Internal Funding Sources

ACCESS Program
The ACCESS Program, formerly called The Ladder ACCESS Program, is an initiative to help tenured, tenure-track, and senior non-ladder faculty meet their family care-giving needs while succeeding throughout their academic careers. The program uses a sliding scale based on family income to determine award size ($4,000 to $24,000) for faculty parents of children under the age of 6.

Aramont Fund for Emerging Science Research
Provides critical funding to advance high-risk, high reward science conducted by postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty at Harvard Medical School, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Applications should propose research in the natural sciences, specifically for work that may be considered high-risk, high-reward.

The Arnold Arboretum
Offers fellowships and awards to students, post-doctoral researchers, and professionals of the biological and horticultural sciences.

Arts & Humanities Tenure-Track Manuscript Workshop Grants
Available to eligible tenure-track faculty members, these small grants of up to $3,000 support travel and other expenses associated with bringing experts to Harvard to review and offer guidance on in-progress manuscripts.

Asia Center Grants
The Asia Center focuses its grants on East, South, and Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on topics that cross national boundaries and academic disciplines. 

Barajas Dean's Innovation Fund for Digital Arts and Humanities
This fund is intended to encourage innovation in the arts and humanities by supporting small and medium scale projects that will move these fields to the center of the digital revolution.

Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Offers research fellowships during the academic year to individuals who wish to devote their time to research and writing in the fields of science and international affairs.

The Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator Fund
Provides development gap funding to Harvard investigators, thereby fostering and advancing the development of nascent technologies emanating from university labs into commercial development and, ultimately, the global marketplace.

Campus Sustainability Innovation Fund
Supports projects that use Harvard’s campus or the neighboring community as a test bed for envisioning and piloting innovative solutions to sustainability challenges, including, but not limited to, climate and health.

Center for AIDS Research
Supports promising young investigators, high-risk/high-impact feasibility studies, and collaborative, multiple-applicant proposals that focus on AIDS research.

Center for Hellenic Studies
The Center offers fellowships to scholars working on the ancient Greek world in all its varieties, for example, in fields of archaeology, art history, epigraphy, history, literary criticism, philology, philosophy, pedagogical applications, reception, and interdisciplinary studies.

Center for Jewish Studies Harry Starr Fellowship in Judaica
Covers travel expenses and a stipend for a group of scholars from around the world to gather at Harvard to engage in full-time research in a designated subject area in Judaica.

Center for the Environment Small Grants for Exploratory Research
Supports preliminary explorations of significant environmental issues that show promise for further scholarship.

The Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History
The Center hosts an annual faculty fellowship program organized around a broad theme in American history.

Climate Change Solutions Fund
The Fund supports research and policy initiatives intended to hasten the transition from carbon-based energy systems to those that rely on renewable energy sources, to develop methods for diminishing the impact of existing carbon-based energy systems on the climate, and to propel scientific, technological, legal, policy and artistic innovations needed to accelerate progress toward cleaner energy and a greener world.

Course Development Funds
These funds are meant for limited experiments or one-time investments that improve individual courses or whole concentrations.

David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
Supports Harvard faculty research, teaching, and professional activities relating to Latin America.

Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Supports individual research and sponsored research programs on Russia and the nations and countries that surround it.

Dean's Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship
A targeted program that provides funding in the following three categories: (1) bridge funding, to allow faculty to continue work on very promising research that has not yet won external funding; (2) seed funding, to encourage faculty to pursue exciting, original research directions that might not yet be ready to compete in traditional funding programs; and (3) enabling subventions, to provide small funds in support of an external fellowship or to purchase (or upgrade) critical equipment.

Dean's Fund for Scientific Advancement
A new program of internal funding mechanisms offered by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health that expands opportunities for scientific advancement and transdisciplinary collaboration through a pipeline of support. The Dean’s Fund is comprised of four funding mechanisms: Activation Award, Incubation Award, Acceleration Award, and Transformation Award.

Dependent Care Fund
Provides financial assistance to Harvard Ladder Faculty who would like to travel for a professional event that will advance their academic careers, and who also have child care or adult dependent care obligations.

