IRIS is a fee-based service.  It is available to academic institutions for an annual subscription fee.

IRIS is not a funding agency. We do not offer grants, scholarships, or financial aid. Please direct questions about financial aid to the appropriate office or department at the college or university concerned. If you are interested in attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, please go to the UIUC Web site. IRIS offers three Web-based funding and research services: the IRIS Database of federal and private funding opportunities in all disciplines; the IRIS Alert Service; and the IRIS Expertise Service.

The IRIS Database currently contains over 9,000 active federal and private funding opportunities in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. In addition to funding opportunities for faculty, the IRIS Database also contains fellowships and scholarships for grad students and undergrads. Users can search IRIS by sponsor, deadline date, keyword, and other criteria. Most IRIS records contain live links to sponsor Web sites, electronic forms, or Electronic Research Administration (eRA) portals. The IRIS Database is updated daily.

The IRIS Alert Service enables students, staff, and researchers at subscribing institutions to create their own IRIS search profiles. Users can select their preferred search frequency, delivery method (e-mail or Web), and keywords. The program runs the user's profile against the IRIS database and delivers the search results automatically via e-mail or the Web.

The IRIS Expertise Service enables researchers at subscribing institutions to create detailed electronic CVs ("biosketches") and post them to a Web-accessible database for viewing by colleagues at other institutions, program officers at federal and private funding agencies, and private companies. The biosketches can also be used in the electronic submission of grant proposals. There are no copyright or ownership restrictions on IRIS Expertise Service biosketches. Subscribing institutions can download their faculty members' biosketches at any time and use them to populate a local database—or even another online service.

For more on these three services and how to use them, see the IRIS Short Course. Like other fee-based online services, IRIS is designed to be used from or through computers at subscribing institutions.

We do not enable commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for IRIS access. This means that you cannot use IRIS directly through your personal Internet Service Provider (you can, however, access IRIS through a proxy server at a subscribing institution; see below). Attempts to search IRIS through your personal Internet account will almost certainly result in an "access denied..." message.

There are two ways to access IRIS from off site:

1. Dial into your institution's server computer. Your computing or network services office can provide the server computer's telephone number. Once you have connected to the Internet through your institution's server computer, you should be able to use IRIS normally.

2. Point your Web browser to a proxy Web server at your institution. The proxy server will ask you for your personal network ID and password that have been assigned to you by your institution. Once you provide these, the server will enable you to connect to IRIS (and other proprietary online resources) just as if you were working from an on-site computer. Many colleges and universities have proxy servers for precisely this reason, but some don't. To find out whether your institution does, try contacting the library.

If you have questions about accessing IRIS from home, on the road, or off site, please contact us at:

The Illinois Researcher Information Service (IRIS)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
128 Observatory
901 South Mathews Avenue
Urbana, Illinois 61801

Telephone: (217) 333-9893
Fax: (217) 333-7011
Email