New NSF Dear Colleague Letter: Critical Aspects of Sustainability (CAS): Innovation Solutions to Climate Change

CAS: Innovative Solutions to Climate Change is a call to action that encourages the submission of certain types of proposals to appropriate existing NSF core programs to lay the foundation for disciplinary and interdisciplinary research and to answer fundamental questions related to novel approaches and solutions to climate change. Learn more here.

 

Moore Inventor Fellows Program*

Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: October 26, 2021

Sponsor Deadline (if nominated): December 13, 2021

Award Amount: $200,000 per year for 3 years plus $25,000 per year to the institution to cover costs associated with administering the grant.

Eligible Applicants: Applicants must be no more than 10 years past receiving the terminal advanced degree in their field (M.S., Ph.D. or M.D.). If awarded, fellows are expected to devote at least 25% of their own time to the pursuit of their invention.

 

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's Moore Inventor Fellows program seeks to identify outstanding inventors and innovators who harness science and technology to enhance the conduct of scientific research, strengthen environmental conservation, or improve the experience and outcomes of patient care. The foundation aims to support inventions at an early stage that could lead to proof-of-concept work on an invention or advance an existing prototype that tackles an important problem.

 

Each institution will be required to contribute $50,000 in annual direct support of the inventor’s work. This could include support for undergraduate or graduate students, equipment, supplies, and other needs that will enable the fellow to make progress on their work. Direct salary support is acceptable provided it includes a proportionate release of time from teaching or other duties. Funds that were designated for the fellow’s use before the fellow was awarded a Moore Inventor Fellowship (such as start-up funds) do not qualify. A clear statement of the proposed institutional support is required as part of the nomination.

 

Recent recipients include Prineha Narang (SEAS, 2018).

 

Harvard University, as single institution, is limited to submitting two proposals to this opportunity. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research is facilitating the internal application and review process for applicants. To be considered for one of the two Harvard nominations, potential applicants must first submit a pre-proposal using the link above. More information on the award can be found on the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation website.

United States - Israel Binational Science Foundation Research Grants

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 9, 2021

Sponsor Deadline: November 17, 2021

Award Amount: up to $250,000 for up to 4 years

The U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) promotes scientific relations between the U.S. and Israel by supporting collaborative research projects in a wide area of basic and applied scientific fields, for peaceful and non-profit purposes. The BSF Research Grants program funds both U.S. and Israeli scientists who wish to work together. Applications must be submitted together by at least one scientist from each country. In 2021, the following areas of research are eligible for submission:

• Biomedical Engineering: Biological Systems and Signals, Control Systems and Imaging; Biomechanics; and Tissue Engineering, Stem Cells and Biotechnology.
• Life Sciences: Animal Sciences; Biochemistry; Cell and Developmental Biology; Ecology; Genetics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology; Immunology; Microbiology; Molecular Biology and Genomic Research; Neurobiology; and Plant Sciences.
• Medicine: Aging, Social and Rehabilitative Medicine, Epidemiology; Cancer; Cardiology, Blood and Respiratory Systems; Child and Human Health, Human Development, Fertility; Cytoskeleton and Support Systems; Infectious & Immunological Diseases; Metabolic and Endocrine Systems; and Neurological and Sensory Systems.
• Psychobiology: Animal Learning and Behavior; Behavioral Genetics; Brain and Behavior; Evolutionary Psychology; Immunoneuropsychology; and Neuropsychology.

United States - Israel Binational Science Foundation Start-Up Research Grants*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 9, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: November 17, 2021
Award Amount: $75,000 per PI over 2 years

 

The Start-Up Grant Program is meant to help newly appointed researchers who are beginning their independent research careers and may not yet have initial results to substantiate their application. Grants are for two years, in order to enable the grantees to submit a standard application to the next competition in their area of research. It is implemented within the framework of the regular BSF Research Grants program, i.e., proposals must exhibit scientific excellence, have a strong element of cooperation between Israeli and American scientists, and fall within the areas of research supported in that year by the BSF. Start-Up applications traditionally have a higher rate of success as compared with standard applications.

 

At least one of the PIs should have attained his/her Ph.D., M.D. degree or equivalent, no more than ten years prior to submitting the proposal. Only up to two junior PIs may apply together for a start-up grant, one Israeli and one American, and they can apply with or without an unfunded senior scientist. 

Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) Research Infrastructure Program*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 12, 2021

Sponsor Deadline: November 19, 2021 at 1 PM

Award Amount: Each award is anticipated to provide $1.5-5 million in funds to the eligible applicant. The MLSC expects to invest up to $10M through this Research Infrastructure Program.

