Currently 22 active research and journalism grants, fellowships and residencies open to applicants in the US. Hand-curated and updated weekly. Almost every entry is funded; a few notable unpaid open calls and festival submissions are included as clearly flagged exceptions. Browse the list below, or use the interactive desk for filtering and shortlisting.
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Anthropic's four-month STEM Fellows Program brings mathematicians, physicists, biologists, chemists, engineers and other domain scientists in to work on unsolved problems in their own fields using Claude. Fellows join small pods of peers from related disciplines, define hard open problems that Claude currently struggles with, build datasets, simulations and evaluations, test how the model plans experiments and interprets data, and map where its answers are confidently wrong, with access to frontier models and internal tools and weekly meetings with Anthropic researchers. Some fellowships may be extended. ELIGIBILITY: a STEM PhD plus several years of experience (for example postdoc or faculty), hands-on experience with Claude and Claude Code, full-time availability, and existing US work authorisation (no visa sponsorship); prior machine-learning experience helps but is not required. Runs 12 January to 8 May 2027, full time, San Francisco by default with a required one-week in-person orientation there; remote within the US may be considered case by case. Later stages include a take-home exercise and conversations with the research team. DEADLINE: 28 October 2026 (no time zone stated); offers planned by 20 November 2026.
The Foundation for American Innovation's Conservative AI Policy Fellowship is an eight-week, part-time, work-compatible programme on AI policy for conservative policy professionals in Washington DC. WHO: congressional and executive branch staff, policy researchers and think tank staff, tech professionals moving into AI policy, and exceptional early-career applicants; no technical AI background is required. FORMAT: weekly in-person sessions at FAI's Capitol Hill office (usually Fridays 12:00-13:30 or Tuesdays 18:30-20:30), about 2-3 hours a week, plus a required weekend retreat in February. WHAT YOU GET: a USD 1,500 stipend for eligible fellows (subject to ethics rules for government employees), with meals and retreat costs covered. APPLICATION: online form linked from the FAI fellowships page. DEADLINE: 30 October 2026.
Foresight Institute's AI for Science and Safety Nodes request for proposals funds open, AI-first projects across three calls: I. Local Compute (compute that individuals and communities physically own and control), II. Coordination and Accountability (supercollaboration and decentralised alignment, human empowerment, and AI insurance and open governance: multi-agent oversight and verification, tools for collective deliberation, decision rules for when human control adds value, and independent risk assessment or insurance mechanisms for frontier labs), and III. AI-first Science (automated nanotechnology, whole-brain emulation, frontier bio). Grantees can also get workspace in the San Francisco or Berlin AI Nodes (a community xNode runs in Cape Town) and private compute. All funded code, data and outputs must be open-sourced. Projects are judged on fit with the focus area, impact on reducing existential risk from AI, feasibility within 1 to 3 years, AI-first working methods, ability to execute, and high-risk, high-reward potential. ELIGIBILITY: individuals, teams and organisations worldwide; nonprofits and for-profits welcome (for-profits must justify the need for grant funding). Priority goes to applicants who want to work in person at one of the Nodes, but it is not required. Review takes about three months; applications can opt in to sharing with Lightcone Commons. DEADLINE: 31 October 2026, 23:59 PDT.
The SURF Artist-in-Residence program invites artists to create work inspired by the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota. At 4,850 feet deep, SURF is the deepest underground laboratory in the United States, housed in the former Homestake Gold Mine, and hosts experiments in physics, biology, geology and engineering. The residency is modeled after programs run by the National Park Service, CERN and Fermilab, and aims to create awareness of the science and encourage interdisciplinary work. STRUCTURE: a four-week on-site visit in summer 2027 (between 22 May and 31 July, timed to the artist's schedule) with studio time, guided underground visits, tours of Lead and the surrounding Black Hills sites, and dinners with scientists; then a one-week visit in October 2027 to install an art exhibition, give up to two lectures based on the proposal, and run promotional or outreach events in the local community (which may include schools, universities, interviews or documentation of the residency). FUNDING: a USD 5,000 stipend paid in two installments; the artist may apply for up to USD 5,000 in additional funds for creating the artwork; transportation, housing and per diem for both visits; and return shipping covered up to USD 7,000. CONDITIONS: each artist donates at least one artwork, selected by a SURF representative, to SURF's permanent art collection, and is responsible for installation and de-installation in coordination with SURF and the exhibition space. A timeline and expectations are agreed in an MOU before the residency begins. PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS: working underground requires being comfortable in dark spaces, following all safety protocols, walking on uneven surfaces for at least a mile at a time, and negotiating wet, slippery conditions and an elevator ride in the dark; safety training and loaned personal protective equipment are mandatory, and a SURF guide accompanies the artist at all times. DEADLINE: 1 November 2026, via the SURF AiR application portal.
The AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships place scientists and engineers inside US federal agencies, congressional offices and the judicial branch for a year of hands-on policymaking, contributing technical knowledge and analytical skills to the federal policy process. AI, data and computing policy placements are among the largest tracks, and AAAS runs a dedicated AI legislative branch cohort that places AI experts in congressional offices at GS-12 Step 10 on the DC locality scale. ELIGIBILITY: US citizens holding a PhD or equivalent doctoral degree in any science or engineering field, or a master's degree in engineering plus three years of post-degree professional experience; some tracks accept a bachelor's plus five years. Relevant expertise includes AI, machine learning, computer science, robotics and data science. Fellows must reside in DC, Maryland or northern Virginia during the fellowship year. TIMELINE: the application portal opens 1 August 2026 and closes 1 November 2026 at 11:59pm ET, with eligibility notification in late November, interview notification January to February 2027, semi-finalist interviews in March, placement offers by early May, and the fellowship year running 1 September 2027 to 31 August 2028. Apply through fellowshipapp.aaas.org.
The American-Scandinavian Foundation's award program for study and research abroad is its longest-standing commitment to educational exchange: over the past 100 years, more than 4,000 fellowships and grants have gone to Americans working in the Nordic region and Scandinavians in the US engaged in study, research, or creative arts projects. Fellowships for Americans in the Nordic Countries support projects in Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Sapmi. AMOUNTS: long-term fellowships of up to USD 23,000 for 4 to 12 months, and short-term grants of up to USD 5,000 for 1 to 3 months; awards are given in all fields, with graduate students (preferably dissertation-related), academic professionals, and creative artists eligible. In 2026, 31 American Fellows were granted over USD 277,390 in total. REPORTING: fellows abroad more than six months submit an interim report mid-project, and all fellows submit a final narrative report within 60 days of the fellowship period's end. DEADLINE: 1 November 2026 for the 2027-28 cycle. See ASF's Program Guidelines for full requirements and apply via the ASF application portal.
The Rome Prize supports roughly 30 artists and scholars a year with a residential fellowship at the American Academy in Rome; disciplines include Design and Visual Arts, where media and new-genre work is regularly funded. Fellows receive a USD 16,000 (half-term) or USD 30,000 (full-term) stipend plus housing, workspace and weekday meals on the Academy's Janiculum campus. ELIGIBILITY: US citizens for most categories; foreign nationals who have lived in the US for the three years preceding the deadline may apply in Environmental Arts and Humanities and certain postdoctoral categories. FEES: USD 50 (one category) or USD 60 (multiple) by 1 November 2026; a late window runs to 15 November at USD 80/90. DEADLINE: 1 November 2026.
ACLS Digital Justice Grants fund digital projects in the humanities and interpretive social sciences that critically engage with the interests and histories of people of colour and other historically marginalised communities, including Black, Latinx, Indigenous, disabled and LGBTQ+ communities. The programme's stated aims are to diversify the digital domain, advance justice and equity in digital scholarly practice, and contribute to public understanding of racial and social justice issues, with an explicit interest in scholars working with under-utilised or understudied source materials and those at institutions with less infrastructure for digital work. TWO TRACKS, one deadline: SEED GRANTS of USD 10,000 to 25,000 for projects in the start-up or prototyping phase, covering planning, prototyping and methodology testing; and DEVELOPMENT GRANTS of USD 50,000 to 100,000 for projects that have moved past proof of concept and can show preliminary work and evidence of engagement. ELIGIBILITY: at least one principal investigator must be a scholar in the humanities or interpretive social sciences, and awarded funds must be administered by a US institution of higher education. WHAT IS NOT FUNDED: creative works such as novels or films, textbooks, straightforward translations, purely pedagogical projects, and institutional indirect costs. Note that outputs are expected to be made as widely available as intellectual property allows, ideally under the most liberal open-source or Creative Commons licence. TIMING: applications go through the ACLS online fellowship and grant administration system (ofa.acls.org) by 3 November 2026 at 17:00 ET; grant terms begin between 1 July and 31 December 2027 and run 12 to 18 months. The programme is funded by the Mellon Foundation.
