The primary purpose of the NSF Unidata Community Equipment Awards is to encourage new members from diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the geosciences to join the NSF Unidata community, and for existing members to continue their active participation so as to enhance the community process.

Between 2003 and 2026, NSF Unidata has awarded $1.7 million to 200 different projects at 70 colleges and universities through the Community Equipment Awards program.

The NSF Unidata Program Center is now accepting proposals for the 2025 Community Equipment Awards. The deadline for submissions is March 28, 2025, and notifications of award status are expected to be made by May, 2025. View the 2025 Call for Proposals.

We invite you to provide suggestions for the focus of future Equipment Award RFPs, and to keep your eyes open for the 2027 announcement.

The 2026 Community Equipment Award grants were awarded to:

  • University of South Alabama
  • University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez
  • University of Iowa 

See Previous Equipment Awards for details on the 2026 awards.

Past equipment awards have funded projects including:

  • Installing or upgrading servers to ingest IDD data streams
  • Creating electronic map walls
  • Installing THREDDS Data Servers to make data available locally and regionally
  • Installing computing lab hardware to run visualization software such as AWIPS and IDV
  • Purchasing cloud computing resources for specific educational or research projects

See the Previous Equipment Awards page to find information projects that received awards in previous years.