AFRL/AFOSR Center of Excellence (CoE)

AFRL/AFOSR Center of Excellence

Supports early-stage Air Force fundamental research at universities, nonprofits, and industry partners.

The AFRL/AFOSR Center of Excellence (CoE) program is a joint initiative between the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and an AFRL Technology Directorate (TD) that funds a university or consortium of universities to conduct high-priority collaborative basic research. Topics are defined each year when AFRL Technology Directorates propose new CoE themes to the AFOSR Chief Scientist; approved topics are then posted as individual Funding Opportunity Announcements on Grants.gov. Selection is conducted by a joint AFOSR-TD competitive review panel, and the award is made as a grant to the university team. Award periods are three years with an option to extend for two additional years. The funding instrument is a grant, structured similarly to an extramural single-investigator grant but at a larger scale appropriate for a center-level effort.

Eligibility is limited to U.S. universities or teams of U.S. universities; for-profit companies, non-profits, and individual researchers acting outside an institutional structure are not eligible for the prime award. Because each CoE is tied to a specific AFRL Technology Directorate, the research scope is driven by that TD's capability roadmap, and CoE research teams are expected to engage in personnel interchange with AFRL to strengthen the directorate's in-house technical capacity and provide recruiting pipelines for AFRL scientists and engineers.

Organizations tracking this program should monitor Grants.gov for FOAs tagged with AFOSR Center of Excellence, as there is no standing solicitation — opportunities appear only when a TD proposes and wins approval for a new CoE topic. Successful CoE teams typically have pre-existing relationships with the relevant AFRL TD and can demonstrate that their proposed research complements ongoing AFRL in-house programs. The three-plus-two-year award structure provides enough runway for deep collaborative engagement while maintaining Air Force flexibility to redirect investment after the base period.