The Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grant Program supports audacious research projects dreamed up by MIT faculty members who take “it can’t be done” as an invitation. We enable and empower the insatiable curiosity that drives innovation.

Recently completed projects

Lemons into Lemonade

Using malarial organisms to deliver therapeutic drugs

With the support of the Bose Fellows Grant, I believe this paradigm shift will enable transformative opportunities for engineering therapeutic solutions.”

Instrumental Science

What the evolution of string instrument design tells us about acoustics

Innovative research thrives on innovative funding. We are very grateful to the Bose Research Grant for providing the nourishment that will enable our work to continue.”

Magnetic Vision

Putting navigation abilities in pigeons and worms to use

The Bose Grant provides me with the rare opportunity to fulfill my curiosity and contribute my understanding of nanomagnetism to a field that has enjoyed numerous physiological and behavioral studies, and yet has not benefitted from basic mechanistic experiments.”

Power to the Plasma

An innovative assault on traditional batteries

To go beyond existing modeling paradigms, I have long felt that a combined theoretical, computational, and experimental approach is needed, and this is what the Bose Research Grant could enable.”

Rare Earth Electronics

Searching for new building blocks of technology

I was looking for funds to build a piece of instrumentation, but typically, if it’s a big investment at the university level, it has to be a piece of equipment that has clear connections and benefits to a large number of scientists.”

Is Anyone There?

Looking for extraterrestrial life in all the right places

This work is completely outside my mainstream research but I am so convinced of its value I am willing to invest substantial time pursuing it.”

Writ Small

Silicon wafer etching using high-mass molecules

I view the uniqueness of XeF2’s chemistry as a thread dangling from an otherwise neat fabric of ideas about chemical reactivity—a view that does not conventionally include classical mechanical effects, such as deformation.”

Beyond the Bulb

Achieving 100% energy efficiency in LED lighting

My entire adult life, I’ve thought about the problem of 100 percent efficient lighting—but I’ve never had the funding to really devote myself to solving it. Thanks to the Bose Research Grant, I can pursue this lifelong ambition.”

Precious Power

Diamond as a next-generation semiconductor

The concept of the Bose Grants has unique merit. It fuels the type of research that can generate new fundamental knowledge, fundamental technologies, fundamental contributions to society.”

On the Beam

Crafting smaller-scale particle accelerators to better probe the nature of reality

Thanks to the Bose Fellows Program, I’ve had the chance to challenge that truism by exploring the potential of a better accelerator.”

Lemons into Lemonade
Jacquin Niles
Instrumental Science
Nicholas Makris
Magnetic Vision
Polina Anikeeva
Power to the Plasma
Martin Z. Bazant
Rare Earth Electronics
Joseph Checkelsky
Is Anyone There?
Sara Seager
Writ Small
Sylvia T. Ceyer
Beyond the Bulb
Rajeev Ram
Precious Power
Jesús A. del Alamo
On the Beam
Janet Conrad

Recently awarded projects

I’m an engineer by training, so this research brings together different parts of my knowledge and skill set, and inspires me to explore new directions. I believe that the answers I seek may already be out there, waiting for me to discover.”

Biology the Chemist

Making Sense From Nature
Mary Gehrin

Dr. Norman Borlaug, who won a Nobel Prize in 1970 for his work in addressing world food insecurity, inspired me to go to graduate school, and now is the time for me to apply my skills to help avert the next food crisis.”

Seeds of Survival

Adopting orphan crops to adapt to climate change

To change the world for the better we have to be discerning about the things we bring into it. We’re not interested in inventing for inventing’s sake. We have to keep that sense of purpose in mind as we whittle down from a long list of possibilities offered up to us by these works of speculative fiction.”

Inspired Invention

Muses to My Gears
Biology the Chemist
Kristala L. J. Prather
Seeds of Survival
Mary Gehring
Inspired Invention
Sandy Alexandre

A
Lifelong
Passion

For Dr. Bose, tackling research that broke the mold wasn’t a hobby—it was a way of life.