Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI), Funding Opportunity Number 09-516, is a discretionary grant program designed to strengthen working partnerships between universities and industry. The central idea is to support collaborative arrangements where academic researchers and industry professionals jointly pursue research and related training that neither side would typically be able to do as effectively alone. GOALI is especially oriented toward relationships that meaningfully move people, ideas, and problem-solving approaches across the academic-industry boundary, with an emphasis on projects that can produce broadly useful knowledge and long-term impact rather than short-term product development.

GOALI supports several types of university-industry linkages. A key priority is enabling faculty members, postdoctoral researchers, and students to conduct research and gain hands-on experience in an industrial setting, which can include temporary placements or structured collaboration where the industry environment plays a real role in shaping the work. The program also encourages the reverse flow of expertise by supporting industrial scientists and engineers who bring an industry perspective, practical integrative skills, and real-world constraints into academic research and education. In addition, GOALI explicitly welcomes interdisciplinary teams that combine university and industry participants to tackle research problems collaboratively, particularly where the mix of disciplines and institutional perspectives is essential to the approach.

From a research standpoint, the solicitation targets high-risk, high-reward efforts, with a clear preference for fundamental research and transformative ideas that extend beyond what industry would normally fund on its own. That means proposals are expected to push into new conceptual territory, explore new approaches to generic or widely shared technical challenges, or develop fresh methods that could reshape a field. Beyond research outputs, GOALI also highlights the development of innovative collaborative educational programs between universities and industry, and it places strong value on direct transfer of new knowledge between academia and industry. Taken together, the program is structured to fund work that advances science and engineering while also building durable, mutually beneficial collaboration models.

Administratively, GOALI is run by NSF and spans a wide range of NSF directorates and topic areas, reflected in the listed CFDA numbers. Eligible areas include Engineering; Mathematical and Physical Sciences; Geosciences; Computer and Information Science and Engineering; Biological Sciences; Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences; Education and Human Resources; Polar Programs; the Office of International Science and Engineering; and the Office of Cyberinfrastructure. In practice, this breadth signals that GOALI is not limited to one discipline, but instead can support university-industry partnerships wherever NSF-funded fundamental research can be credibly advanced through industry engagement.

The opportunity anticipated about 80 awards with an estimated total funding of $10,000,000. Individual awards listed an approximate floor of $6,000 and a ceiling of $100,000. The solicitation indicates there is no cost sharing or matching requirement, which can simplify budgeting and institutional approvals compared with programs that require formal cost share commitments.

On timing and submission, the notice notes that supplemental funding requests should be discussed with the relevant NSF program officer before submission. For full proposals, applicants are directed to check with the NSF program officer in the specific research field for acceptable submission periods rather than relying on a single fixed deadline. The record also indicates that this solicitation was later replaced by NSF 10-580 and archived on July 13, 2010, so anyone pursuing a GOALI-style submission would typically look to the successor solicitation and current NSF guidance rather than relying on the archived version alone.

Eligibility is summarized at a high level as "Others" with additional clarification in the full text, but one explicit restriction is included: for fellowships and traineeships under GOALI, only U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, or U.S. permanent residents are eligible to apply for support. That citizenship/residency limitation is tied specifically to fellowship/traineeship support, which is important for teams planning student or postdoctoral participation through those mechanisms.

For applicants seeking more detailed requirements, the notice points to NSF Publication 09-516 as the additional information link. It also provides support contacts for access and linking issues through NSF Grants.gov support at grantsgovsupport@nsf.gov.

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