NVIDIA’s Research and University Teams are dedicated to building relationships and collaborating with professors at key 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, and providing access to developer forums and pre-released tools and drivers through NVIDIA’s Developer Relations Website.

Professor Partnerships may include:

• Financial support for research projects, in the form of grants or research contracts.
• Equipment donations and/or discounts for labs and teaching facilities
• Access to cudacluster.nvidia.com, a GPU Computing (CUDA) cluster provided by NVIDIA.
• 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 are evaluated competitively by committee on a roughly quarterly basis. 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!

FAQ’s

Are your funding programs open to all qualified institutions worldwide?
A professor application is open to all qualified post-secondary institutions worldwide.

What terms or conditions apply to grants and donations from NVIDIA?
Grants and donations are made as unrestricted gifts or as part of research contracts. These grants are typically around $25,000. We do not typically make multi-year funding commitments, however grant applications can be renewed each year by resubmitting the partnership request updated with the accomplishments so far and new goals.

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. However, we can often provide significant discounts on our high end boards, which usually count as in-kind contributions for industry matching purposes and thus can be doubly valuable to academics. Also note that you may apply for time on cudacluster.nvidia.com, a ROCKS-based cluster equipped with high-end GPU nodes for CUDA researchers who need multiple GPUs for their work.

Do you support projects in community colleges or vocational schools?
At this time 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

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 Firefox, Mozilla or any provider other than IE you may experience some difficulties. We are currently working on a solution to this problem. 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.