The Brown Institute for Basic Sciences
Brown Investigator Award

Brown Investigator Award Portal

All applications for this internal competition must be submitted via InfoReady. You can sign in using your Net-ID and your @stonybrook.edu email address. Please allow sufficient time to familiarize yourself with the portal prior to submitting your pre-application. Pre-application requirements are listed in the announcement below.

The Office for Research and Innovation invites applications for the 2027 Brown Investigator Award which seeks to support bold ideas for curiosity-driven basic research in the areas of physics and chemistry. Stony Brook University can nominate ONE candidate for this program.

Please see below for details. If you are interested in applying, you must submit a pre-application via the Brown Investigator Award Portal in InfoReady by Monday, August 17, 2026 at 9 am. Pre-applications for internal review and selection must be uploaded to the portal as a single PDF document. 

KEYWORDS: Chemistry, a tomic physics, condensed matter physics

WHAT DOES IT FUND: The Institute believes that there is a reservoir of great scientists who have demonstrated their talent and capability by earning tenure at leading US universities, but who cannot pursue their most daring ideas because of the often-conservative nature of government funding. Therefore, the Institute intends to provide significant funds with few funding restrictions and limited reporting requirements to a small number of such scientists in physics and chemistry departments. Because the Institute wants to support basic research, which may have eventual technological impact, it has chosen to award grants to investigators working in atomic and condensed matter physics and fundamental areas of chemistry. Candidates must pursue new research avenues that are highly creative, and for which conventional sources of research funding may not be readily available. These investigations may include not only the exploration of new phenomena, but also the development of new approaches to the collection of new data for use by future researchers, the development of new and original techniques to detect or measure properties and processes, and new ideas for the analysis of newly observed phenomena.

APPLICANT REQUIREMENTS: Candidates must be faculty members who (a) are within ten years after being granted tenure as of July 1, 2026; (b) work in either the chemistry or physics department; (c) have interests in fundamental chemistry, atomic physics, or condensed matter physics; and (d) possess the inquiring mind and talents that are focused on basic curiosity-driven research. The Institute does not want to provide additional resources to faculty members who already have large amounts of flexible funding. Further, nominees that have or will have significant administrative duties, such as department chair, may not be competitive. Areas not under consideration for funding are biomedical research, applied or engineering research, astronomy, astrophysics and particle physics.

AWARD: Up to $2,000,000 for experimentalists and up to $1,250,000 for theorists spread over a span of up to five years

COST SHARE: Not required

SPONSOR DEADLINE: Nomination due September 15, 2026. Full proposal due November 9, 2026. Reference letters due November 16, 2026.

A complete pre-application should comprise of the following:

• Research statement (limited to a maximum of two pages of text including figures and references, prepared in 12- point font with 1-inch margins): The research statement should describe why the research is important, the state of the field, and outline the general research goals for the next five years. The statement should also describe, in general terms, how funds will be used. The research statement should also explain why funding from government agencies for the proposed research is especially difficult to obtain. This should be written for a broad audience. 
• Current and pending support
• CV (Biosketch style preferred, standard NSF version; 2-page limit)
• Budget and Budget justification (no more than one page)
• Letter of Support: A letter from the nominee's department head, which should describe the nominee's talents and experience that prepares them to undertake high-risk, high-payoff basic research.