NAIRR Pilot proposal instructions
Citation
U.S. National Science Foundation, National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot. “NAIRR Pilot Proposal Instructions.” Web page, nairrpilot.org, publication date not stated. https://nairrpilot.org/nairr-pilot-proposal-instructions. Read 2026-10-16.
Bottom line
- A NAIRR Pilot request is a three-page PDF, a short CV for the lead, and an online form. The form must match the PDF.
- Eligibility is wide: US researchers and educators at academic institutions, nonprofits, federal agencies, “state, local, or tribal agencies”, and startups and small businesses with federal grants.
Background
The NAIRR Pilot is a federal program led by the National Science Foundation (NSF). It matches research projects to compute, models and data from many providers. Its review and matching process is on the NAIRR Pilot resource allocations (web) page. This page tells applicants what to submit.
Key claims
What to submit
- A project description “of no more than three (3) pages in PDF format”, a CV or biographical sketch of the lead, optional references, and the “online submission form”.
- Applicants “must use your institutional email address”. Personal addresses such as Gmail “will not be considered”.
- A lead may send more than one proposal for distinct projects. Duplicate requests “are not permitted and will not be reviewed”.
- Projects run for a “twelve-month period”.
The project description has four parts
- B. Resource estimate. About one page. Estimates “should be based on experience in prior work or benchmark runs”. Compute requests give GPU-hours and say “Can this workload execute in a commercial cloud environment?” A reviewer “reading only your three-page PDF” must understand the request. The proposal also explains “how the request might be adjusted” if resources are short.
- C. Support needs. Whether provider staff support is “essential, helpful, or unnecessary”. Any restrictions: “export-controlled code, ITAR restrictions, proprietary data sets, regional location of compute resources, or personal health information (PHI) or HIPAA restrictions”.
- D. Team. Qualifications and readiness. Some resources are at federal sites, so applicants list each team member who needs an account, “along with their current citizenship status”.
Review
- “Proposals for work not supported by a merit-reviewed funding grant are welcome but will undergo additional review regarding the scientific merits of the work.”
- In the form, applicants enter only their first-choice resource. They describe alternatives “in the proposal text only”.
- Proposals follow “NSF policies for use of AI” in preparation and review.
Evidence and method
Program instructions on the program’s own website. They are a primary source for the program’s rules. The page gives no date.
Limits
- The page says what applicants submit. It does not give the review criteria or the scoring. The NAIRR Pilot resource allocations (web) page covers review and matching.
- The rules fit a federal program with federal sites. The citizenship question comes from those sites.