Division of Physics: Investigator-Initiated Research Projects | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Physics (PHY) grant opportunity titled "Division of Physics: Investigator-Initiated Research Projects" (Funding Opportunity Number 16-566) supports investigator-driven research and education efforts in physics at colleges and universities across the United States. The central idea is to fund projects proposed by researchers themselves rather than limiting submissions to narrowly defined topics, allowing scientists to pursue new questions, develop theories, build experimental approaches, and advance physics education in ways that align with NSF's broader mission in science and engineering research and development.

This opportunity covers a wide span of physics, explicitly emphasizing work that ranges across the largest and smallest scales of space and time, from very old to very young phenomena. NSF PHY indicates that it supports both experimental and theoretical research, meaning proposals can be rooted in laboratory and instrument-based studies, computational and simulation approaches, analytic theory, or combinations of these methods. The programs within the Division of Physics span major subfields, including Accelerator Science; Atomic, Molecular, and Optical (AMO) Physics; Computational Physics; Elementary Particle Physics; Gravitational Physics; Integrative Activities in Physics; Nuclear Physics; Particle Astrophysics; Physics of Living Systems; and Quantum Information Science. Plasma Physics is noted as being supported under a separate solicitation, which signals that plasma-focused proposals should be directed to that distinct program call rather than submitted under this one.

Eligibility is listed as unrestricted (open to any type of entity), subject to any clarifications that might appear in the official eligibility text. In practice, this kind of NSF physics solicitation most commonly serves universities and research institutions, but the posted eligibility statement is broad and does not narrow the applicant pool in the summary data provided. The funding instrument is a grant, and the activity category is "Science and Technology and other Research and Development." The CFDA numbers associated with this opportunity are 47.049, which corresponds to NSF physics-related assistance listings.

A key piece of guidance in the solicitation is about how applicants should submit proposals when their work could reasonably fit more than one physics program. The Division of Physics strongly encourages submitting a single proposal for possible co-review rather than sending multiple, slightly modified versions of the same idea to different programs. In other words, if a project is interdisciplinary or sits at the boundary between two PHY programs, NSF prefers one well-prepared proposal that can be jointly reviewed by the relevant programs, instead of multiple near-duplicate submissions. This helps reduce redundant reviewing, avoids confusion about which proposal is the "real" one, and increases the likelihood that the best version of the idea is evaluated cleanly by the appropriate experts.

Administrative details in the source data show the opportunity was posted and created on May 15, 2016, with an original and current closing date of December 1, 2016. The award ceiling and expected number of awards are not specified in the summary fields provided, which usually means applicants would need to consult the full solicitation text for typical award sizes, project durations, and program-specific budget expectations. Overall, the opportunity is a broad, division-level entry point for investigator-initiated physics research proposals across many subfields, with an explicit preference for single submissions that can be co-reviewed when a project overlaps multiple programs.

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