As part of one of the world's most innovative and recognizable brands, we are committed to support university research and innovation in North America, while also fostering partnerships with university faculty and researchers. This Research Award Program provides funding for cutting-edge academic research and helps build a collaborative relationship between faculty and Sony researchers. With awards up to $150,000 per year for each accepted proposal, both the Faculty Innovation Award and Focused Research Award create new opportunities for university faculties to engage in pioneering research that could drive new technologies, industries and the future.
FACULTY INNOVATION AWARD
Global research and development at Sony enables us to foster innovative ideas, which could ultimately lead to future technology advancements and company growth. In order to speed up and expand the creation of new ideas, we would like to partner with universities. This partnership will help cultivate advanced concepts and fertilize our own research and development. The Sony Faculty Innovation Award provides up to $100K USD* in funds.
FOCUSED RESEARCH AWARD
Solid research is the underlying driving force to crystallize fearless creativity and innovation. While we are committed to run in-house research and engineering, we are also excited to collaborate with academic partners to facilitate exploration of new and promising research. The Sony Focused Research Award provides an opportunity for university faculty and Sony to conduct this type of collaborative, focused research. The award provides up to $150K USD* in funds, and may be renewed for subsequent year(s).
Deadline: Sep. 15, 2025
- Information Technology
- Audio, Music, Speech, and Language Processing
- Computer Vision
- Machine Learning
- Cloud Edge System
- Data Science
- RF Sensing
- Robotics
- Communication
- Human Sensing and Interaction
- Human-AI Interaction
- Life Sciences
- Security
- Linux System
- Software Development Technology
- Entertainment Technology
- Affective Computing
- Computer Vision
- Machine Learning
- Robotics
- Audio, Music, Speech, and Language Processing
- Location Based Entertainment
- Visual/Visualization
- Device Technology
- Computer Vision
- Optical Metasurface/DOE
- RF Sensing
- Micro LED Device (under 1μm Aperture)
- Silicon Photonics
- Visual Chain-of-Thought and Simplified Responses Using Visual Elements
- Multimodal Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Creative Assistance
- Next-Gen Communication Paradigms: Semantic and Task/Goal-oriented Communication
- Physics-based Robotics Simulation
- Incorporating New Optical Functions to High-peak-power Solid-state Surface Emitting Laser
- Innovative Visual Technology powered by AI
- AI-based Digital Human Content Creation
- Understanding Gameplay and Game Scenes through Multimodal LLMs
- Encoding and Protocols for Distributed Computing
- Design and Evaluation of an Intermediate Interaction Layer for Integrating Diverse Input/Output Environments
- Flexible Structural Mechanisms Enabling Dynamic Motion Entertainment
We accept applications from Principal Investigators (PIs) who meet the eligibility criteria below.
- PI's institution: PIs must belong to a university, educational institution, or governmental/non-profit research institute. (E.g. we accept submissions from research institutes that are categorized as governmental and NPO/NGO in nature index tables.)
- PI's position: PIs must be a full-time professor (adjunct professors and adjunct researchers are not eligible) or researcher and be eligible to supervise Ph.D. students at the PI's institution. Full professors, associate professors, and assistant professors are eligible to apply. For the UK, this includes Senior Lecturers, Principal Lecturers, Lecturers, and Readers who are eligible to supervise Ph.D. students at their institutions.
- Countries: The PI's institution must be in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
A PI or different PIs from the same university/institution may submit more than one proposal for different research topics. However, we ask each PI to please not submit identical proposals, and for each PI to not submit more than one proposal for each research topic. Sony will gladly accept an unlimited number of proposals from the same university for the same research topic as long as they each have different PIs.