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Greetings,

 

We are excited to share this funding opportunity from Schmidt Sciences. The Virtual Institute for the Carbon Cycle (VICC) is requesting Expressions of Interest (EOIs) to support transformational research that dramatically reduces uncertainty in the global carbon cycle by an order of magnitude and provides robust scientific knowledge to guide effective climate policy and solutions. More information about the award can be found in the synopsis and links below. For a full list of currently open opportunities that have been announced through our office, please visit our new Current Opportunities web page. As a reminder, our Research Development team is available to provide proposal development support to FAS ladder faculty.

 

Schmidt Sciences: Virtual Institute for the Carbon Cycle (VICC) Phase 2 Expressions of Interest (EOI)

  • OSP Deadline: not applicable at the EOI stage
  • Sponsor EOI Deadline: August 28, 2026 at 11:59 PM ET
  • Award Amount: Commensurate with project; a typical award is $10M over 5 years. A preliminary budget describing project expenses will be requested at the EOI stage.
    Schmidt Sciences allows an indirect cost rate of 11.11% (framed as 10% of the total project cost in the request for EOIs). This falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss this with your grants administrator before preparing an application.
 

Program Overview

 

Schmidt Sciences Virtual Institutes (VIs) are focused research networks that bring together top scientists across institutions and disciplines to tackle specific, high-impact problems. Each VI supports a limited number of multi-institutional, often international, projects, typically led by one primary institution with 2–3 core partners and a broader set of collaborators. These teams are selected to pursue timely opportunities where new approaches can significantly accelerate progress. VIs are designed to take on high-risk, high-reward challenges that can expand fundamental scientific knowledge and deliver meaningful benefits to society. 

 

The Virtual Institute for the Carbon Cycle (VICC) is one of several Schmidt Sciences Virtual Institutes. VICC supports transformational research that dramatically reduces uncertainty in the global carbon cycle by an order of magnitude and provides robust scientific knowledge to guide effective climate policy and solutions. The goal of VICC is two-fold: (a) improve understanding and reduce uncertainty of both natural and anthropogenic components of the global carbon cycle to inform (detect/attribute) mitigation in carbon emissions, and (b) improve understanding and reduce uncertainty of future changes in the global carbon cycle, including carbon-climate feedbacks, to inform climate policies. Phase 1 refers to the collection of four projects that are currently underway within the VICC program. These four projects (CLARiTy, COCO2, CongoFlex, PeTCaT) started in October 2025 and are currently in Year 1 with an anticipated completion date of 2030. Projects that will be selected as part of this round of VICC will constitute Phase 2. The Institute aims to support several multidisciplinary and international teams of researchers by providing sustained funding for up to 5 years and networking support to pursue novel and ambitious research aligned with VICC goals. Projects may hinge on significantly improving our mechanistic understanding and constraints on key components of the carbon cycle via modeling, observational, data assimilation, or any combination of those approaches.

 

VICC Phase 2 intends to fund up to five to seven projects. The intention of this VICC program is to provide research awards with relatively flexible funds over an extended period. Previously awarded projects in other Schmidt Sciences Virtual Institutes have used these flexible funds to, amongst other things, support graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and other scientists; to facilitate conferences, meetings and exchanges between personnel at the collaborating institutions; to obtain software engineering support and cloud computational infrastructure (cloud compute/GPU, cloud storage); and for other standard research expenses. 

 

Priority Areas

  • Theme 1. Anthropogenic emissions and their fate in time and space, in order to make major improvements in the accuracy of the global carbon budget.
  • Theme 2. Carbon cycle behavior on policy-relevant timescales in order to enable attribution and robust distinction between the response of the carbon cycle to natural and anthropogenic drivers.
  • Theme 3. The future of the land and ocean carbon stocks and fluxes in a changing climate on decadal to centennial timescales, including evaluating the potential for surprises and abrupt change.
  • Projects outside of these focus areas are welcome, as long as they are aligned with VICC’s overarching mission and goals of closing key knowledge gaps in carbon cycle science, significantly reducing the uncertainty associated with the major components of the carbon cycle, and improving the accuracy of their future projections.
 