Dumbarton Oaks
Provides grants and fellowships to assist with scholarly projects in Byzantine Studies, Pre-Columbian Studies, and Garden and Landscape Studies. Support is generally for archaeological research, as well as materials analysis and photographic surveys of objects and monuments. Summer schools and workshops bring together students for in-depth study of languages, material culture, and theory.

Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
Provides fellowships in ethics, addressing fundamental problems of ethics in a way that is of practical benefit to institutions of government and to society generally.

Elson Family Arts Initiative
Supports undergraduate education in the arts and humanities and the integration of the arts into the curriculum within FAS. The Elson fund is intended to introduce art-making activities into parts of the curriculum where art-making has not traditionally been inserted.

Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Grants support research with an emphasis on the study of China.

FAS Faculty Aide Program
The Aide Program is designed to help members of the FAS hire undergraduate research assistants.

FAS Professional Development Funds
To support their professional development, the Edgerley Family Dean of the FAS will reimburse tenure-track faculty up to $1,000 for activities they undertake to advance their development as scholars and teachers. This $1,000 grant is included in the start-up package for new faculty, starting on July 1, 2010. Faculty hired prior to this date should use this application form for the purpose of reimbursement. Please note: the fund may be used to support a manuscript workshop. 

FAS Tenure-Track Publication Fund
The Fund provides aid to assistant and associate professors in the FAS seeking to find supplemental research funds to assist with costs related to scholarly publications, broadly defined. Please note: the fund may not be used to support a manuscript workshop. 

Faculty Development and Diversity (FD&D) Research Enabling Grant (REG) for Extenuating Work/Life Circumstances
Provides financial assistance to pre-tenure ladder faculty facing work/life or personal/family challenges that threaten to impede their academic research and/or their progress at Harvard.

Film Study Center
Supports internationally eminent and emerging filmmakers, video artists, sound artists, and photographers whose creative projects seek to interpret the world, especially the fabric of human existence and cultural difference, through moving and still images and sounds.

The Foundations of Human Behavior Initiative
This initiative provides seed grants to support transformative research in the social and behavioral sciences. Successful proposals will be those that promise to advance understanding of the social, institutional and biological mechanisms shaping human beliefs and behavior. 

Harvard Brain Science Initiative
The Harvard Brain Science Initiative awards seed grants to support outstanding and creative new neuroscience projects, through three distinct seed grant programs: The HBI Collaborative Seed Grant Program funds dual investigator teams consisting of one Harvard Medical School faculty member and one FAS faculty member. These grants support a broad range of fundamental neuroscience research. The HBI ALS Seed Grant Program supports a broad range of ALS research that is aimed at advancing biomedical breakthroughs that ultimately enhance our capacity to treat and cure ALS. The HBI Bipolar Disorder Seed Grant Program funds research relevant to the basic understanding and eventual treatment of bipolar disorder. The HBI Young Scientist Development Awards seek to bolster the career development of neuroscience trainees by providing flexible, small grants of up to $5,000 to support creative training endeavors not easily covered by other funding sources. The HBI Community Building Fund offers small, flexible grants to any Harvard student, fellow, faculty or staff member with an idea for making neuroscience research, career exploration or outreach work at Harvard more efficient—particularly by reducing barriers to collaboration.

Harvard Catalyst
Offers pilot grants to Harvard investigators who need seed funds for early stage research anywhere along the translational spectrum, from basic/preclinical investigation to practice- or population-based research.

Harvard China Fund
Supports teaching and research on China and promotes Harvard's presence in China.

Harvard Culture Lab
The Culture Lab is an incubator for innovative ideas that seek to advance a culture of belonging at Harvard. Culture Lab grants, programs, and initiatives aim to catalyze a cultural transformation to achieve full belonging and empowerment for all members of the Harvard community.

Harvard Data Science Initiative Bias^2 Program
Supports research, features speakers, and engages the data science community towards using data science to uncover bias and systemic racism, as well as to understand and combat the use of badly-conceived data science that can reinforce bias and inequity. Recognizing that strength comes through diversity, the Program welcomes proposals from teams with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and identities.

