Professor Partnership Program

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NVIDIA’s Academic Research Team is dedicated to building relationships and collaborating with professors at universities worldwide. We aim to inspire cutting-edge technological innovation through advanced research and to find new ways of enhancing the teaching and learning experience. This is achieved through a variety of initiatives and programs — including funding university research projects through professor partnerships and graduate fellowships, working with faculty to develop curriculum, providing access to developer forums, pre-released tools and drivers through NVIDIA’s Developer Relations Website and providing access to some of our award winning books freely available online in html.

Professor Partnerships may include:

Financial support for research projects, typically in the form of unrestricted cash grants
Equipment donations and/or discounts for labs, teaching facilities, and research projects
Sponsoring and/or support of curricular initiatives in GPU computing, parallel computing, and computer graphics

Please complete the Online Application to be considered for a Professor Partnership. Applications requesting cash awards or substantial equipment donations are evaluated competitively by committee on a roughly quarterly basis; small-scale equipment donations (e.g. a single GPU board) can usually be evaluated and turned around much more quickly. This online application is supported by Internet Explorer only. Once your application is submitted successfully, a confirmation screen will pop up and you should receive a confirmation email. Please verify that the attachments remain intact!

NVIDIA is always looking to learn about the great research taking place in academia. One great option for opening doors with NVIDIA is by helping your students get hired into year round internship or fulltime opportunities. If you are interested in sharing our positions with your students please don’t hesitate. Professor referrals go a long way, so feel free to email any high potential prospects to myfuture@nvidia.com. Your students are a great reflection on the type and quality of work you do.

Another fantastic opportunity for opening doors is by attending or sending your graduate students to the NVIDIA Research Summit. Attendees get to learn from dozens of technical sessions and to talk face-to-face with the NVIDIA Research Team and others at NVIDIA that are helping to create the next generations of GPUs.

FAQ’s

What scale of effort does NVIDIA intend to support with Professor Partnerships?
NVIDIA Professor Partnerships are generally small “seeding” grants intended to enable researchers to begin a new project and gain the preliminary results to support a larger proposal to other funding agencies. Our goal is “breadth-first” seeding; using many small equipment donations (generally one or two GPUs) and a few small cash donations (generally capped at $25,000 USD) rather than funding an entire university project through to completion. Note that we also support the efforts of individual Ph.D. students through our NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship.

Are your funding programs open to all qualified institutions worldwide?
A professor application is open to all qualified post-secondary institutions worldwide. University-affiliated research institutions may apply and will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. The application should clearly state the relationship between the principal investigator, their institution, and the affiliated university. Startup companies spun out of universities (for example including SBIR and STTR efforts by university faculty) are generally not eligible. We encourage such companies to look into NVIDIA’s GPU Ventures program.

What terms or conditions apply to grants and donations from NVIDIA?
Grants and donations are typically made as unrestricted gifts. Funding grants are usually limited to $25,000 USD. We do not normally make multi-year funding commitments, however faculty may apply for renewal by resubmitting the partnership request updated with the accomplishments so far and new goals. Board donations are typically 1-2 boards to get the projects started.

Do you donate complete computer systems?
Since NVIDIA does not make complete computer systems, we don’t donate them. Requests for complete systems are considered cash requests.

Do you donate large quantities of boards to equip large teaching labs or research clusters?
We don’t typically donate large quantities of boards.

Do you support projects in community colleges or vocational schools?
At this time through the Professor Partnership Program specifically, we only support projects in post-secondary institutions.

Do I have to attach a Statement of Proposed Partnership?
Yes, in order to be considered, we need to review your Statement of Proposed Partnership.

What should be included in the Statement of Proposed Partnership?
Your Statement of Proposed Partnership should include research proposal including topic, abstract, background and/or benefits, important timelines, list of publications, links to courses you teach, and specific support you are looking for from NVIDIA. Proposals should be brief, informal, and to-the-point; one to five pages usually suffice. If you are requesting money, please explain how it will be used; if you are requesting equipment please confirm that you have the necessary systems to host the donated equipment. If you are teaching a class or plan to teach CUDA or parallel computing, please describe the class, how large, graduate vs. undergraduate and include any URLs. Keep in mind your attachments will need to be under 6MB otherwise our servers will reject them

I’m having trouble submitting my application, what is causing this and what should I do?
The Professor Partnership online application is supported by Internet Explorer (IE). If you are using any browser other than IE you may experience some difficulties. You can email UniversityPartnership@nvidia.com to follow up on any applications you are concerned about.

I submitted my application, but I didn’t receive a confirmation email?
If you do not receive a confirmation email, check your spam folder, and if you still have not received a confirmation, you can either email UniversityPartnership@nvidia.com to confirm or re-submit your application.