UW+Amazon Science Hub

Gift-funded Research Projects

The Science Hub welcomes proposals from UW faculty and research scientists with principal investigator status. Under this funding mechanism, the Science Hub is looking for cutting-edge and exploratory projects for a period of one year. Researchers with approved proposals will receive seed funding up to $100k. Awards are structured as unrestricted gifts to the principal investigator. Each gift funded proposal will be subject to 5% assessment per UW Administrative Policy (APS) 36.2. Seed funding is meant to develop innovative basic or use-inspired research direction in one or more fields related to Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, including their societal impacts. Seed projects may have the potential for renewal for additional funding, or may lead to sponsored research funding with one or more Amazon units.

We welcome applications from diverse candidates, including those from historically underrepresented communities in the sciences, engineering, and mathematics fields.

Open Calls for Proposals

2024 Robotics

We expect to have our 2024 Call for Proposals open in early April 2024!

2023 Robotics

December 9, 2022

The Science Hub seeks proposals to advance the state of the art and enable new robotics and AI solutions, in the following topic areas:

  • Robotic Manipulation — for example: picking and packing objects from/to cluttered, confined spaces; robust grasping for a wide variety of many object types, including fragile, deformable, and deconstructable (e.g., lidded shoe boxes); modeling and prediction for fast compliant control
  • Computer Vision — for example: robust 3D scene understanding with low-cost sensors; tracking and predicting the 3D poses of dynamic actors; object damage detection from images
  • Machine Learning — for example: continual learning; sample-efficient model (re)training; applications of ML to robotic planning and control 
  • Modeling, Simulation, and Verification — for example: modeling and simulation of deformable objects in contact; closing sim-to-real gaps in synthetic imagery; design of experiments and verification of autonomous systems
  • Autonomous Mobility — for example: safe and fluent navigation in complex dynamic environments; multi-agent planning and coordination (10s–100s of robots); localization and mapping

All UW researchers are welcome to apply. The application includes basic demographic questions, and requests an uploaded copy of your CV and a 2 to 4-page research proposal. The proposal should include a short description of the budget request of up to $100k for one-year. Awards are structured as unrestricted gifts to the principal investigator. Each gift funded proposal will be subject to a 5% assessment per UW Administrative Policy (APS) 36.2. No third parties should be involved in the projects. Per default, project results will be made available to the general public through publication and open source.


Previous Calls for Proposals

Databases and Distributed Systems Learn More

RoboticsLearn More