Transport Phenomena (TP)

The Transport Phenomena program is a funding opportunity of the National Science Foundation, specifically associated with the Directorate for Engineering and the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems. The program supports fundamental engineering research intended to improve the understanding, modeling, and control of the transport of mass, momentum, energy, and species across multiple scales. The National Science Foundation identifies this research as relevant to advances in areas including artificial intelligence, manufacturing, biotechnology, microelectronics, energy generation, extraction and utilization, nuclear energy, quantum science and engineering, and other national priorities. The program is identified as PD 26-366Y. Supported Transport Phenomena projects may involve experiments, theory, computational modeling, or combinations of these approaches. Projects are expected to improve fundamental understanding and create novel analytical techniques while maintaining a clear vision for how resulting research outcomes can benefit engineering applications. Research areas include the dynamics of single-phase and multiphase systems, including flow separation, transition to turbulence, drag reduction, cavitation, instabilities, and reactive flows. The program also encourages research connecting microscale dynamics with macroscale material and flow properties. Relevant fluids can include liquids, gases, suspensions, emulsions, granular materials, active fluids, biological fluids, colloids, aerosols, bubbles and drops, and fluids containing surfactants. Additional areas within program scope include physicochemical phenomena at interfaces between fluids and between fluids and solids. Examples identified by the National Science Foundation include adsorption and desorption of nanoparticles and surfactants, bulk and interfacial rheology, wetting and capillarity phenomena, electrokinetics, flow in porous media, and directed and self-assembly of particles. The program also supports thermodynamics and thermal transport research involving conduction, diffusion, convection, phase transition, and radiation. This work may address multiple scales, complex structures and interfaces, microelectronic devices, biological systems, phonon transport, and quantum thermal phenomena. The program also encourages proposals concerning combustion of gas, liquid, and solid fuels. Identified combustion topics include chemical kinetic modeling, turbulence-chemistry interactions, detonations, plasma assisted reacting flows, sustainable fuels, mechanisms for pollutant control, and in-situ diagnostic methods. Research concerning wildland fire behavior is also supported when it aims to prevent wildfire spread, inhibit wildfire growth, or predict and mitigate fires at the wildland-urban interface. The source does not specify individual award minimums, maximums, total program funding, number of awards, a required cost share, or a matching contribution. Those financial values therefore cannot be established from the supplied program page. The supplied program page does not state applicant eligibility categories or geographic eligibility restrictions. Accordingly, specific eligible organization types, states, territories, or other geographic areas cannot be verified from this source alone. All proposals must comply with the applicable funding opportunity requirements and the National Science Foundation Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide and its supplements. NSF grants and cooperative agreements are also subject to applicable NSF award terms and conditions and research security policies. The source does not identify a required letter of intent, concept paper, pre-proposal, notice of intent, or other pre-application gating step. Full proposals are accepted at any time, so the opportunity operates without a stated fixed proposal deadline. Applicants submitting through Research.gov must follow the NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide proposal preparation guidelines. Applicants submitting through Grants.gov must follow the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide, with additional information available through the Grants.gov Proposal Processing in Research.gov resource. Because proposals are accepted anytime, the opportunity is treated as currently accepting applications and rolling rather than as a recurring deadline-based competition. The source does not provide a specific application opening date, award notification date, performance period, or next recurring cycle. The program contact is the TP Program Team at cbet-tp@nsf.gov. No individual program officer or individual contact telephone number is identified on the supplied opportunity page. The page lists the National Science Foundation's general telephone number as 703-292-5111, but this is not identified as the program team's direct number and therefore is not treated as the grantor phone. The program page was published April 24, 2026 and last updated August 20, 2026. It also identifies partnership opportunities through NSF ENG Partnerships and notes a May 4, 2026 update concerning partnership opportunities with the Transport Phenomena program.

Emphasize fundamental research that advances understanding, modeling, or control of transport phenomena; clearly connect the proposed fundamental research outcomes to engineering applications; align the technical work with the transport phenomena and research areas expressly identified by the program.