“Infrastructure funding,” in a research-administration context, refers to grant programs and capital funds specifically earmarked for the equipment, facilities, and shared research resources an institution needs to conduct research — as distinct from the project grants that fund a specific investigator’s research program. A single R01 or standard research grant is not built to buy a $2 million mass spectrometer or fund a new imaging suite; infrastructure programs exist precisely to fill that gap, and they come with their own eligibility rules, application conventions, and post-award obligations that differ from an ordinary project grant.
This guide covers what counts as research infrastructure, why funders treat it as a distinct category, and the major federal and international mechanisms a research administrator is likely to encounter: the US National Science Foundation’s Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program, the NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant (S10) programs, Canada’s Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), Australia’s Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) scheme, and UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) capital investment mechanisms.
What Counts as Research Infrastructure
Funders generally group research infrastructure into three broad categories:
- Instrumentation and equipment — single high-cost instruments (a cryo-electron microscope, a next-generation sequencer, a mass spectrometer) or an integrated set of instruments too expensive for one lab or one project grant to absorb.
- Facilities — physical space: laboratory buildings, core facility suites, animal facilities, and other capital construction or renovation projects.
- Cyberinfrastructure and digital infrastructure — high-performance computing, research data storage, and networking capacity that increasingly sits alongside physical equipment in funders’ infrastructure programs.
What unites these categories, from a funder’s perspective, is that the resulting asset is meant to be shared across multiple investigators, labs, or even institutions, rather than becoming the property of a single principal investigator. For the specific case of shared instrumentation and service centers, see CASRAI’s guide to core facilities (research cores), which covers how these resources are organized and cost-recovered once they exist.
Why Infrastructure Funding Is a Distinct Category
Infrastructure programs differ from standard project grants in several structural ways that matter for how a research administrator plans and manages them:
- The institution applies, not the individual investigator. Most infrastructure mechanisms require the applicant to be the institution itself, applying on behalf of a documented group of investigator-users — a single PI typically cannot apply alone.
- Indirect costs are often restricted or excluded. A number of major infrastructure mechanisms (the NIH S10 programs among them) do not allow facilities-and-administrative (F&A/indirect) costs to be charged against the award, since the award is funding a capital asset rather than a full research project.
- Cost-sharing or matching funds are common. Several programs — Canada’s CFI most explicitly — fund only a portion of total project cost and require the institution to secure the remainder from other sources.
- The resulting asset typically becomes institutional infrastructure, not the property of one lab, and often carries ongoing obligations (usage reporting, continued shared access) after the award closes.
US Federal Mechanisms
NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program
The National Science Foundation’s MRI Program funds acquisition or development of a shared-use research instrument at institutions of higher education and not-for-profit scientific/engineering research organizations. As of NSF’s most recent solicitation, MRI proposals are organized into three tracks:
- Track 1 — requests of $100,000 up to $1,399,999 (an institution may submit up to two Track 1 proposals per competition).
- Track 2 — requests of $1,400,000 up to $4,000,000 (one submission per institution).
- Track 3 — $100,000 up to $4,000,000, specifically for equipment and instrumentation that reduces helium consumption (one submission per institution).
NSF has waived the MRI Program’s cost-sharing requirement for new awards for a five-year period beginning with the FY 2023 competition. Note that NSF paused new MRI submissions during the October/November 2025 window and, as of this writing, anticipates issuing an updated solicitation later in FY 2026 for proposals targeting FY 2027 — a research administrator planning around MRI should confirm the current solicitation status directly on NSF’s MRI program page before committing institutional resources to a proposal.
NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant (S10) Programs
NIH funds shared, high-cost research instrumentation through its S10 activity code, administered by the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP), via two parallel programs: the Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) program, covering roughly $50,000 to $750,000 equipment requests, and the High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant program, covering roughly $750,001 to $2,000,000. Both require the institution — not an individual investigator — to apply on behalf of a documented group of NIH-funded investigator-users, do not permit indirect costs to be charged against the award, and run on an annual cycle. CASRAI’s core facility guide covers the SIG/HEI programs in more detail, including how the resulting equipment typically becomes shared core-facility infrastructure rather than a single lab’s property.
Other US Agencies
The Department of Energy funds large-scale research infrastructure primarily through its national laboratory system and associated user facilities (particle accelerators, light sources, supercomputing centers), which researchers access through separate user-proposal processes rather than institution-held equipment grants — a structurally different model from NSF/NIH instrumentation grants, since DOE typically owns and operates the facility itself. The Department of Defense funds infrastructure through mechanisms such as the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP); institutions should confirm current solicitation terms directly with the sponsoring agency, since defense instrumentation programs’ scope and cycle can change from year to year.
