How we work with faculty

The Boston University Foundation Relations team, within the Office of Advancement, helps faculty identify, apply for, secure, and steward charitable gifts and grants from private philanthropic foundations and nongovernmental organizations. We match faculty research and programs with foundations’ priorities, which are often to support pilot projects and high-risk research that may not be attractive to traditional funders such as NIH and NSF. Additional details about how we work can be found in this overview.

“They were a GREAT addition to the process:  proactive, professional, detail oriented, rapidly responsive, friendly, and accommodating….In short, they were a key member of our submission team. Truth be told, I am not 100% sure that we would have made the submission deadline without them.”

—Thomas Gilmore, PhD, Professor, Biology

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Research

For Early-Career Faculty

Hundreds of foundation programs are focused on early-career faculty. Their funding can be highly beneficial, helping to seed a new project, confirm proof of concept, or generate pilot data. In contrast to federal funders, private funders are more willing to support high-risk, high-reward projects.

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By The Numbers

$60.6 million

foundation support to BU in FY25

430

proposals the Foundation Relations team helped faculty submit in FY25

38

“Meet the Funder” events organized by the Foundation Relations team over past four years

BU + Foundations in the News

Numerous faculty members from across the University receive foundation support.  Here are a few recent examples.

News

Kate Nussenbaum, Assistant Professor of PBS, announced as 2026 Jacobs CIFAR Research Fellow

Summary of Work Plans for Fellowship:  Making good choices requires considering not just their immediate outcomes, but also their longer-term consequences, a cognitive process that exhibits substantial individual variability across development. Such variability may reflect adaptation to the predictability of experienced environments. In predictable environments, knowledge of the world can be used to forecast the […]

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News

Amelia Stanton, Assistant Professor of PBS, awarded American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Early Career Researcher Grant

This study will apply a novel statistical approach to medical record data to identify subgroups of sexual and gender minority youth and young adults with intersecting factors that are associated with increased risk for suicidal ideation. The research team will also hold focus groups with sexual and gender minority youth patients at increased risk for […]

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News

Lucy Kim, Associate Professor of Art, announced as one of Wagner Foundation’s 2026 Arts Fellows

The Wagner Arts Fellowship honors mid-career to established artists who are committed to Boston’s creative arts ecosystem and to developing socially engaged, community-focused work. Three Greater Boston-based artists have been selected to receive $75,000 each to build their practices in 2026. The fellowship is geared towards contemporary visual artists, but also artists who transform our idea […]

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News

Project on social return to R&D investment led by QST Professor Timothy Simcoe chosen for support by Coefficient Giving, Sloan Foundation

Investments in research, development, and innovation are widely recognized as key drivers of long-term economic growth but estimates of the social rate of return on these investments vary substantially. To encourage research on this topic, sometimes called "The Griliches Question," the NBER has launched a five-year project that will be organized around the creation of […]

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News

Two BU Bioengineers, Brian DePasquale and Michael Economo, win prestigious Sloan Foundation Research Fellowships

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation gave 126 fellowships this year to early-career researchers from 44 institutions in the United States and Canada; the list was selected from more than 1,000 nominations. The prestigious honor (59 fellows have gone on to win Nobel Prizes) has been awarded annually since 1955 to researchers “whose creativity, innovation, and […]

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News

Study lead by Terry Ellis, Professor and Department Chair of Physical Therapy, receives $2M grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation

The funding will support a clinical study evaluating motor and cognitive factors associated with changes in walking for people with Parkinson's disease who use MedRhythms' MOVIVE (MR-005), a safe, use-at-home medical device that delivers rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) to support gait rehabilitation and motor function. This study was funded through The Michael J. Fox Foundation's […]

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News

Institute for Equity in Child Opportunity & Healthy Development (IECOHD) receives Rapid Response grant from William T. Grant Foundation

The project, Immigrant Inclusion in the U.S. Tax and Transfer System: Reviewing Evidence to Inform State Policy Action, is lead by Dolores Acevedo-Garcia (SSW), Stephanie Ettinger De Cuba (SPH), and Pamela K. Joshi (SSW), as well as Christopher Wimer at Columbia University. IECOHD and the Center on Poverty and Social Policy (CPSP) at the Columbia […]

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