MIT Research Grants

J-WAFS has a number of grant programs that provide research funding to the MIT community. Ranging from seed grants, commercialization grants, and sponsored research requiring an MIT Principal Investigator to smaller research grants for students, over $16 million has been distributed to the MIT community over the past five years to support critical water and food research.

Ongoing

Direct Sponsored Research

A unique opportunity to directly support and engage with the MIT community and to address your organization’s water or food system challenges through impactful research projects, technology commercialization, and student funding, mentorship, and recruitment.

Open RFPs

A line of people bent over picking crops in a rice field

J-WAFS Water and Food Seed Grant (Annual)

Grants for new, early-stage, innovative projects that are sufficiently distinct from prior research, and that can benefit from one or two years of funding with the hopes of significantly impacting water and food supply challenges.

Currently Closed

Hay barrels in a flooded agricultural field

J-WAFS Water and Food Grand Challenge Grant

A new opportunity targeting grand challenges in water and food that can benefit from actionable, solutions-oriented research, and that can leverage multiple existing areas of expertise, programs, and Institute resources.

A man with an head scarf squatting picking stalks in a field of wheat

J-WAFS Grant for Water and Food Projects in India

A funding opportunity for current members of the MIT community interested in addressing a water or food-related challenge in India. These grants are offered periodically.

Cows grazing in a green grassy meadow under blue skies

J-WAFS Grant for Transforming Animal Agriculture Systems

A funding opportunity for current members of the MIT community—including students—interested in addressing problems associated with industrial animal food production (IFAP), including ways to mitigate large, industrial farming.

Close up shot of grains of wheat in a sunny field

J-WAFS Solutions Grant (Annual)

Grants to help MIT researchers move their water and food technologies from the labs to the commercial world, to improve the productivity, accessibility, and sustainability of the world's water and food systems.