The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin awards research fellowships for on-site work in its collections spanning literature, photography, film, art, performing arts, music and cultural history, supporting scholarly articles, dissertations, creative works, digital humanities projects and exhibition proposals. FELLOWSHIP TYPES: Postdoctoral Fellowships of USD 3,500 per month for one or two months, open to holders of a PhD or terminal degree (MFA, MLIS), current or former faculty, and similarly qualified researchers without institutional affiliation; Dissertation Fellowships of USD 2,500 for graduate students with doctoral dissertations in progress; and Travel Stipends of USD 2,000 open to graduate students, current or former faculty and independent researchers including journalists and artists (not combinable with other Ransom Center fellowships). International recipients in all categories receive an additional one-time USD 500 stipend toward visa and travel costs. Fellows spend most days in the Reading Room consulting the collections, with access to a shared office, during a residency period between 1 June 2027 and 31 August 2028. APPLY with a three-page proposal PDF and letters of recommendation; recommendation letters are also due by the deadline. DEADLINE: 6 November 2026, 5:00 PM CST.
The Federation of American Scientists' Metascience Fellowship places three full-time fellows inside federal research agencies such as the NSF or DOE for one year, after a pre-service residency at FAS. Fellows advise agency leaders on evidence-based research reform, analyse grantmaking, peer review and open-science practices, design experiments with built-in evaluation, write briefing memos, coordinate metascience work across agencies and give hands-on technical help. Placements may be extended depending on funding and performance. ELIGIBILITY: US citizens only; current federal employees cannot apply. Mid- to senior-career professionals with an advanced degree or equivalent experience in a scientific, engineering or public-policy field, willing to work mostly in person in the Washington, DC area. Fellows must start at FAS no later than 4 January 2027. Applications take a CV and three responses of up to 300 words each, submitted through the FAS platform. DEADLINE: 9 November 2026, 11:59PM ET; late applications are not reviewed.
The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program awards USD 200,000 each to scholars, journalists, authors and public intellectuals for one to two years of research and writing toward a book or major study in the social sciences and humanities, with recent classes framed around understanding US political polarization and strengthening social cohesion. HOW IT WORKS: this is a nomination-based program; individuals cannot apply directly. Nominations come from designated nominators at universities, colleges, think tanks, publishers and other institutions, and most nominating institutions run internal selection rounds with deadlines in early October 2026 (check your institution's research office). Carnegie Corporation's nomination deadline is 13 November 2026, with fellows announced in spring 2027. ELIGIBILITY: US-based candidates put forward by their institutions; both senior and junior scholars are considered. If you are affiliated with a university or think tank and want to be considered, contact your institution's limited-submissions or research development office well before its internal deadline. NOMINATION DEADLINE: 13 November 2026.
Molly Crockett's lab at Princeton, based in the Department of Psychology and the University Center for Human Values, is hiring a postdoc to start in summer or fall 2027. The research topic is flexible. The lab uses methods from computational social science and cognitive science informed by theory from science and technology studies and feminist epistemology, studying feedback loops between individual psychology, institutions and culture, and how the tech industry co-opts these processes to concentrate power. It is especially interested in bridging quantitative and qualitative methods for understanding human experience, and in how culture and power shape which questions are valued and which methods are legitimised. The lab is industry-independent and accepts no research funding from the tech industry; it uses a variety of ML methods and aims to develop thoughtful approaches to automation in scholarship, so it suits researchers excited about AI in science but wary of hype and industry influence. WHAT YOU GET: an USD 80,000 salary from stable institutional funds, initial one-year appointment renewable up to three years. APPLICATION: via Interfolio; questions about fit to mj.crockett@princeton.edu. Review of applications begins 20 November 2026 and continues until the position is filled.
CISAC's 2027-2028 fellowship application is open across seven tracks: Artificial Intelligence and Laws of Armed Conflict; AI in Strategic Stability and Military Competition; Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence; India-U.S. Security Studies; Natural Sciences or Engineering International Security (for natural scientists and engineers researching scientific and technical aspects of security topics); Nuclear Security; and International Security. Applicants are considered for all fellowships they are eligible for. Fellows spend the academic year in residence at Stanford engaged in research and writing, participating in seminars and collaborating with CISAC faculty and the wider community. CAREER STAGES: predoctoral (currently enrolled PhD students), postdoctoral (completed PhD or DPhil), and junior faculty or professionals. FUNDING: stipends are provided (predoctoral comparable to Stanford Graduate Fellowships plus tuition; postdoctoral and professional stipends commensurate with experience), though exact amounts are not published; non-US citizens may apply and visas are available through the fellowship. APPLY via the SlideRoom portal (Stanford CISAC Fellowship Program) with the application form, CV, graduate transcript (required for pre- and postdoctoral applicants), research prospectus (max 1,500 words), abstract (max 200 words), writing sample (max 50 pages), and three confidential recommendation letters uploaded directly by recommenders; all materials in English. DEADLINE: 2 December 2026. Questions: cisacfellowship@stanford.edu.
