Smart Cities & Urban Informatics Scholarships for 2026
January
1) Sharon D. Banks Memorial Undergraduate Scholarship
Why It Slaps: This is one of the cleanest smart-mobility fits on the board. If your version of “smart cities” leans toward transit systems, transportation data, mobility infrastructure, or transportation planning, this gives you a strong official lane without having to force the exact words “urban informatics” into your application.
Amount: $5,000
Deadline: January 9, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
2) Helene M. Overly Memorial Graduate Scholarship
Why It Slaps: Graduate students in transportation-related fields can use this as a direct bridge into the smart infrastructure side of city systems. It is especially strong for applicants whose work touches planning, engineering, logistics, or the operation side of modern mobility networks.
Amount: $10,000
Deadline: January 9, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
3) Molitoris Leadership Scholarship for Undergraduates
Why It Slaps: This is a very solid fit for students who want to shape the future of transportation systems, not just study them. If your application talks about safer streets, multimodal systems, transit innovation, or policy leadership in connected cities, this scholarship lines up well.
Amount: $5,000
Deadline: January 9, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
4) Bridgette Beato Leadership Legacy Scholarship for Graduates
Why It Slaps: This one is strong for graduate students whose smart-cities angle includes sustainability, land use, quality of life, or innovation in transportation challenges. It is more leadership-forward than purely technical, which makes it a good match for urban systems students who want both policy and technology credibility.Set featured image
Amount: $5,000
Deadline: January 9, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
5) Junior College/Trade School Scholarship
Why It Slaps: Not every smart-city path starts in a four-year degree. This one is useful for students entering technical, community college, or applied transportation pathways that feed into ITS operations, field technology, transit support roles, and infrastructure systems work.
Amount: $2,500
Deadline: January 9, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
6) WTS Transportation YOU High School Scholarship
Why It Slaps: For high school students, this is one of the best early-entry scholarships connected to transportation and STEM. It is a smart pick for future applicants who want to move from high school interest into city mobility, transportation engineering, transit technology, or infrastructure analytics later.
Amount: $2,500
Deadline: January 9, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
7) Robert P. Wadell Transportation Engineering Scholarship
Why It Slaps: If your smart-cities path is transportation engineering, this is one of the sharper fits because it explicitly centers transportation engineering rather than broad civil engineering. That makes it useful for students interested in traffic systems, roadway operations, airport mobility, and infrastructure planning tied to connected urban networks.
Amount: Amount is determined annually
Deadline: January 15
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
8) Holzheimer Memorial Student Scholarship for Economic Development Planning
Why It Slaps: Smart cities is not just sensors and software. It is also economic development, downtown revitalization, equitable growth, and the planning decisions that determine how data and infrastructure actually improve a place, which is why this scholarship is a smart adjacent fit for urban informatics students with a planning lens.
Amount: $500
Deadline: Generally late January; the official page says the application system usually opens in early January and the deadline is in late January, subject to change
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
February
9) Women & Planning Division EDI Student Scholarship
Why It Slaps: This is a conference-support scholarship rather than a traditional tuition award, but it still matters because conferences are where urban planning, mobility, housing, land use, and equity ideas get sharpened. For students building a smart-cities profile with a strong planning and inclusion angle, it gives both funding and field exposure.
Amount: $1,000
Deadline: February 16, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
March
10) Women in GIS Awards and Scholarships
Why It Slaps: GIS is one of the clearest technical backbones of urban informatics. If your work touches mapping, spatial data, digital twins, environmental layers, infrastructure analysis, or location intelligence, this is a very natural fit and one of the most on-topic awards in the whole list.
Amount: Undergraduate: $500; Graduate: $1,000; Practitioner/Academic grants: $2,000
Deadline: March 6, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
April
11) USGIF Scholarship Program
Why It Slaps: This is one of the best umbrella opportunities for urban informatics students because the program explicitly welcomes geospatial intelligence and related disciplines, not just one narrow major. If your work touches mapping, remote sensing, spatial analytics, AI plus geospatial data, or city-scale data systems, this should be on your shortlist.
Amount: Varies on the general scholarship application
Deadline: April 5, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
12) Reinventing Geospatial, Inc. (RGi) Scholarship for Geospatial and Engineering
Why It Slaps: This is a high-value, high-fit scholarship for students sitting at the overlap of engineering and geospatial work. That overlap is exactly where a lot of smart-cities work happens, especially in digital infrastructure, urban sensing, and spatially aware engineering systems.
