Fast Grants Program

Researchers at any career stage across academic institutions worldwide are eligible. We particularly welcome:

• Early-career faculty
• Postdoctoral scholars
• Graduate students
• Undergraduates (with faculty sponsorship; $25K tier only)

Applicants must be affiliated with an institution eligible to receive a charitable gift from a US private foundation:

• US institutions: any 501(c)(3) public charity in good standing — universities, non-profit research institutes, academic medical centers, qualifying hospitals; state or federal government instrumentalities (e.g., state university research foundations) are eligible.
• Non-US institutions: must be a foreign equivalent — confirmed via active equivalency determination (NGOsource, etc.) or received via a US-based fiscal sponsor that is itself a 501(c)(3). If you're unsure, indicate this on your application — your sponsored programs office can usually answer in a single email.
• For-profit companies, individual researchers receiving funds personally, and OFAC-sanctioned institutions are not eligible.

$25K, $50K, or $100K tiers in a single payment for a 12-month project period. 

Please note: Undergraduate applicants are eligible for the $25K tier only.

The application is designed to be low-friction and concise. Each section must be formatted in bullet points according to the following requirements:

• Project Title
• One-sentence summary A plain-language description of your project that we can publish on the BFF website if funded (≤200 characters) 
• The question / idea What you want to explore and why it matters (3–5 bullets, ~50 words, 275 characters)
• What you'll do The experiment/approach (3–5 bullets, ~50 words, 275 characters)
• Why now / why this team Relevant background (2–3 bullets, ~30 words, 200 characters)
• Budget Line items totaling $25k, $50k, or $100k; single payment; 12-month project period; indirect costs ≤ 15%. (~50 words, 275 characters)
• Outputs What you intend to release publicly; sharing back is strongly preferred but not strictly required (1–2 bullets, ~20 words, 125 characters)‍
• Brief bio Your role and institution, plus 2–3 representative pieces of work (3–4 bullets, ~80 words, 400 characters)

Required conditions: 

• Indirect costs ≤ 15% 
• 1-page written update at month 6 
• Acknowledgment of the Biswas Family Foundation in research publications.‍

Strongly preferred:

• ‍‍Release of code, models, and/or datasets back to the community. We're not prescriptive about how — we want the work to compound for the field beyond the grant period.

We offer a flexible “curiosity budget” and encourage applicants to propose their own line items. Budget items could include:

• Cloud compute, GPU rentals, API or token credits
• Dataset acquisition or licensing
• Research assistant or trainee hours
• Small reagents and consumables
• Travel to disseminate results‍
• Indirect costs capped at 15% (Foundation standard)