The Loeb Fellowship at Harvard Graduate School of Design is a year-long residential fellowship for accomplished mid-career practitioners shaping the built and natural environment: urban designers, public artists, architects, landscape architects, urban planners, developers, journalists, civic leaders, policymakers and community development leaders (past fellows have included a theater director, public artists and a documentary filmmaker). Fellows audit courses at the GSD and across Harvard (minimum one GSD course per semester), engage with the school community, and join a lifelong global alumni network. SUPPORT: a stipend of USD 57,500 for the academic year (taxable income), housing through 30 June for fellows and families of modest size coming from outside the Boston/Cambridge area, and a travel grant covering roughly one economy round trip home per semester. ELIGIBILITY: minimum 8 years of experience in the field (a typical class averages about 42 years of age); international candidates are encouraged to apply and must be eligible for a J-1 visa at selection; fellows must remain in residence in the Cambridge area while classes are in session. HOW TO APPLY: via SlideRoom with a resume, three recommendation letters (due 7 days after the deadline) and optional supplemental materials. No application fee. DEADLINE: 5 January 2027 at 11:59 PM ET for the 2027-28 class.
The Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri funds people and teams to build and launch a tool, workflow or product that helps newsrooms, in three tracks: Individual (USD 75,000), Institutional (USD 75,000, paid to a host organisation or the fellow) and Emerging Technology (USD 100,000, where AI or another new technology must be essential to the solution). The output must be a free, open-source resource usable by US journalists; tools limited to one city or state are unlikely to be funded. The fellowship is remote and runs for eight months from 28 June 2027 with an in-person kickoff at RJI and a couple of paid visits. ELIGIBILITY: anyone, anywhere; no age, background or journalism credential required. Applications open 2 November 2026 on Submittable; a shortlist is invited in early to mid February 2027 to submit a fuller application, with finalist interviews 5 to 23 April 2027. DEADLINE: 8 January 2027 (first round; no time zone stated, RJI is on US Central time).
The Institute for Law & AI's US Summer Fellowship is a paid research fellowship at the leading edge of US AI law and policy for law students, professionals, and academics, including the Summer Institute on Law and AI in Washington DC and mentorship from LawAI research staff. FUNDING: USD 2,000 per week, a USD 10,000 relocation/housing stipend for DC-based fellows, covered flights, accommodation and meals for the Convening Week, and potentially higher subsidies for exceptional candidates. ELIGIBILITY: a strong grasp of US legal principles applicable to AI regulation via formal US legal study (incoming 1L and up) or comparable professional experience; full-time commitment 14 June to 20 August 2027; valid US work authorization required (visa sponsorship possible but not guaranteed). The application takes about 20 minutes. DEADLINE: 29 January 2027, 11:59PM ET.
Robot foundation models (pi-zero, OpenVLA, GR00T and others) are approaching widespread deployment on the back of more than USD 18 billion in funding, and almost nobody is working on their safety. The Physical AI Safety Institute, a new nonprofit founded by Bear Haon and Kaylene Stocking and seeded by a grant from BlueDot Impact, describes itself as a capacity-building organisation growing the community that develops techniques to interpret, align and control robot foundation models. Its research fellowship runs in 12-week cohorts: each fellow works within a stream led by a mentor on a concrete problem in physical AI safety, with mentors drawn from researchers with track records in robot foundation models, mechanistic interpretability, safe control or adversarial robustness for embodied systems. Each cohort ends with a research symposium where fellows present their work. STREAMS: mechanistic interpretability (sparse autoencoders and activation patching for VLA and WAM architectures); adversarial robustness (jailbreaking and prompt injection in the embodied action space); runtime monitoring (detecting when a policy operates outside its competence envelope); sim-to-real safety transfer (do safety behaviours survive deployment on physical hardware); and robot security (cyberattack vectors, data poisoning and supply chain for deployed robot models). WHO SHOULD APPLY: researchers with strong technical foundations in robotics or machine learning and a demonstrated interest in safety; prior safety experience is not required. PROCESS: this stage is an expression of interest, not a full application. The form takes about two minutes and asks you to pick your stream and preferred cohort dates; concrete details including stipend figures and application deadlines are shared through that channel, and neither is published on the site as of listing. PAISI also publishes seven free curriculum modules running from classical robot safety through VLA interpretability, adversarial robustness and runtime monitoring to deployment evaluation, plus a white paper, The Case for Physical AI Safety, at paisi.ai/the-case-for-physical-ai-safety. Contact: bear@paisi.ai.
