National Geographic Grants about the Role of AI in Protecting the Planet

The National Geographic Society (NGS) and Microsoft’s AI for Earth program are partnering to support the exploration of how AI can help us understand, engage, and protect the planet. The $1 million AI for Earth Innovation Grant will provide grants to 5-15 novel projects that improve the way we monitor, model, and ultimately manage Earth’s natural systems for a more sustainable future.

The grants will support the creation and deployment of open source trained models and algorithms that are available to other environmental researchers and innovators and thereby have the potential to provide exponential impact. To qualify, applications should outline a proposal to use AI for conservation in at least one of the following core areas:

[1] Biodiversity conservation: acoustic and image classification, geotemporal distribution models.

[2] Climate change: temperature and precipitation model downscaling, risk optimization.

[3] Agriculture: health monitoring in crops and livestock, yield modeling.

[4] Water: groundwater modeling, flood prediction.

Grant Resources:

Typical proposal requests should be less than $100,000; however, applicants may request up to $200,000. Successful applicants may use awarded funds over one year. In addition to financial support, successful proposals will receive free access to AI for Earth API’s, applications, tools, and tutorials, and support for their computational work on Microsoft Azure.

Project Requirements:

All models supported through this grant must be open source, and grant recipients must be willing to share their models for use by other environmental researchers and innovators.

Applicant Qualifications:

The main applicant should have a demonstrated background in environmental science and/or technology, and we require that at least one member of the team has strong enough technical skills (such as AI, machine learning, statistical data analysis, scientific modeling, software development, and/or remote sensing) to complete the proposed project successfully. We believe great ideas spring from a diversity of experiences, and thus encourage applications from all over the world.