Enterprise Innovation brings internal and external collaboration opportunities to our faculty and trainees. These programs provide extra funding and opportunities to work with industry to advance faculty/trainees' translational research projects.
Please contact Dr. James Bellush at james.bellush@cornell.edu if you have any questions or need guidance on your application.
1. Burroughs Wellcome Fund: Next Gen Pregnancy Initiative
Eligibility: Program invites applications from investigators who aim to study the interrelatedness of pregnancy duration, fetal growth, and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Successful research proposals will investigate underlying mechanisms of normal pregnancy, preeclampsia, preterm birth, and late pregnancy loss – specific emphasis on subtyping adverse pregnancy outcomes, investigating maternal – fetal interactions, and integrating animal models with clinical outcomes.
Award Details: Funding of up to $500,000 over 4 year period ($125,000 / yr)
Submission: Application instructions linked here
Deadline: Full proposals due Dec. 4, 2025
2. Sanofi: iDEA-Tech Awards North America
Eligibility: iDEA-TECH Award provides $150,000 in funding to support 1-year projects led by academic researchers and early-stage startups. This program seeks to explore emerging science and technologies that can be applied across the therapeutic pipeline, with focus areas including real-world evidence, novel modalities, advanced imaging, multi-omics, disease modeling, process innovation, and safety assessment.
- Please see attached PDF for specific research scope guidance
Submission Details: Details regarding application instruction and pre-proposal template can be found here
Award Details: $150,000 in funding for 1 year (IDC included)
Submission Deadline: December 12, 2025
3. AACR – Mark Foundation: Chemistry in Cancer Research Grant
Eligibility: Grants are designed to support groundbreaking basic or translational research utilizing chemistry or chemical biology to address urgent issues in cancer. Projects should aim to develop chemical tools or probes to validate emerging cancer targets to advance our understanding of cancer biology. Relevant proposal may include:
- Chemical tools / probes to explore gene function, biology, or validate target (antibody or peptide approach)
- Novel conjugation approach to improve efficacy of biologics
- Induced proximity approaches (PROTAC, molecular glues) to modulate cancer-driving proteins
- Advanced delivery systems to improve the delivery of drugs, genes, or other therapeutic agents to tumors
Submission Details: LOI should be non-confidential and submitted through ProposalCentral
Award Details: Budgets up to $435,000 for 3 years
Submission Deadline: December 16, 2025
4. Gates Foundation: Grand Challenge, Low-Cost Maternal and Child Nutrient Ingredients and Products
- Eligibility: Gates Foundation is seeking proposals for transformative, bold solutions to address malnutrition in lower middle income countries (LMICs). Core objectives are to develop exceptionally low-cost nutrient ingredients (sp. calcium, choline, DHA) and low-cost prenatal supplements to improve maternal and child health globally.
- GF is seeking proposals which innovate across the entire product lifecycle, including raw material sourcing, ingredient formulation, manufacturing methods, and packaging
- Submission Details: Specific RFP details and instructions for application can be found via link above
- Award Details: Funding range from $200,000 - $500,000 over 12-18 months (depending on specific development scope)
- Submission Deadline: December 16, 2025
- Eligibility: Gates Foundation is soliciting applications that contribute to development of vaginal formulations that promote optimal drug delivery within the vaginal compartment. Committee aims to identify product-agnostic features that promote vaginal health and broadly advance product development for women’s health. Core objectives for RFP include:
- Leveraging biology for vaginally administered products
- Defining characteristics of ideal vaginal product
- Submission Details: Specific RFP details and instructions for application can be found via link above
- Award Details: $250,000 in funding for 2 years (max 10-15% IDC included)
- Submission Deadline: December 16, 2025
6. Alzheimer’s Research UK: Dementia Frontiers Fund
- Eligibility: Dementia Frontiers Fund is a bold, ambitious initiative empowering researchers to tackle the most urgent and complex questions in dementia. Proposals which address the following core questions will be accepted in a staged application process:
- Can we better predict and stage disease progression in dementia?
- What are the relative contributions of different brain changes to the development of dementia?
- Why are some high-risk populations resilient to dementia?
- Submission Details: Funding call will follow a staged process:
- Stage 1 – Expression of Interest (EOI), approximately $50,000 will be awarded to ~10 research teams to support further proposal development
- Stage 2 – Full application, shortlisted teams will be invited to submit a full application and be reviewed by expert panel, 4 teams will be selected to receive a two-year award from a $6,000,000 funding pool
- Stage 3 – At least one team demonstrating the most promising progress and clear path to answering research question will be eligible for major follow on award for an additional 3-years
- Award Details: Stage 1 - $50,000, Stage 2 – up to $1,200,000, Stage 3 – Follow on award (TBD). Additional details on funding and eligibility can be found here.
- Submission Deadline: Expression of intent (EOI) deadline January 7, 2026