Research Grants

The most important work on an open embedded stack is often done by people with no institutional backing: an independent researcher auditing a scheduler, a student attempting formal verification of a kernel component, an engineer bringing up a new board in their spare time. This work is valuable, slow, and unfunded. The Research Grants programme exists to fund it: grants for independent work on the embedded stack — security analysis, formal verification, hardware bring-up — awarded on published criteria.

Grants are also how a young foundation converts donations into public goods. Every grant-funded result — an audit report, a verified component, a newly supported board — flows back into the MIT-licensed platform for everyone. The programme will be designed so that a dollar of funding becomes a permanent, public improvement to the stack.

The programme will award grants for independent work on the EmbeddedOS stack, in areas like security analysis, formal verification, and hardware bring-up. Applications will be judged against published criteria — technical merit, public benefit, and the feasibility of the proposed work — by reviewers with no stake in the outcome. Funded work will be published openly: reports, code, and data, all public.

An honest note on timing: the Foundation received its 501(c)(3) exemption in March 2026 and is building its funding base now. The grants programme will launch when funding allows — there is no grant money to award yet, and announcing a programme before the money exists would be dishonest. The design work — criteria, review process, grant agreements — is being done now so the programme can open as soon as the funding is in place.

For independent researchers, students, and engineers who want to do deep work on the embedded stack — auditing components, verifying code, bringing up hardware — and need funding to make the time. Institutional affiliation will not be required. The quality of the proposal and the public value of the result are what will matter.

For donors and sponsors too: the grants programme will be one of the clearest ways to see a donation turn into a public result. Funders interested in supporting the grants pool can contact the Foundation to discuss it, and every grant will be reported publicly through the transparency page.

For the community at large: published grant results become shared reference material — an audit report on the scheduler or a verified driver benefits every downstream user of the stack, whether or not they ever apply for a grant themselves.

The Research Grants programme is planned and has not started. There is nothing to apply for today — no application form, no deadlines, no funding rounds. If you want to be notified when the programme opens, email contact@embeddedos.org describing the kind of work you would propose.

Two things help now. First, donors who want the grants programme to exist sooner can accelerate it: funding conversations start at partners@embeddedos.org. Second, researchers can help design the programme — the published criteria and review process will be shaped with input from the research community, and that input is welcome at contact@embeddedos.org today.