Research opportunities
Subscribe to updatesCompetitions, grants, fellowships, calls for papers, conferences and workshops for undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs and early-career researchers. Every entry links to the official announcement — use “Team up” to find collaborators for it.
- Community submitted · NIH / NIDA6 days left
Competition · 2026 $100,000 Start an SUD Startup Challenge
Research ideas intended to become biotech startups in drug use, misuse, and substance use disorder. Award: Up to $100,000 cash.
Eligible for: Postdoc / Faculty / Independent researcher / Master's student / PhD student / Industry
- Official source · Arc Institute9 days left
Competition · Arc Institute 2026 Virtual Cell Challenge
Zero-shot prediction of CRISPRi perturbation responses across unseen cell contexts; $100,000 grand prize.
Eligible for: Master's student / PhD student / Postdoc / Faculty / Independent researcher / Industry
- Community submitted · American Society of Plant Biologists17 days left
Grant · ASPB Travel Awards — Plant Biology 2027
Competitive travel support for early-career plant scientists attending Plant Biology 2027.
Eligible for: Undergraduate / Master's student / PhD student / Postdoc / Faculty / Independent researcher
- Community submitted · Farm Robotics Challenge / UC ANR / AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems17 days left
Competition · Farm Robotics Challenge 2027
Student agricultural robotics competition solving real farming problems with AI, robotics, sensing and software. Award: 2027 prizes pending; >$100,000 awarded in 2026.
Eligible for: Undergraduate / Master's student / PhD student
- Community submitted · NIH / NIDDK34 days left
Competition · NIDDK Early Research Partnership Engagement Challenge
Strategies for early community engagement and stronger academic-community research partnerships. Award: Up to $1,000,000 total prizes.
Eligible for: Postdoc / Faculty / Independent researcher / Undergraduate / Master's student / PhD student
- Community submitted · American Society of Plant Biologists34 days left
Grant · ASPB Recognition Travel Awards — Plant Biology 2027
Full-ride travel support for students, postdocs and faculty who meet the program's workforce-development criteria. Award: Typically travel, lodging, registration, per diem and membership.
Eligible for: Undergraduate / Master's student / PhD student / Postdoc / Faculty
- Community submitted · Stanford Qiu Lab / NeurIPS 202636 days left
Competition · Virtual Embryo Challenge — NeurIPS 2026
Predict embryonic gene expression, spatial organization, temporal development and mutant perturbation responses. Award: $112,000 in prizes and awards.
Eligible for: Master's student / PhD student / Postdoc / Faculty / Independent researcher / Industry
- Community submitted · NIH42 days left
Fellowship/position · NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (F31)
Up to five years (typically two to three) of mentored dissertation-research support for PhD students in health-related research fields, awarded through the participating NIH institutes.
Eligible for: PhD student
- Community submitted · USDA NIFA65 days left
Grant · AFRI Education and Workforce Development
Institutional grants for agricultural workforce training, experiential learning, undergraduate research/extension and predoctoral/postdoctoral fellowships. Award: $39.7M estimated program funding; $10K-$650K awards.
Eligible for: Undergraduate / Master's student / PhD student / Postdoc
- Community submitted · U.S. Department of Energy / Krell Institute72 days left
Fellowship/position · DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship — 2027-2028
Four-year fellowship for early-stage PhD students using HPC to solve complex science and engineering problems. Award: $45,000 annual stipend plus full tuition and fees; renewable up to 4 years.
Eligible for: Undergraduate / Master's student / PhD student
- Community submitted · Plant and Animal Genome Conference (PAG)1/8/2027 – 1/13/2027 · San Diego, CA
Conference · Plant and Animal Genome Conference (PAG 34)
Large annual forum on plant and animal genome projects, with workshops on genomic selection, quantitative genetics and bioinformatics.
- Community submitted · NIH80 days left
Competition · It's About Time: Temporal Reasoning in Biomedical Knowledge Graphs Challenge
Develop temporal embeddings and reasoning systems for biomedical knowledge graphs. Award: Up to $1,000,000 total purse.
Eligible for: Master's student / PhD student / Postdoc / Faculty / Independent researcher / Industry
- Community submitted · Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship / Rice University94 days left
Competition · Rice Business Plan Competition 2027
Major collegiate startup pitch competition where student-founded companies pitch investors for more than $1M in cash, investment and prizes. Award: More than $1,000,000 in cash, investment and prizes.
Eligible for: Master's student / PhD student / Undergraduate / Independent researcher / Industry
- Community submitted · NIH / NLM96 days left
Competition · SPARK PubMed/PMC Challenge
Build AI systems that generate citation-backed biomedical literature synthesis and support complex literature exploration. Award: $250,000 total prizes.
Eligible for: Master's student / PhD student / Postdoc / Faculty / Independent researcher / Industry
- Community submitted · NIH / NLM96 days left
Competition · SPARK dbGaP Challenge
AI-powered genomic/phenotypic study discovery, including semantic variable normalization and conversational cohort-feasibility analysis. Award: $250,000 total prizes.
Eligible for: Master's student / PhD student / Postdoc / Faculty / Independent researcher / Industry
- Community submitted · NIH / NIDDK184 days left
Competition · Kidney Artificial Intelligence Discovery Challenge: From Nebulae to Nephrons
Apply AI/computer vision to kidney images, multi-omics, spatial data and clinical information. Award: $100,000 total cash prizes.
Eligible for: Postdoc / Faculty / Independent researcher / Master's student / PhD student / Industry
- Community submitted · Microsoft
Competition · 2027 Microsoft Imagine Cup
Global student startup competition with Microsoft AI resources, mentorship and startup prizes. Award: $100,000 Scale World Champion; $50,000 Launch prize.
Eligible for: Undergraduate / Master's student / PhD student
- Community submitted · Activate
Grant · Activate Fellowship
Fellowship for scientists and engineers who want to commercialize their research, with funding, lab access and entrepreneurial support.
Eligible for: PhD student / Postdoc / Faculty / Independent researcher
- Community submitted · Amazon Web Services
Grant · AWS Cloud Credit for Research
Cloud computing credits for researchers and institutions who need compute and storage for data-intensive projects.
Eligible for: PhD student / Postdoc / Faculty
- Community submitted · DREAM Challenges / Sage Bionetworks
Competition · DREAM Challenges
A long-running series of crowd-sourced computational challenges in biomedicine, run with open data and rigorous benchmarking.