Amount: $15,000
Deadline: April 5, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
13) Leidos Scholarship for AI/ML Advancement
Why It Slaps: This is one of the strongest modern-data fits in the list. If your urban informatics angle includes machine learning, advanced analytics, predictive modeling, or AI applied to geospatial research, this scholarship lines up beautifully with the kind of work cities increasingly rely on.
Amount: $10,000
Deadline: April 5, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
14) Future Geospatial Innovator Award
Why It Slaps: This one is tailor-made for students using emerging technologies to solve spatial problems. That is basically urban informatics language in action, especially if your projects involve location data, sensors, mapping tools, mobility datasets, or applied city analytics.
Amount: $10,000
Deadline: April 5, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
15) IBTTA Foundation Scholarship
Why It Slaps: Tolling is not the flashiest part of smart cities, but transportation finance and operations are a real part of how intelligent mobility systems work in practice. This scholarship is a useful fit for students in transportation-related programs who want to work on real-world infrastructure systems, mobility operations, and next-generation transportation networks.
Amount: $5,000
Deadline: April 20, 2026 at 3:00 PM CT
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
May
16) APA Foundation Scholarship in Planning
Why It Slaps: This is one of the broadest and strongest direct-fit awards for smart-cities students because urban planning remains one of the main homes for work on land use, housing, community systems, transportation, and city data strategy. The award size is also strong, and the 2026 cycle is clearly posted.
Amount: $5,000
Deadline: May 15, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
17) Charles Abrams Scholarship
Why It Slaps: Housing and urban affairs are central to serious smart-city work, and this scholarship comes from exactly that tradition. It is narrower than the general APA Foundation scholarship because it is tied to specific graduate programs, but for students at those schools it is a high-quality, on-theme opportunity.
Amount: $5,000
Deadline: May 15, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
18) Judith McManus Price Scholarship
Why It Slaps: This is a strong public-sector planning fit, which matters because many smart-city and urban informatics careers live inside city agencies, planning departments, regional bodies, and community-serving institutions. It is especially valuable for applicants who want their essays to connect data skills with public impact.
Amount: $5,000
Deadline: May 15, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
19) CaGIS Student Research Scholarships
Why It Slaps: Cartography and GIS are core technical tools for urban informatics. Even though the dollar amount is smaller than some national awards, the thematic fit is excellent for students working on mapping, location analytics, spatial modeling, or place-based data visualization.
Amount: Up to three master’s scholarships at $400 each and up to five doctoral scholarships at $1,000 each
Deadline: May 15, 2026
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
20) APA Latinos and Planning Division Student Scholarship
Why It Slaps: This is a good niche-fit planning award for students interested in Latino communities, equitable development, and urban planning practice. The current live page still shows the most recent posted cycle, so this is best treated as a watchlist scholarship to monitor for the next refresh rather than a same-day apply target.
Amount: Two scholarships of $750
Deadline: May 23, 2025 on the current live page
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
October
21) Robert A. Catlin/David W. Long Fellowship
Why It Slaps: This fellowship is a strong fit for students whose smart-cities interests connect to urban planning, geography, housing, urban policy, or community-centered development. It is especially good for applicants who want their application narrative to center people, neighborhoods, and real-world urban outcomes instead of only technical tools.
Amount: $1,500
Deadline: October 4, 2025 on the current live page
Apply/info: Official fellowship page.
November
22) AAG-IGIF Scholarship Award
Why It Slaps: This is one of the best scholarship-style matches for students in applied spatial analysis and GIScience, which is exactly where a lot of urban informatics research lives. It also has flexible use cases, including tuition, books, equipment, and travel support tied to SA/GISS work.
Amount: $1,200
Deadline: November 15, 2026 by midnight EST
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
23) AAG-IGIF Graduate Research Award
Why It Slaps: This is a strong research-focused option for graduate students building tools, studies, or methods in spatial analysis or GIScience. For urban informatics students doing thesis or lab work around mobility, environment, land use, or city datasets, this is a very clean thematic fit.
