Graduate Research Innovation (GRIN) Award (One task statement) | FA NOFO0026 001

Opportunity Information: Apply for FA NOFO0026 001

The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP), administered by the Bureau of Land Management, is offering the Graduate Research Innovation (GRIN) Award to support current US-based masters and doctoral students whose work relates to wildland fire and associated physical, biological, or social sciences. The core aim is to help graduate students make their thesis or dissertation research more useful to real-world fire, fuels, and resource management by strengthening the management and policy relevance of their work and increasing direct engagement with managers and decision-makers. GRIN awards are designed specifically as add-ons to already approved graduate research, not as funding for an entire thesis or dissertation, and they must result in practical, manager-facing products and clearer pathways for research to inform fire-related decisions.

To be eligible, the student must be enrolled in their current graduate program while conducting the GRIN-supported work, and the proposed activities must extend new, unfunded components of an existing thesis or dissertation that has already been approved by the student’s advisory committee. A required GRIN Eligibility Certification must be completed and attached by the student’s advisor; if the certification is incomplete (both required boxes not checked), the proposal will not be considered. Students may only submit one proposal, and anyone who has previously received a GRIN award cannot receive another. Project schedules should be built around an anticipated award timeframe of late August to mid-September 2026.

The program is tightly focused on JFSP’s mission, meaning proposals must directly address management- or policy-relevant questions within one or more specified topic areas: fuels management and fire behavior, the changing fire environment, emissions and air quality, fire effects and post-fire recovery, relative impacts of prescribed fire versus wildfire, and human dimensions of fire. Proposals outside these areas will not be reviewed. Applicants are also expected to demonstrate clear relevance to fire, fuels, or resource management and, when applicable, include a plan for direct communication with managers about project outcomes. Because JFSP is also interested in the science needs of decision-makers, GRIN projects can explicitly help students learn how research is translated into policy and operational decision-making.

Applications are expected to be written primarily by the student to provide hands-on proposal development experience, but they must be reviewed and formally submitted by the student’s advisor, who serves as the official Principal Investigator. The student must be listed as the Student Investigator, and an advisor letter of recommendation is required. Letters of support from managers are encouraged when they fit the project. If the student cannot complete the project, the advisor, as PI, is responsible for returning any unspent funds to JFSP.

Funding is capped at $25,000 per award (including indirect costs) and is intended to directly support the student’s research activities rather than faculty compensation. Allowable costs include items like a graduate stipend, field or laboratory assistance, equipment and materials, and travel, with the explicit restrictions that funds may not be used for faculty salary or student tuition. JFSP emphasizes that GRIN funding should enable meaningful, value-added work such as substantial field or lab data collection, synthesis efforts, modeling or data analysis, policy analysis, or development of applications or tools that managers can actually use.

Proposals will be reviewed based on the student’s qualifications, the scientific merit of the work, its relevance to managers and decision-makers, how well it extends or enhances the approved thesis/dissertation, and whether the proposed work is feasible. Award recipients must produce at least one management- or policy-oriented tool or summary guide, present at a regional, national, or international fire conference or workshop, and submit an acceptable final report to JFSP by the project end date. These are one-time awards with no supplemental funding available.

Applications must be submitted electronically through the JFSP submission system at https://www.firescience.gov (not through Grants.gov) by September 18, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. Mountain Time, with no exceptions to the deadline.

• The Bureau of Land Management in the education, environment, science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Graduate Research Innovation (GRIN) Award (One task statement)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.232.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2025-06-30.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2025-09-18. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $25,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education.

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