International Mechanisms
Canada: Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
The Canada Foundation for Innovation funds research infrastructure — facilities, laboratories, major equipment, computing hardware and software, and databases — at Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals, and non-profit research organizations, explicitly excluding operating costs, personnel salaries, and stipends. CFI typically contributes up to 40% of a project’s eligible infrastructure costs, with the remainder expected from provincial matching-fund programs, the institution itself, or private/non-profit co-funders. See CASRAI’s dictionary entry on the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for its fund structure and legal status.
Australia: Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF)
The Australian Research Council funds shared research infrastructure through its Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) scheme, one component of the ARC’s broader Linkage Program (alongside Linkage Projects, ARC Centres of Excellence, and other collaborative schemes). LIEF grants require a consortium of participating organizations rather than a single institution, reflecting the scheme’s purpose of funding infrastructure shared across multiple research groups or institutions.
United Kingdom: UKRI Capital Investment Mechanisms
UK Research and Innovation funds research infrastructure through several distinct routes rather than one unified program. Research England, one of UKRI’s constituent councils, distributes formula-based capital funding to English universities through the Research Capital Investment Fund (RCIF). Separately, UKRI runs the World Class Labs Fund, a competitive equipment-funding call covering research equipment and knowledge-based resources (including scientific, cultural, and digital collections) across disciplines. Large-scale, cross-disciplinary infrastructure — beyond what a single institution’s equipment call would cover — is prioritized separately through UKRI’s Infrastructure Fund. A UK-based research administrator should treat these as complementary but distinct funding routes rather than a single “infrastructure grant” application, since eligibility and scale differ across them.
How Institutions Plan and Apply for Infrastructure Funding
Because most infrastructure mechanisms require the institution, not the individual investigator, to be the formal applicant, the practical workflow differs from a standard project-grant application in a few consistent ways:
- Internal prioritization comes first. Institutions typically run an internal call or committee review to decide which instrumentation or facility proposal to submit in a given cycle, since most programs cap the number of applications an institution may submit (NSF MRI, for example, limits an institution to a set number of proposals per track).
- A documented user group, not a single PI, anchors the proposal. Programs generally require identifying the group of investigators who will use the resulting infrastructure and demonstrating genuine shared demand, not a single lab’s convenience.
- Cost-share and institutional commitment need to be secured early. Where a program requires matching funds (CFI being the clearest example), securing the institutional or provincial match is frequently the longer lead-time item in the application timeline, not the technical narrative itself.
- Post-award obligations continue past the equipment purchase. Infrastructure awards frequently carry ongoing reporting or shared-access obligations once the facility or instrument is operational — plan for this at the proposal stage, not after the award is made.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is infrastructure funding the same as a core facility grant?
Not exactly. Infrastructure funding is the broader category — it covers any grant or capital fund earmarked for shared equipment, facilities, or cyberinfrastructure. A core facility grant (such as an NIH S10 award) is one specific use of infrastructure funding: acquiring the instrumentation that then becomes a core facility’s equipment base. See CASRAI’s core facility guide for how a funded instrument becomes an operating, cost-recovering shared resource.
Can a single investigator apply for infrastructure funding directly?
Generally no. Most major infrastructure mechanisms — NSF MRI, NIH S10, CFI, ARC LIEF — require the institution to be the formal applicant, applying on behalf of a documented group of investigator-users, precisely because the resulting asset is meant to be shared rather than held by one lab.
Do infrastructure grants allow indirect (F&A) costs?
It varies by program, but several major mechanisms restrict or exclude indirect costs entirely. NIH’s S10 SIG and HEI programs, for example, do not permit indirect costs to be charged against the award. A research administrator should check the specific funding opportunity announcement or program guidelines rather than assuming standard F&A treatment applies.
What is the difference between infrastructure funding and a standard research project grant?
A standard project grant (an NIH R01, an NSF standard grant) funds a specific research program led by an individual investigator, with the award going toward personnel, supplies, and project-specific costs. Infrastructure funding instead capitalizes a shared asset — equipment, a facility, or computing infrastructure — that outlives any single project and serves multiple investigators, and it is applied for, owned, and reported on at the institutional level rather than the individual-investigator level.
