snowy mountain under starry night sky

YPS Grant Program

Funding innovative interdisciplinary research through competitive grants.

Read the 2025 Request for Proposals Grant Info Session Recording

At a Glance

YPS awards three types of grants, reflecting a growing and diversifying demand across the university to support novel and impactful projects that solve planetary challenges. 

  • Initiation

    Up to $25,000 to spark new ideas and a 12-month timeline

  • Acceleration

    Lay the groundwork for implementation with up to $100,000 and an 18-month timeline

  • Constellation

    Transform knowledge into action with up to $250,000 to and a 24-month timeline

  • Deadline

    The application deadline has passed for YPS’s 4th Annual Grant Program

Request for Proposals

The YPS Grant Program is intended to provide support to collaborative groups of Yale community members striving to create novel solutions, pilot new projects, or further existing ideas towards solving planetary challenges that are too complex to be addressed by a single individual or within a single discipline. We look forward to supporting individuals and teams from different disciplines, schools, and academic domains. 

The program is funded with longstanding, generous support from the Three Cairns Climate Impact Innovation Fund, with additional support from the Natural Carbon Solutions Fund, the Simon Bates Catalyst Fund, the Science Catalyst Fund for Planetary Solutions, the Gordon Data and Environmental Sciences Research Grants, and the Science Frontiers Endowment. Other funding partners include the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture and AI at Yale.

Partners

YPS grants are funded through generous gifts and partnerships

Three Distinct Grant Types

Intended to empower work on potential new, challenging, or high-risk research and scholarship. Activities in an Initiation grant may include but are not limited to workshops, conferences, book projects, art installations, and curricular improvements. Initiation grants can have budgets up to $25,000 and a 12-month timeline.  

Intended to support projects focused on research and scholarship that lay the groundwork for implementation. This may involve conducting proof-of-concept studies, gathering preliminary data, and practicing team science. This phase is crucial for bridging the gap between ideas and practical, scalable solutions. Acceleration grants can have budgets up to $100,000 and an 18-month timeline.  


 

Intended to enable transformation of academic knowledge into tangible, actionable outcomes in concert with stakeholders. This could include pre-commercialization efforts to support new spin-out companies or developing, testing and scaling decision-making tools in collaboration with stakeholders who would implement those tools in their activities. This phase is aimed at ensuring that the research achieves its full potential.  Constellation grants can have budgets up to $250,000 and a 24-month timeline.  

PI Eligibility

All teams must be led by a current Yale faculty or staff member who is eligible to serve as a PI and has gained approval to serve as PI, if approval is needed. Even though this is internal funding, we are following the 1310 Principal Investigator Eligibility Requirements on Sponsored Projects policy, and therefore asking that faculty who would need to submit the PI status request form (Form 1310 FR.04) and staff who would need to seek approval from the Provost or Dean of self-support units for an external opportunity do the same for this opportunity as well. Please upload the completed form in the PI Status Request Form section on InfoReady.

No. Trainees, including postdocs, are not eligible to serve as PI.

No. PIs need to be current Yale faculty or staff with permission to serve in this role.

Co-PIs are allowed; however, each proposal must be submitted by a single PI who is responsible for overall management of the project. Please upload the Biosketch, CV, or Resume of any individuals who will serve as PI or co-PIs.

Past Grant Projects

Related Insights

Grant Information Session

A recording of the grant info session can be viewed via Zoom.

Zoom Video Recording

Questions?

Visit the links for more information, and reach out to us with any questions.

planetarysolutions@yale.edu