As a Tier One Research University, Columbia relies strongly on federal agencies, private foundations, and city and state agencies to support its research efforts. Internal seed funding programs also play an import role in the University's research endeavor. Information about such resources is provided below. If you have questions, please feel free to contact the Office of Research Initiatives.
Once a potential funding source has been identified, all proposals must be reviewed by the Office of Sponsored Projects Administration before submission to a funding sponsor. For more information, please see Proposal Preparation.
FEDERAL AGENCIES
Federal Agencies offer a variety of funding opportunities, including center grants for large, multi-project efforts, and instrumentation programs for the purchase and development of shared instruments. This list is not comprehensive; for a comprehensive listing of all government funding agencies, please click here.
Information about popular center grant, and collaborative funding programs.
Important funding opportunities that are otherwise not largely publicized across the University
Non-Federal Agency Funding
Information about New York State and City Agencies that provide funding for research and education.
Information to help researchers identify and pursue research funding from private foundations.
Internal Funding Programs
Funding competition for seed monies to initiate groundbreaking, interdisciplinary, and high-risk research collaborations that may potentially trigger novel scientific paradigms
Includes all programs that limit the number of proposals the sponsoring organization or agency will accept from an institution, or that require institutional nomination; these restrictions require that the University run an internal selection process to identify the nominee(s)
Provides monies to initiate the exploration of high-risk, high-impact research projects, thus enabling them subsequently to secure external funding
Guidance
Newly arrived researchers will find resources to help in their search for funding information about offices involved in supporting research, and guidance concerning relevant policies and procedures at Columbia University.
Information about funding programs and resources to help postdocs find funding for research, training, and publishing.
Resources to guide researchers through the steps of preparing and submitting proposals.
The Office of Sponsored Projects Administration is responsible for reviewing grant applications before they are submitted to the sponsor.
Sponsored Projects Lifecycle
Funding Resources
The Office of Research Initiatives maintains a list of annual funding programs sponsored by private foundations as an overview for the research community
SPIN is a web-accessible database containing government and private funding sources. SPIN offers custom, active searching, automated opportunity matching, and daily opportunity notifications.
Database for biomedical research grants. Use it to identify funded research topics, read the abstracts of funded grant proposals, identify researchers when conducting literature searches, etc.
Information about research projects that NSF has funded since 1989 can be found by searching the Award Abstracts database. The information includes abstracts that describe the research, and names of principal investigators and their institutions. The database includes both completed and in-process research.
The LRP may repay up to $35,000 of qualified student loan debt per year. For deadlines, eligibility, and assistance, please click here.