Grants and Funding

Resources
Deadlines

The Mathematics business office needs your complete proposal TWO WEEKS before the granting agency’s submission deadline, in order to complete reviews and finalize the budget. Proposals that are incomplete at the campus Sponsored Programs Office (SPA) four business days before the sponsor’s submission deadline will not be submitted. The sponsor’s deadline day does not count as one of your four lead-time days, and neither do weekend days. Use the SPA Deadline Calculator! To avoid the risk of non-submission, make sure that your proposal is 100% complete for SPA to review a full WEEK ahead of the submission deadline.

To request an exception to the deadline, send your request with justification to the LAS Research Office and cc that email to Vera Hur (dept chair) and Cody Mayfield (dept budget director) to keep them informed. Requests will be denied unless very strong arguments are provided for approval. Your missing out on a funding opportunity is not by itself a strong argument. Please plan ahead, start early, and submit your proposals before the deadlines.

Foreign Institutions

Consult the US government lists of institutions that are deemed problematic or prohibited. In particular, the “1286” list includes a number of well-known universities in China and Russia. If you are involved with faculty members or officials in those countries then please check the lists carefully and send any questions about your involvement to the university’s Office of Research Security: researchsecurity@illinois.edu

National Science Foundation
  1. Quick-Start Guide to NSF proposal preparation
    …what the business office will do and what you need to do, for creating the proposal.
  2. Consult the NSF review criteria and questions for reviewers. Your proposal should aim to make it easy for reviewers to answer those questions. Note the NSF updates regarding “broadening participation”.
Simons Foundation
  • Travel Support for Mathematicians (January) – travel, memberships, equipment for tenure track and tenured faculty. Note. If the application system asks for a Gift Receiving Entity then enter “University of Illinois Foundation”; the Signing Official is “Christy Devocelle” (she is the CFO/Treasurer of the University of Illinois Foundation), the Financial Officer is also “Christy Devocelle”, and the Institution Administrative Contact is “Cody Mayfield”.
  • Targeted Grant (rolling) – high-risk projects of exceptional promise and importance
  • Collaborations in Mathematics and the Physical Sciences (October) – progress on fundamental questions of major importance
  • Simons Fellows in Mathematics (October) – sabbatical extension funding
  • AMS-Simons Travel grants (February) – 2-year travel grant, PhD within the last four years. For the “institutional verification”, put: Cody Mayfield <cmayfiel@illinois.edu>. It is important that you inform the Mathematics business office before you apply, so that the application can be completed accurately and the funding handled correctly if you are successful.
  • NSF-Simons National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology (March) – external grants
OTHER agencies
Campus funding
  • Campus Research Board (August, October, January, March) – proposals should be written to support your research, through RA support and/or research-related travel (see below). Publication fees are allowable too. The project can be joint with a student but should not be presented as solely the student’s work. A proposal for RA support should explain what the RA will do and what qualifications they possess for the work. Read the CRB policies for additional proposal and budget restrictions.
    RA budget figures for a 50% RA stipend: $13,720 for Fall 2025, $13,720 for Spring 2026, $6304 for Summer 2026 (2 months). The amounts include fringe benefits, and the summer figure includes a couple of hundred dollars additionally to cover extra fringes that get charged if the student is registered for fewer than 3 hours. The pay received by the RA will be lower than the figures above (since the figures include fringe benefits). We recommend that you request two semesters and a summer of funding, which will already exceed the Research Board’s maximum request of $30,000. Please confirm your budget calculations with the business office each semester before assigning an RA position. You may need to reduce the percentage appointment. Over-expenditures will be your responsibility, NOT the department’s, so please check with the business office.
    Travel budget figures: requests are considered for research-related travel such as travel to work with collaborators (but not conference travel, which is supported instead under the Scholars’ Travel Fund below). Include per diem figures in your request and put an itemized travel budget in the “Budget Justification” section of the application.
    Reporting other funds: look up your internal balances in My-UI-Financials (use the VPN to enable logging in). Specific CRB policies say what you must explain in the proposal about your internal funds and how they are committed e.g. “The PI has about $X in discretionary funds, which are used to pay for membership dues, books, conference registrations, seminar visitors, and an RA on a different project. Those funds are not sufficient to support an RA on the proposed project.” If you have more than $60,000 in internal funds then do not apply to the Research Board. If you have no internal funds, then explain briefly in the budget section (eg “start-up all spent”). If you hold an external grant, then explain why it does not cover the RA requested from the CRB e.g. because the project proposed to the CRB is different from the externally funded proposal. 
  • Scholars’ Travel Fund (monthly) – conference travel support for faculty members, incl. some specialized faculty
  • Provost’s Initiative on Teaching Advancement PITA (March) – grants of $7500 for instructional improvements
Collaboration in residence programs
Research communities