Harvard Data Science Initiative Competitive Research Fund
Supports research that advances Data Science at Harvard in new ways. Invites innovative ideas that span all areas of Data Science, including methodological foundations, as well as the development of quantitative methods and tools motivated by Data Science challenges.

Harvard Forest Charles Bullard Fellowship in Forest Research
Supports advanced research and study by individuals who show promise of making an important contribution, either as scholars or administrators, to forestry and forest-related subjects including biology, earth sciences, economics, politics, administration, philosophy, humanities, the arts, or law.

Harvard Innovation Labs: President's Innovation Challenge
The goal of the Challenge is to harness creativity and ingenuity from across the University to generate solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems. The President’s Innovation Challenge is an opportunity to win a share of $510,000 in prize money, made possible by the Bertarelli Foundation. Teams accepted to the challenge benefit from all the resources at the i-lab, including 1:1 staff advising, matched mentorship, expert office hours, and networking opportunities.

Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program
Supports research that advances solar geoengineering’s science and technology frontier by offering faculty research grants and a fellowship program. 

Harvard Global Health Institute: Burke Global Health Fellowship
The Burke Global Health Fellowship program at Harvard Global Health Institute provides funding for Harvard junior faculty members from across the University to support innovative research, and curriculum development and teaching (particularly at the undergraduate level) in global health.

Harvard Global Institute
The Institute funds projects that connect Harvard faculty and students with scholars from outside the United States to investigate problems of universal consequence, produce findings, and advance them in ways that achieve significant impact, whether upon the University curriculum, individual research fields, theories, methodologies, policies, and/or broader public discourse here and abroad.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute: Seed Grants
Provides early-stage funding for novel research projects that address challenges from across the field of stem cell and regenerative biology. HSCI supports ideas that are not typically funded from traditional sources, either because the research is too early-stage or because it came from a scientist who is still too junior to compete with larger, well-established laboratories. 

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Fellowships support projects in the following fields: atomic and molecular physics; infrared, optical, radio, and X-ray astronomy; planetary sciences; geophysics; solar and stellar physics; and theoretical astrophysics.

Harvard University Digital Scholarship Support Group
The Digital Scholarship Support Group provides faculty, students, and staff interested in incorporating digital methods into their teaching and research with a single point of entry to the many resources available at Harvard. The Digital Teaching Fellows Program aims to facilitate the integration of digital tools and methods into FAS courses, spark innovative digital active learning projects, and foster new patterns of faculty-student interaction.

Harvard University Native American Program
Offers faculty grants that focus on developing and strengthening Native teaching, research, and publishing efforts within all of Harvard's schools and programs.

The Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences
IQSS faculty affiliates may obtain funding to organize or present at one of two conference series; affiliates may nominate scholars for the visiting collaborators program; IQSS welcomes scalable research proposals from faculty engaged in new or ongoing research that will make a significant impact on the lives of others.

Instructional Lunch Fund
Facilitates regular meetings over lunch (or breakfast, coffee, etc.) between course heads and their section leaders to discuss course-related matters.

Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
Provides fellowships to advance research in the field of press, politics and public policy; provides an opportunity for reflection; facilitates a dialogue among scholars, journalists and policymakers; and creates a vibrant and long-lasting community.

John Harvard Distinguished Science Fellowship Program
The John Harvard Distinguished Science Fellowship Program aims to recruit outstanding young scientists to work as independent researchers affiliated with Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences departments in the life sciences, the physical sciences, and imaging.

Jorge Paulo Lemann Funds
Support "courses that address innovation and entrepreneurship broadly defined" at Harvard College and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.  These funds can be used to revamp existing courses or to launch new ones, and faculty from across the divisions are encouraged to apply.

Lab for Economic Applications and Policy (LEAP)
The mission of the LEAP is to facilitate research related to government policy, with the ultimate aim of injecting scientific evidence into policy debates. Economics and PEG Economics-Track Ph.D. students and Junior faculty of the Economics Department are eligible to apply.

The Laxmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute
The institute supports faculty research projects with grants ranging from $15,000–$30,000. Faculty members at Harvard are eligible for grants that bring together faculty from different fields and regions whose scholarship relates to South Asia. 

Lemann Brazil Research Fund
This Fund supports cross-disciplinary research projects relating to Brazil. Proposals are sought for projects that address education management and administration; social science and its applications; public administration and policy; technological advances in education; and evidence-based research. Consideration will also be given to projects that propose collaboration between Harvard faculty and Brazilian academics in the life sciences, physical sciences and engineering, and basic and applied sciences.

Mahindra Humanities Center Fellowships
Fellowships support recent Ph.D. recipients; the Center welcomes applications from all fields within the humanities and the allied social sciences.

Manuscript Workshop Grants for Tenure Track Faculty
Available to tenure track faculty with primary appointments in the FAS Division of Social Science who are in their 2nd to 6th year of residence, these grants support travel and other expenses associated with bringing experts to Harvard to review and offer guidance on in-progress manuscripts.

Microbial Sciences Initiative
Offers undergraduate summer research fellowships to undergraduates who are planning to carry out research during the summer break in the lab of an MSI faculty associate.

Middle East Initiative
Grants support research by Harvard University faculty members on issues of critical importance to Kuwait, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab World. Grants can be applied toward research assistance, travel, summer salary, workshops, and course buy-out.

Milton Fund
Supports studies of a medical, geographical, historical, or scientific nature, which must be either in the interests of promoting the physical and material welfare of the human race, or of investigating and determining the value and importance of a discovery or invention.

Mind/Brain/Behavior Interfaculty Initiative
These awards are intended to support faculty members who want to examine MBB-related issues through interdisciplinary research, education, or experiences.

Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship (MPES) Annual Faculty Curricular Innovation Awards

This award funds the development of undergraduate courses that integrate civic and community engagement into undergraduate education through an emphasis on collaboration, public engagement, and civic purpose—an intention to contribute to the world beyond the self. The MPES invites proposals for courses that are community engaged, feature assignments in collaboration with groups/organizations, or include substantive public-facing components, and may encompass student directed/independent projects or faculty directed projects. Proposals may be for the development of new courses, as well as for the substantive redesign of existing courses, and may be departmental, general education, or freshman seminar.
 

Motsepe Presidential Research Accelerator Fund for Africa
The primary purpose of this new internal fund is to support faculty-led and student-driven research projects that focus on advancing key challenges and opportunities facing Africa - whether it be emerging technologies and the Fourth Industrial Revolution; climate change and its effect on health, agriculture, water, and/or sanitation; renewable energy and its benefit to infrastructure and/or society; health; aging; materials science; and the governance and policies needed for an entrepreneurial economy. More information is available in the request for applications.

Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ)
Supports scientists wishing to pursue research and to conduct fieldwork in either animal systematics or to collect specimens and data relating to the study of comparative zoology.

OPEN GATE
The purpose of OPEN GATE is to encourage scholarship, research, and educational activities in the field of sexual orientation, including the funding of research projects and conferences.

OTD Business Development Fellowship
Provides current Harvard graduate students and postdoctoral researchers an opportunity to participate in the crucial early stages of technology development by analyzing technologies’ commercialization potential and crafting marketing strategies.

Peabody Museum
Offers curatorial fellowships and visiting fellowships for photographers.

Physical Science and Engineering Accelerator Fund
Supports faculty in the physical sciences and engineering to engage in innovative research aimed at extending preliminary observations, establishing proof-of-concept, scaling-up a product or process, and generating (or enhancing) intellectual property positions. Funding is intended to position Harvard technologies for venture investment or commercialization by established companies.

President's Innovation Fund for International Experiences
Provides seed funding to faculty members at any Harvard school to support the development of creative and significant academic experiences abroad for Harvard College students.

Program on the Global Demography of Aging
Focuses the expertise available at various schools at Harvard toward one of the pressing health questions of global aging, namely understanding the changing patterns of adult morbidity and mortality, including their measurements and causes, demographic and economic implications, and policies and programs for addressing and mitigating such implications.

