No active solicitation right now. Multiple NOFOs per year across different research areas. Check nist.gov/itl/how-work-us/itl-grants-program regularly.
Browse active grants →NIST research grant program that explicitly includes forensic science as a funded area. Supports method validation, standards development, and OSAC-aligned work. Best suited for labs with a research mission or university partners.
Apply directly on grants.gov, no state intermediary. Open to almost any non-federal organization: universities, nonprofits, companies, hospitals and state or local governments and their labs.
Official program pageUniversities, nonprofits, and research organizations primarily. Operational crime labs may be eligible as collaborative partners. Verify eligibility in the year-specific NOFO.
26 awards that mention forensic work on record from the last three fiscal years.
Source: USAspending.gov. The award list covers only awards whose descriptions mention forensic work.
General advice for this program, not taken from the notice. The notice’s own review criteria are what reviewers actually score, so check these against it.
Explicitly reference and build upon OSAC (Organization of Scientific Area Committees) published standards and registered guidelines in your methodology section to demonstrate direct alignment with NIST's forensic science priorities. Show how your research will advance, validate, or fill gaps in existing OSAC documents.
Include a detailed plan for characterizing and reporting measurement uncertainty in all proposed forensic methods, using SI-traceable references where applicable. NIST reviewers prioritize proposals that treat metrological rigor as a core deliverable, not an afterthought.
Do not state that a method will be 'validated' without specifying the exact validation parameters (e.g., sensitivity, specificity, reproducibility thresholds, sample matrix types) you will measure. Unquantified validation plans are a common reason NIST reviewers score forensic proposals poorly on technical merit.
Avoid framing your proposal primarily around solving active casework backlogs or operational laboratory throughput, as NIST CFDA 11.609 funds fundamental and applied measurement science, not laboratory operations. Proposals that read as service contracts rather than research lose significant ground in peer review.
A starting list, not the official one. Each notice ends with its own application checklist, and that is the list to work from once a round opens.
