Now Accepting Seed Proposals for 2025-26
NSF-Simons AI Institute for Cosmic Origins (CosmicAI) invites the submission of proposals for novel research projects at the intersection of AI/machine learning and astronomy for 2025-26. Focus areas for this call include (but are not limited to) topics that align with one of the four scientific working groups:
Explorable Universe: Advancing trustworthiness, generative AI methods, and exploration of large datasets.
Observable Universe: Advancing the efficiency of the calibration and analysis of high-dimensional data and preparation for next-generation observing facilities.
Explainable Universe: Advancing the interpretability of AI methods and their application to study astrophysical systems.
Accelerated Universe: Advancing the robustness of AI surrogate modeling in the astrophysical domain and methods to accelerate the modeling of physical processes.
Applications will undergo a two-stage review process. First, applicants must submit a project abstract by December 8, 2025, which will be evaluated by December 17, 2025. Selected applicants will then be invited to submit a full proposal by January 23, 2025, at the latest. The final awards will be announced by February 13, 2026.
Submit the following information:
Title of the project
Name of the principal investigator(s)
An abstract of less than 150 words describing the project
Topic/category of the project
Name of a senior personnel collaborator (Recommended)
Full proposal applications submissions will require:
Two-page proposal (including reference and figures) using the proposal template. The proposal should include motivation and description of the project, expected impacts and/or deliverables, and a statement of relevance to CosmicAI.
A brief estimated budget (direct costs only), including budget justification and project duration.
Name of a senior personnel collaborator
CV
The Executive Committee will make the final decisions on the awards. We expect to award $180,000 (in direct costs), with proposal requests averaging $30,000. The abstracts of selected awards will be posted publicly on the CosmicAI website. Please address any questions to admin@cosmicai.org
Details:
Only one submission per PI is permissible.
The PIs are encouraged to propose exploratory projects that will position the research to be competitive for future external funding.
The seed proposals should be led by a faculty member or research scientist (not graduate students or postdocs) and submitted in collaboration with a senior member of CosmicAI. Abstracts may be submitted in the first round without a named collaborator.
The funding is awarded by NSF-Simons CosmicAI. Faculty members receiving funding shall include a statement of acknowledgment in any research products that are produced:
“Seed funding from the NSF-Simons AI Institute for Cosmic Origins through the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement 2421782 and the Simons Foundation award MPS-AI-00010515.”
Funds should be spent within one year of the award.
The CosmicAI program managers will compute overhead separately, and it does not need to be included in the estimated budget.
The award PI must provide a short progress update every quarter and present the funded project one year after funding is disbursed (for reporting purposes).
The proposal PI may be a member of a non-CosmicAI institution, but funding may be spent only through a CosmicAI institution (UT, UVA, Utah, UCLA, NYU, NOIRLab, NRAO); no subcontracts.
Funding may be directed to the salaries of graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, or senior personnel (not already receiving academic salaries from CosmicAI).