Overview
The Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC) is pleased to invite university faculty to respond to this call for research proposals on Confidential Computing; up to 2 awards are available. We are interested in making awards on a wide range of practical research in Confidential Computing. This year, we have three areas of primary interests:
- Addressing emerging challenges in scaling confidential computing
- Novel applications and case studies in privacy domain like data protection, data sharing, data sovereignty and verifiable transparency
- Security hardening, security review/analysis and verification of confidential computing components e.g., architectures, firmware, software, and protocols
To Apply
Applicants should submit the contents mentioned under the requirements section to research@confidentialcomputing.io considering the timelines mentioned below. Funding will range from $25,000 to $50,000 per proposal, depending on the specific requirements.
Application Timeline
- May 1, 2026: Applications Open
- June 1, 2026: Applications Close
- July 1, 2026: Recipients Announced
Requirements
Proposals should include:
- A summary of the project (2 pages maximum) explaining the area of focus, a description of techniques, any relevant prior work, and a timeline with milestones and expected outcomes.
- A draft budget description (1 page) including a cost of the requested award and an explanation of how funds would be spent.
- Curriculum Vitae for all project participants.
- Organization details including tax information and administrative contact details.
Eligibility
- Awards must comply with applicable U.S. and international laws, regulations and policies.
- Applicants must be current full-time faculty at an accredited academic institution that awards research degrees to PhD students or at a reputed research institute.
- Applicants must be the Principal Investigator on any resulting award.
Selection Criteria
The program committee will make the grant decision based on the proposal quality and potential impacts to the research and open source community.
Expected Outcomes
An emphasis should be placed on open collaboration and community benefit. Therefore, we expect successful proposals to produce outcomes that contribute to the broader Confidential Computing ecosystem. This includes, but is not limited to, the publication of research findings in a public forum, the release of open source code under a permissive license, and the contribution of new features or improvements to existing open-source projects within the Confidential Computing Consortium. Awardees will be encouraged to present their work at relevant industry conferences and to engage with the community to ensure their research has a lasting and positive impact. If needed, members of the Confidential Computing Consortium Technical Advisory Council can offer mentorship, consultation and advice on the research.
Additional Information
Payment will be made to the proposer’s host university as an unrestricted gift. Because of its nature, salary/headcount could be included as part of the budget presented for the RFP. Since the award/gift is paid to the university, they will be able to allocate the funds to that winning project and have the freedom to use as they need. Award funds can be used to cover a researcher’s salary. Typically research funds ideally cover graduate or post-graduate students’ employment/tuition and other research costs (e.g., equipment, laptops, incidental costs).
Terms & Conditions
By submitting a proposal, you are authorizing the Confidential Computing Consortium to evaluate the proposal for a potential award, and you agree to the terms herein.
- You agree that the Confidential Computing Consortium will not be required to treat any part of the proposal as confidential or protected by copyright.
- You agree and acknowledge that personal data submitted with the proposal, including name, mailing address, phone number, and email address of you and other named researchers in the proposal may be collected, processed, stored and otherwise used by the Confidential Computing Consortium for the purposes of evaluating the contents of the proposal.
- You acknowledge that neither party is obligated to enter into any business transaction as a result of the proposal submission, the Confidential Computing Consortium is under no obligation to review or consider the proposal, and neither party acquires any intellectual property rights as a result of submitting the proposal.
Program Committee
- Mingshen Sun, TikTok (Chair)
- Fritz Alder, Nvidia
- Mike Bursell, Confidential Computing Consortium
- Caroline Perez-Vargas, Microsoft
- Yu Ding, Google
- Kevin Hui, Meta