Provostial Fund for the Arts & Humanities
Provides funding for performances, master classes, conferences, workshops, seminars and visits by outsiders.

Provost's Fund for Interfaculty Collaboration
This fund supports a variety of cross-faculty collaborations, including but not limited to new interdisciplinary courses, working groups, small-scale conferences, and new research projects that have relevance to fostering interfaculty collaboration more broadly.

Radcliffe Fellowship
Supports artists and scholars who have both exceptional promise and demonstrated accomplishments.

Radcliffe Institute Exploratory Seminars and Workshops
Provides funding for exploratory seminars and workshops to bring together scholars, practitioners, and artists from the University and around the world to develop ideas and research across the disciplines. Open to ladder faculty and former Radcliffe Fellows.

Raoul Berger-Mark DeWolfe Howe Legal History Fellowship
The purpose of the fellowship is to enable the fellow to complete a major piece of writing in the field of legal history.

Regan Fund
This fund supports programs that invite distinguished guests to Harvard to present views in the fields of economics, government, and social problems of the United States and the world. Eligible programs present views that might not otherwise be available to undergraduates seeking knowledge or just curious about alternate solutions to current and future problems.

Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies Fellowships & Grants
Provides fellowships and grants for undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Undergraduate and graduate fellowships and grants allow students to gain first-hand knowledge of Japan, practice language skills and conduct research. Postdoctoral fellowships provide scholars with exceptional promise an opportunity to transform dissertations into publishable manuscripts.

Rowland Fellows Program
New faculty in all the natural sciences--physics, chemistry, biology, etc.--as well as in engineering will be considered for five years of support to perform independent experimental research.

Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainblity Fellows Program
Supports professional development and scholarship of exceptional academics and practitioners working on climate change and sustaibility. 

SEAS Learning Incubator LInc Faculty Fellowships
The mission of the SEAS Learning Incubator is innovation of educational pedagogy in engineering and/or science. LInc Faculty Fellowships permit faculty to dedicate time normally devoted to teaching a course to the re-design of an existing course/ design of a new course so as to implement new research-based pedagogies and improve learning gains.

The Society of Fellows
For early career faculty in any field of study.

Star-Friedman Challenge for Promising Scientific Research
This program provides seed funding to interdisciplinary high-risk, high-impact projects in the life, physical, and social sciences. This competition is open to ladder faculty members in the four participating schools (HMS, HSPH, FAS and SEAS). Ordinarily, awards will range from $80,000-$150,000. In truly exceptional circumstances, the committee may consider larger awards.

Tenured Publication Fund
The Fund aids tenured FAS faculty members in bringing scholarly book projects to timely completion. 

Ukrainian Research Institute
Supports focused research on projects in Ukrainian history, literature, philology, culture, and other related areas of study in the humanities and social sciences fields.

Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies
Offers fellowships and grants for projects focusing on any aspect of the Italian Renaissance. Grants generally support interdisciplinary projects such as conferences, courses, seminars, or lectures. Grants may also support the development of a scholarly book.

W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center
The Fellows Program provides residential fellowships for scholars to perform research for a period of one to two semesters in a wide variety of fields related to African and African American Studies.

Weiss Fund for Research in Development Economics
The program funds research that will positively affect the lives of poor people in poor countries. The Weiss Fund supports research by students and faculty working in development economics, broadly defined, funding projects that address a wide range of issues affecting less developed countries. Participating institutions currently include Boston University, Harvard University, MIT, Northwestern University, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, University of Chicago, University of California, San Diego, Princeton University and Yale University.

Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Supports research that deepens the understanding of the forces, both domestic and international, that are transforming many countries as well as the international system.

Zuckerman Travel and Research STEM Fund at Harvard University
Aims to support the development of new research collaborations in STEM fields between faculty members and researchers in FAS or SEAS and their counterparts at research institutions in Israel. Proposals involving PhD student participation are encouraged. The intent of this Fund is to support travel and meeting expenses to catalyze new collaborations.

 

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