for the above items or activities are subject to return without review (if noncompliance is established prior to review) or decline (if noncompliance is established during the merit review process).
Research Opportunities Initiative Launch
UNC ROI provides targeted funding for innovative and potentially game-changing research projects that can enrich North Carolina and develop new technologies and methodologies. Priority research areas eligible for ROI funding include advanced manufacturing, marine and coastal science; defense, military, and security; pharmacoengineering; energy; and data science. The UNC System ROI accepts proposals from any institution in the UNC System, and invite submissions that propose a large-scale initiative involving multiple strategies designed to deliberately support and increase the research footprint in one of the eligible areas. The initiative should have broad impact and involve multiple researches and collaborators. Since the UNC ROI is a limited submission UNCW is only allowed to select a single applicant to support their full application to the UNC ROI directly.
To begin, select the HOME dropdown link and select faculty & staff (external), faculty & staff (internal) or student to be re-directed to the filed list of funding opportunities. Click on any title to view the opportunity overview which includes descriptions, information links and relevant PDF documentation.
Use your UNCW username and password to log in to InfoReady. If you have any issues contact the InfoReady team.
No. You can view requirements and save any application as a draft prior to submission.
Submitted applications can be edited up until the Internal Submission Deadline. "Still Open" opportunities that have passed the Internal Submission Deadline with no applications received will remain open until filled by the first applicant.
All submitted applications that meet the eligibility requirements and are completed as requested are passed on to the internal reviewer(s). InfoReady notifies all applicants of the outcome of their submission.
- All submitted applications that meet the eligibility requirements and are completed as requested are passed on to the internal reviewer(s).
- If necessary, completed reviews are presented to the Associate Provost for Research and Innovation who then makes the final decision as to which application will move forward.
- InfoReady notifies all investigators of the outcome of their submission.
- Selected applicants will partner with SPARC to complete the proposal to the sponsor and will route the proposal through RAMSeS for internal approvals. Once routed in RAMSeS, SPARC will review, approve, and submit the proposal to the sponsor.
SPIN text search performs a full-text search against the entire text of the SPIN programs; this includes opportunity titles, sponsor names, synopses, objectives, as well as funding opportunity numbers, email addresses, keywords, and several other fields.
The search automatically invokes inflectional forms of the entered words. For example, a search for test will scan all SPIN programs for: test, tests, tested, and testing.
The search also contains a number of capabilities to build complex searches with various logic and grammar parsing. The commands can be combined together, along with parenthetical logic to dictate the order of operations, for building complex queries defining exactly what you are looking for.
Each opportunity in SPIN is catalogued with terms from their keyword list. SPIN's keyword search allows you to explicitly find opportunities that match one or more of the predefined keywords in our controlled vocabulary of approximately 3,500 terms.
Keywords can be combined in two ways with 'OR' or 'AND' operators. An 'OR' search will find opportunities that have either the keywords Geochemistry OR Geophysics; an 'AND' search is more specific and will find only those opportunities that have both Geochemistry AND Geophysics keywords.
Using SPIN's advanced search interface, searches can be more specifically defined. A dropdown selection allows you to choose the fields to filter where the full text of the opportunity record contains or does not contain the entered selection.
Distinct fields generate AND queries while using the same field multiple times generates an OR query.
After a search has been created you can save the search and receive daily or weekly email alerts. The email sends a list of relevant opportunities.