Solve Tab

Campus Sustainability Incubator Fund

This new fund was launched by the MIT Office of Sustainability in March 2017

The Campus Sustainability Incubator Fund seeks to enable MIT community members to use the MIT campus as a test bed for research in sustainable operations, management and design. The seed funds will enable students, faculty, and researchers to explore the physical facility and social context in which they are working, living and learning. The Campus Sustainability Incubator Fund, is made possible through a generous gift from Malcom B. Strandberg. Find out more about the fund here.

More on the Incubator Fund

Win a prize for your idea or solution

IDEAS Global Challenge

IDEAS is an annual innovation and social entrepreneurship competition for MIT students and their collaborators. We enable students to apply their MIT education in real-world situations to tackle quality of life issues for people around the world. Winning teams receive up to $15,000 to launch their projects during a 15-month grant period.

Lemelson-MIT Student Prize

The Lemelson-MIT Student Prize honors promising collegiate inventors around the country. The student prize is open to teams of undergraduate students and individual graduate students who have inventions in categories that represent significant sectors of the economy; healthcare, transportation, food and agriculture, or consumer devices.

MindHandHeart Innovation Fund

The MindHandHeart Innovation Fund seeks to leverage the enthusiasm and problem-solving skills of the MIT community to find new and inventive ways of increasing awareness about mental health, building communities of support, and promoting life and wellness skills. The Fund offers grants of up to $10,000 to invest in cutting-edge ideas and grassroots solutions developed right here by our faculty, students, and staff.

MIT Clean Energy Prize

The MIT Clean Energy Prize is a multi-stage, student-organized business plan competition. In 2016, student entrepreneurial teams competed for a $100,000 Grand Prize and $125,000 in category prizes, among other awards. University teams from across the United States enter their business ideas in one of four categories: Generating Energy, Delivering Energy, Improving Energy Usage, Energy for Developing Economies

MIT Water Innovation Prize

A solutions-to-market competition aiming to help support the next breakthrough in the water sector. Its goal is to help emerging entrepreneurs translate their research or idea into a business, access mentors and resources, and build their networks in the water industry. The competition welcomes all approaches to water innovation, from engineering and product design to policy and data analytics.

Rabobank-MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize

This new prize is intended to be the premier food and agribusiness business plan competition for university and graduate students. It is sponsored by Rabobank, a leading institution in agribusiness financing, and is supported by J-WAFS and the MIT Food and Agriculture Club. The two-stage competition will culminate with finalist teams presenting their business plans as they compete to win $25,000 in total prize money.

Student Group Technical Project Grant

The MIT Innovation Initiative Student Group Technical Project Grant supports student groups working to develop and build hardware/software projects and prototypes for their own exploration or for entrance into competitions.

The Veraqua Prize

The Veraqua Prize is special pool of up to $10,000 within the MIT Water Innovation Prize focused on awarding solutions that focus on the water challenges faced in China. The winning team will develop a working water purification device that effectively removes common contaminants found in China's water, sustains performance level for everyday use over 6-12 months, and can be mass-produced at an affordable cost.

Apply for grant funding to get your project off the ground

Community Service Fund

MIT staff, graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, and retirees are eligible to apply for CSF grants to support their personal public service initiatives, which include programs that they run or would like to start, or projects that they want to work on that enhance the public service work of an existing organization or school.

Campus Sustainability Incubator Fund

The fund seeks to enable MIT community members to use the MIT campus as a test bed for research in sustainable operations, management and design. This opportunity is open to faculty, students, and staff for awards up to $200,000.

D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellowship Program

The MIT D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellowship offers one year of support to social entrepreneurs bringing hardware-based, poverty-alleviating products and services to market at scale. Alumni of MIT and the International Development Design Summit are eligible to apply. Scale-Ups Fellows receive a $20,000 grant, a set of assigned mentors, skills-building, an annual conference, webinars, tailored resources, and networking opportunities.

Deshpande Center Ignition and Innovation Grants

The Deshpande Center helps MIT faculty and students commercialize breakthrough technologies and inventions by transforming promising ideas at MIT into innovative products and cutting-edge spinout companies. Toward this end, the center makes modest but pivotal investments in research that is being done by some of MIT’s most talented scientists and engineers.

The Engine

The Engine offers comprehensive support for entrepreneurs committed to societal impact through scientific and technological breakthroughs.

2017 Environmental Solutions Initiative Curriculum Grants

Call for Proposals: Creating an Integrated Environment & Sustainability Curriculum. $500,000 is available for undergraduate curriculum activities in environment and sustainability. MIT faculty are encouraged to apply for funds to create new classes, adapt existing classes, and generate innovative teaching and learning opportunities.

Graduate Student Life Grants

The Graduate Student Life Grants program is a request-for-proposal process inviting graduate students, spouses, faculty, or staff to submit creative, community building ideas for possible funding. The Grants provide a unique opportunity to enhance graduate student life at the Institute with experiences outside the classroom and lab.

MIT Energy Initiative Seed Fund Program

The MIT Energy Initiative Seed Fund Program supports innovative, early-stage research across the energy spectrum, encouraging researchers from throughout MIT’s five schools to collaborate in exploring new energy-related ideas and to open up new avenues for research. Funding is provided through the MITEI Founding and Sustaining Members Program. All MIT faculty or research staff with principal investigator privileges are eligible.

MIT Innovation Initiative Student Group Collaboration Grant

The MIT Innovation Initiative Student Group Collaboration Grant encourages partnerships between innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) focused student groups. Grants will support diverse groups who are working together on an event or project that will have impact on the I&E ecosystem here at MIT.

MIT Sandbox

MIT Sandbox (short for MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program) provides meaningful seed funding of up to $25,000 for student-initiated ideas, mentoring from within MIT and from a broad network of committed partners, and tailored educational experiences.

Office of Foundation Relations

The mission of the Office of Foundation Relations (OFR) is to optimize philanthropic support to the Institute from foundations.

Tata Center Graduate Fellowship Program

The Tata Center supports the work of MIT faculty and graduate students whose research aligns with the Center’s mission. Numerous disciplines, including mechanical engineering, civil & environmental engineering, architecture, business administration, urban planning, and more, are represented in the Center’s diverse population.

MIT Earth Day Collective Grants

The MIT Earth Day Collective offers funding (up to $500 per team) for the MIT community to develop innovative & interactive campus projects promoting sustainability this April near Earth Day.

Participate in a competition or hackathon

HackMIT

HackMIT is MIT’s headline hackathon, with over 1000 undergraduate attendees from around the globe. Over a 24-hour period in September, hackers collaborate and experiment on software and hardware projects. This is the weekend to meet other enthusiastic hackers, push your boundaries, and realize the projects of your dreams!

MakeMIT

MakeMIT is the world’s premier hardware hackathon, with over 250 hackers and 3524 man-hours hacking hardware. Our fast-paced structure promotes an innovative creative atmosphere, geared towards those who are excited and passionate about designing and building. Come meet other enthusiastic hackers, work with cutting edge technology, and turn your crazy ideas into reality!

MIT Energy Hack

The MIT Energy Hack is a weekend long event in November where teams of hackers can come together and solve tough energy related challenges! Companies from different areas of the energy industry come together in order to propose challenges for hackers to solve with the challenges ranging from building energy usage to innovative ways to recreate certain energy cycles. During the weekend, hackers spend hours quickly finding solutions in order to present them at the end of the weekend in front of a panel of judges from various companies.