A one-year fellowship placing Fellows directly inside government, non-profit and social-enterprise host institutions across the United States to design and implement high-impact programs, translating data-driven insights into actionable policy recommendations, new programs and operational changes for the partners they serve. STIPEND: USD 47,000 living stipend for the year (scaled up for higher-cost cities) plus a reimbursable health-insurance stipend up to USD 5,000. ELIGIBILITY: primarily intended for candidates graduating from their academic programs in 2026 and/or already working full-time; this is a full-time 12-month commitment. PROCESS: applications and interviews are considered on a ROLLING basis starting in March, so applicants are encouraged to apply early; most engagements begin between June and November, with partner match meetings 6 to 8 weeks before the anticipated start. APPLY: https://www.adf.uchicago.edu/apply
Pulitzer Center's 'Bringing Stories Home' initiative supports in-depth local journalism on under-covered issues in communities across the United States. ELIGIBILITY: freelance and staff journalists working on US-based stories. Grants cover the hard costs of reporting. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis via the Pulitzer Center reporting-grants page.
The ILIAD Intensive is a four-week, full-time, in-person program for mathematically strong researchers interested in foundational AI alignment, running in London (at LISA) and in Berkeley. It runs five days a week, 10am to 6pm, in cohorts of 15 to 30 participants. CURRICULUM, across five clusters: Alignment (decomposing the alignment problem, pretraining, post-training and deployment, reward learning); Learning (deep learning theory, singular learning theory, training dynamics); Abstractions, Representations and Interpretability (mechanistic interpretability, natural latents); Agency (reinforcement learning, decision theory, agent foundations); and Safety Guarantees (debate, steganography, the limits of interpretability). MONEY: no tuition is charged. Each participant receives a USD 5,000 travel and housing allowance, office space at the venue, and lunch and dinner five days a week. Participants book and pay for their own travel and accommodation out of the allowance. ELIGIBILITY: a strong mathematical background, typically graduate-level study or a completed degree in mathematics, physics or theoretical computer science, though mathematical maturity is weighted more heavily than specific credentials. Research experience, general competence and motivation are also assessed. Prior machine learning or alignment experience is not required. DEADLINE: no fixed closing date is published. A single application covers several upcoming programs and applicants indicate their preferred dates and locations; applications are being accepted for the October 2026 and November 2026 cohorts. HOW TO APPLY: through the application portal at iliad.ac/apply. Questions to contact@iliad.ac.
NOTE: this tier is institutions-only; individual researchers cannot apply in a personal capacity but can serve as principal investigators through their institution. Anthropic's earlier Economic Futures Research Awards (USD 10,000-50,000 plus USD 5,000 Claude API credits for empirical research on AI's economic impacts, rolling, with results presented within six months) are currently not accepting applications; this entry covers the larger Research Fund now open for proposals. THE FUND: Anthropic has committed USD 200 million to the Economic Futures Research Fund to support ambitious external research on interventions that prepare society for the economic impacts of AI, studying what programs could make the economy more flexible and resilient, ensure AI's benefits are shared, and minimise harm from AI-driven disruption. FIVE RESEARCH PRIORITIES: (1) AI's impact on workers at the firm and workplace level; (2) equipping people for AI-driven transitions; (3) modernising income support for displacement; (4) building worker stakes in AI-driven growth; (5) generating evidence on public investments. FUNDING: projects primarily in the USD 5-30 million range, minimum USD 1 million, flexible upward for well-scoped, high-potential-impact projects. ELIGIBILITY: accredited universities and other degree-granting institutions, independent research institutes and policy research organisations, and nonprofits with a track record of running field experiments at scale; a global fund with an initially US-centric focus. APPLICATION: via the request for proposals linked from the research agenda announcement (Google Form); no deadline published as of September 2026.
Mentored, individual research in applied mathematics for AI alignment, including foundational questions that get less attention elsewhere, drawing on mathematics, theoretical physics and computer science. ELIGIBILITY: designed for PhD students, postdocs and researchers with equivalent experience in mathematics, theoretical physics, computer science or related fields; selection weighs academic credentials, technical ability, intentions and fit with the cohort's research coverage. APPLICATION: rolling, with fellowships starting at the beginning of most months.