Eligibility Criteria

  • An individual may only serve as the PI on one EOI. They may serve as a co-investigator/collaborator on multiple EOIs.
  • Multidisciplinary and international teams of researchers are strongly encouraged.
    • Project teams do not need to include U.S.-based institutions, and teams may include industry and NGO partners. 
    • Project teams should prioritize representation across disciplines, geographies, and backgrounds.
    • Project teams should also provide opportunities for the participation and development of early-career scientists. 
  • Early-to-mid-career researchers are welcome to submit proposals as the lead PI.
 

EOI Materials

  • The body of the EOI should be a maximum of 3 pages in length and address the following elements:

    • A description of the primary area of innovation of the proposed project, the key challenges that will be addressed in support of VICC’s mission and goals, scope of the proposed research, key project goals and scientific hypotheses that will be tackled.

    • A summary of any notable observational, technological, and computational needs.

    • An overview of the scientific ability, relevant expertise, scientific project management experience, and capacity of the PIs and partner institutions to run a large project.

      • The EOI proposal document should not include any PI, team, and partner names and affiliations as the EOIs will go through a blind evaluation process.

    • A preliminary budget

    • If any generative AI was used, include a short statement about its usage for developing the proposal.

  • Figures are allowed within the 3 pages, but citations should be listed on separate pages. While there is no page llimit for citations, the list should be kept short.
  • Please review the the VICC Phase 2 EOI call guidelines for formatting requirements and other considerations for preparing EOIs.
 

Review Process

  • EOIs will go through a blind evaluation by a committee of carbon cycle and climate experts, the VICC Advisory Board members and Schmidt Sciences staff.
  • The number of teams invited to submit full proposals will be dependent on the number and quality of EOIs that are submitted.
  • All applicants will be notified of the status of their application on or before November 1, 2026. 
  • Selected teams will be invited to write a full proposal (Step 2) including providing more scientific and technical details, project budgets, timelines and team composition. Invited teams will have approximately 60 days to submit the full proposal. These proposals will be subsequently reviewed by an independent panel of experts, committee of advisors, and the Schmidt Sciences team. 
  • Final selection of projects in Phase 2 will occur by Summer 2027. 
 

Additional Information and Resources

 

Interested applicants are encouraged to view the VICC Phase 2 EOI call guidelines, the VICC Phase 2 FAQs, and to learn more about the four projects funded by VICC Phase 1 in 2025. EOIs must be submitted through the Schmidt Sciences application portal.

 

Interested applicants may join upcoming webinars to learn more about the program (recordings of the webinars and a copy of the slides will be posted on their website): 

Teams should plan for a start date of October 1, 2027. A nominal 5-year period of performance implies that projects should aim to end by September 30, 2032. Teams should include funds to participate in an annual VICC-related Science Team meeting each year, lasting five days. Meeting locations are likely to alternate between Europe and the U.S. For planning purposes, teams should plan that the first meeting will happen in October 2027 in Europe. 

 

Questions from FAS or SEAS faculty about this opportunity may be directed to research_development@fas.harvard.edu.

MAILING LISTS

Sign up to join the mailing list for FAS Funding Focus, a resource series tailored to help FAS faculty and staff navigate the ever-evolving landscape of grants and funding. Previous editions of FAS Funding Focus (FFF) are accessible in the FFF archive. To receive additional announcements from FORA, including the monthly On Your RADAR (Research Administration Developments & Announcements Rundown) newsletter and invitations to the FORA Forum, a monthly meeting for Harvard research administrators, please sign up for the FORA listserv here.
 

RESOURCES

Research Development maintains a Sample Proposal Library of successful proposals from recent award recipients that are available to FAS and SEAS faculty by request; please email Research Development to request to view a proposal. For more information on Research Development's resources—including lists of internal funding programs, early career funding programs, and sabbatical fellowships—please visit the Funding Opportunities web page. 
 

SEARCH FOR OPPORTUNITIES WITH PIVOT

All Harvard affiliates can search for opportunities and set up alerts using Pivot, a searchable database of federal and private funding opportunities. Information on Pivot, including a one-page user guide, and other funding opportunity databases available to the Harvard community can be found on the Funding Databases web page.
 

PIVOT CURATED SEARCHES

Curated funding opportunity lists are funding search topics of broad interest. The following curated lists can be further refined in Pivot based on your funding needs. To view the results you must be on a Harvard network or logged in to your Pivot account. Information on setting up a Pivot account can be found in our one-page user guide. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Additional curated lists are available on the Funding Databases web page. We continue to add to and refine these lists based on feedback. Please feel free to reach out to us at research_development@fas.harvard.edu with any suggestions you may have.
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