Amount: Up to $600
Deadline: November 15, 2026 by midnight EST
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
24) AAG-IGIF Student Paper Award
Why It Slaps: If you are already presenting spatial or GIScience work at recognized conferences, this award turns that academic output into scholarship value. It is especially useful for students whose urban informatics work is already mature enough to become a conference paper, poster, or formal research presentation.
Amount: $600
Deadline: November 15, 2026 by midnight EST
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
25) Abraham Anson Scholarship
Why It Slaps: This ASPRS scholarship is a strong fit for students using photogrammetry, remote sensing, surveying, mapping, and broader geospatial science. That matters for smart-cities students working on land records, urban imagery, environmental monitoring, and spatially rich city systems.
Amount: $3,000
Deadline: November 16, 2025 for the 2026 awards cycle; reference letters were due November 23, 2025
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
26) John O. Behrens Scholarship
Why It Slaps: Land information systems are a direct urban informatics fit. If your interests include parcel data, cadastral systems, land records, property information, mapping platforms, or geospatial data management inside cities and counties, this scholarship is unusually on-brand.
Amount: $3,000
Deadline: November 16, 2025 for the 2026 awards cycle; reference letters were due November 23, 2025
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
27) Robert N. Colwell Fellowship
Why It Slaps: This is the heavyweight research option in the ASPRS cluster. Doctoral students doing serious remote sensing or advanced geospatial technology work tied to land monitoring, planning, resource assessment, or applied urban analysis should absolutely keep this on the radar.
Amount: $10,000
Deadline: November 16, 2025 for the 2026 awards cycle; reference letters were due November 23, 2025
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
December
28) ITSNJ Student of the Industry Award
Why It Slaps: This is one of the best true intelligent transportation systems fits in the list. If your work includes internships, field deployments, traffic tech, mobility operations, or ITS project experience, this award lets you make that applied work count directly in a scholarship application.
Amount: $2,000
Deadline: December 5, 2025 on the current live Fall 2025 solicitation
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
29) The Future of ITSNJ Award
Why It Slaps: Research students in intelligent transportation systems often struggle to find scholarships that actually respect technical ITS work. This one does, and it is especially relevant for applicants working on smart corridors, connected vehicle systems, traffic analytics, or mobility technology research.
Amount: $2,000
Deadline: December 5, 2025 on the current live Fall 2025 solicitation
Apply/info: Official scholarship page.
30) ITSNJ Outstanding Undergraduate/Graduate Student Award
Why It Slaps: This is a good catch-all ITS scholarship for students with a stated interest in intelligent transportation systems. For smart-cities applicants who sit between transportation engineering, planning, and transportation technology, it is one of the most directly aligned “urban systems” awards on the page.
Amount: Undergraduate: $750; Graduate: $1,250
Deadline: December 5, 2025 on the current live Fall 2025 solicitation
Apply/info: Official scholarship overview and official solicitation PDF.
FAQs
What counts as a smart cities or urban informatics scholarship?
Usually not a scholarship literally named “smart cities.” The strongest fits usually come from urban planning, GIS, geospatial science, transportation systems, mobility engineering, civic technology, land information, and data-heavy sustainability programs.
Should students only apply to scholarships with “urban” or “city” in the title?
No. That would leave a lot of money on the table. A student building transit models, mapping neighborhoods, studying land-use data, or working on transportation analytics often fits geospatial, planning, and ITS scholarships better than a vague “urban” label.
Are transportation scholarships really relevant to smart cities?
Yes. Smart-city work often includes transportation planning, ITS, traffic systems, multimodal operations, transit technology, and infrastructure management. Those are direct urban-systems pathways.
Are GIS and remote sensing scholarships worth applying to for urban informatics students?
Absolutely. Urban informatics depends heavily on spatial data, mapping, analytics, imagery, sensors, and place-based modeling. GIS and remote sensing awards are often stronger fits than generic tech scholarships.
What should students do when the official scholarship page still shows the most recent past cycle?
Keep it on the watchlist, but label it honestly. Use language like “current live page shows the most recent posted cycle” instead of presenting an old deadline as newly open.
What keywords should students use to find more scholarships in this niche?
Use combinations like urban planning, GIS, geospatial, intelligent transportation systems, mobility, land information systems, remote sensing, civic tech, transportation engineering, sustainability, and spatial analytics.
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