Unsolicited Grant: Project/Program Proposals (Discontinued)

Wellcome Discovery Awards provide major, long-term funding for ambitious research that advances understanding of human life, health, and wellbeing. The scheme is explicitly discipline-agnostic and welcomes AI and computational approaches to biomedical challenges, including machine learning for drug discovery, AI-driven clinical diagnostics, computational genomics, and data science for health equity. Awards value transformative potential over incremental advances, making them well suited to ambitious AI-health intersection research. After the round closing 22 September 2026, Discovery Awards become an always-open scheme with no fixed deadline.

Wellcome Discovery Awards provide long-term flexible funding for established researchers and teams pursuing bold, creative research that can deliver significant shifts in understanding of human life, health, and wellbeing. AI and computational approaches to biomedical challenges are explicitly welcome, including machine learning for drug discovery, AI-driven clinical diagnostics, computational genomics, and data science for health equity. The world's second largest private funder of medical research (endowment approximately £14.5 billion), Wellcome supports interdisciplinary teams tackling fundamental health questions using novel methodologies. Discovery Awards are discipline-agnostic and value transformative potential over incremental advances, making them ideal for ambitious AI-health intersection research.

Wellcome Discovery Awards provide long-term, flexible funding for established researchers and their teams pursuing bold, discovery-driven research to improve human life, health, and wellbeing. The scheme explicitly welcomes AI, machine learning, and computational approaches to biomedical challenges, including machine learning for drug discovery, AI-driven diagnostics, computational genomics, and data science for health. There is no fixed funding limit; the average award is around GBP 3.5 million (about USD 4.4 million) and applications above GBP 5 million (about USD 6.4 million) receive additional scrutiny, with awards typically lasting 3 to 8 years. The next round closes September 22, 2026.

The Wellcome Prize for Mental Health Science with Nature is the world's largest global prize for mental health science, launched by Wellcome Trust in partnership with Nature in May 2026. The prize recognizes and supports breakthrough advances for anxiety, depression and psychosis that deliver measurable health impact. The award explicitly champions digital and AI-based interventions alongside new pharmacological, psychological, and social interventions from around the world. AI-relevant categories include: digital therapeutics powered by AI, generative AI for mental health interventions, AI clinical decision support for mental health, digital biomarkers and machine learning for early detection, AI-driven personalized treatment matching, and software-based scalable interventions. Entries are assessed by an expert panel against four core criteria: novelty, credibility, effectiveness, and adoptability, alongside the strength of lived experience engagement. The overall winner receives USD 1 million, and three finalists each receive USD 250,000 to support continued development. The prize complements Wellcome's existing $30M+ portfolio supporting Mental Health Awards for digital interventions and generative AI for anxiety, depression, and psychosis research.

ACS Petroleum Research Fund (PRF) - Grants is a grant program from the American Chemical Society (ACS) that funds fundamental research in petroleum-related fields including chemistry, earth sciences, chemical and petroleum engineering, polymers, and materials science. Four grant types are available: New Directions (ND) and Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) grants for faculty at PhD-granting institutions, and Undergraduate Research (UR) and Undergraduate New Investigator (UNI) grants for faculty at non-doctoral departments. Awards range from approximately $25,000 to $100,000, and ACS membership is not required to apply. The next submission window opens September 14, 2026, with proposals considered at the May 2027 committee meeting.

The Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship funds postdoctoral researchers who apply AI and machine learning techniques to transform research in the natural, mathematical and engineering sciences. It is deliberately not an AI-methods fellowship: the target candidate is a domain scientist - in physics, chemistry, biology, materials, mathematics or engineering - who will use AI as the instrument that makes a previously intractable scientific question tractable, and applications that read as machine learning research with a scientific veneer do less well than the reverse. The fellowship runs two years and, at Oxford, covers Grade 7 salary together with research and travel expenses, computing equipment, and visa and NHS surcharge costs; other host institutions fund equivalent packages. The structure that applicants most often get wrong is that this is not a single centralised competition. Schmidt Sciences funds the programme, but applications are made to and assessed by individual host universities on their own timetables - Oxford's next submission deadline is 12:00 noon on 16 October 2026 for fellowships starting from April 2027, UC San Diego opened its 2027 cohort on 1 September 2026 with a 5 October 2026 close, and Michigan runs a separate autumn cycle. Candidates should identify the host institution and prospective supervisor first, check that specific institution's deadline, and make contact with the host group well before submitting, since most sites expect an identified sponsor.

Humanity AI is a 500 million dollar, five-year pooled fund launched in October 2025 by ten major foundations - MacArthur, Ford, Mellon, Mozilla, Omidyar Network, Doris Duke, Lumina, Kapor, Packard and Gates - built around the premise that AI is design rather than destiny and that the people affected by AI systems should have a hand in shaping them. Communities Leading on AI is its first competitive open call, and it is the most accessible entry point into a fund that otherwise operates largely through invited and aligned grantmaking. Ten million dollars is available, with individual grants from 75,000 to 1,000,000 dollars. Three of the fund's five issue areas are in scope for this call: education, meaning AI shaped around the interests of students and educators; labor and economy, meaning AI that enhances rather than displaces workers; and humanities, arts and culture, meaning protection for creators alongside expanded human creativity. The fund's other two priorities, democracy and security, are not part of this particular call. Applications launched 10 September 2026 and close 21 October 2026 at 4:59pm Pacific, a notably short six-week window. Review is two-phase: initial screening for eligibility, then scoring on vision, community leadership, clarity and feasibility, impact potential, and credibility, with finalists notified in December 2026 and asked for additional materials and possible interviews before awards are announced in early spring 2027. The eligibility rules reward exactly what the name suggests - community leadership. U.S.-based 501(c)(3) organizations may apply independently; individuals must apply through a fiscal sponsor or as part of a collaboration; for-profit entities can participate but cannot lead an application; and organizations that already received direct Humanity AI funding in 2026 may only participate inside a collaboration rather than as a lead.