 

The Research Infrastructure program (formerly known as the Open or Competitive Capital Program) provides grants for capital projects that support the life sciences ecosystem in Massachusetts by enabling and supporting life sciences research and development in the Commonwealth. Applicants must be requesting funding for life sciences “infrastructure” defined as: “advanced and applied sciences that expand the understanding of human physiology and have the potential to lead to medical advances or therapeutic applications.” Applicants will have to demonstrate how the requested infrastructure will benefit the entire life sciences ecosystem in Massachusetts. Allowable costs include equipment, research supplies and reagents, purchase of hardware and software, generation of data via core facilities, and purchase of analytical equipment. 

 

The MLSC envisions that recipients under the Program will receive a grant that leverages additional funds that have been identified and raised for the proposed project. Applicants that have succeeded in attracting significant additional funds will benefit during the review process.

Cancer Research Institute Technology Impact Award

Sponsor Letter of Intent Deadline (required): November 15, 2021

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline (if invited): March 8, 2022
Full Proposal Deadline (if invited): March 15, 2022

Award Amount: up to $100,000 per year for 2 years

Eligibility: Applicants must hold a faculty appointment as a tenure-track assistant professor (or higher rank) at the time of award activation.

 

The Cancer Research Institute Technology Impact Award provides seed funding to be used over 12-24 months to address the gap between technology development and clinical application of cancer immunotherapies. These grants aim to encourage collaboration between technology developers and clinical cancer immunologists and to generate the proof-of-principle of a novel platform technology in bioinformatics, ex vivo or in silico modeling systems, immunological or tumor profiling instrumentation, methods, reagents and assays, or other relevant technologies that can enable clinician scientists to generate deeper insights into the mechanisms of action of effective or ineffective cancer immunotherapies. Award winners will be selected based on the novelty, creativity, technical sophistication, and transformative potential of the technology to impact.

Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards Program

Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: November 22, 2021

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline (if nominated): January 26, 2022

Sponsor Deadline (if nominated): February 2, 2022

Award Amount: $100,000 over five years

Eligibility: Applicants must hold a full-time, tenure-track academic appointment, and are normally expected to have been appointed no earlier than mid-year 2016.

 

The Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards Program provides discretionary funding to support the research and teaching careers of talented young faculty in the chemical sciences. The Foundation seeks Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars who demonstrate leadership in research and education. Applicants should describe their dedication and contributions to education in the chemical sciences, particularly with respect to undergraduates. 

 

Recipients include Christina Woo (CCB, 2020) "Chemical Control of Cellular Signaling", Kang Kuen Ni (CCB, 2018) "Ultracold Molecules for Chemistry and Physics", Emily Balskus (CCB, 2015) "Discovering and Manipulating the Chemistry of Human Gut Microbes", Theodore Betley (CCB, 2013) "Correlation of Electronic Structure to Reactivity in Organometallic Catalysis and Small Molecule Activation", and Adam Cohen (CCB, 2012) "New Tools to Study Molecules and Cells."

 

This is a limited submission opportunity and only one nomination may be put forward from Harvard University. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research is facilitating the internal application process. To be considered for the Harvard nomination, potential applicants must submit an internal pre-proposal via the link above.

Environmental Research and Education Foundation: Research in Sustainable Solid Waste Management*
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 22, 2021
Sponsor Pre-Proposal Deadline: December 1, 2021
Award Amount: Previously awarded grants have ranged from $15,000 to over $500,000 with the average grant amount in recent years being $160,000. Typical project durations are about 2 years.

 

The EREF funds research on sustainable waste management practices. Pre-proposal topics must relate to sustainable solid waste management practices and pertain to the following topic areas:

1. Waste minimization
2. Recycling
3. Waste conversion to energy, biofuels, chemicals or other useful products. This includes but is not limited to waste-to-energy, anaerobic digestion, composting, and other thermal or biological conversion technologies.
4. Strategies to promote diversion to higher and better uses (e.g. organics diversion, market analysis, optimized material management, logistics, etc.)
5. Landfilling 

Desirable aspects of the above topics, in addition to or as part of hypothesis driven applied research, also include: economic or cost/benefit analyses, feasibility studies for untested technologies or management strategies, life cycle analysis or inventory, and analyses of policies that relate to the above.

American Association of University Women Research Publication Grants in Engineering, Medicine and Science*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 22, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: December 1, 2021
Award Amount: Up to $35,000; payment of the final 10% of the funds will be contingent upon acceptance to a scholarly publication within six months of the end of the grant year.

 

This opportunity is open to women scholars conducting basic research in engineering, medicine or the physical or biological sciences and who have a doctorate degree in one of those fields. Having a strong publication record is a key to receiving promotions and tenure in engineering, medicine and science. Yet persistent gender stereotypes and bias in these fields can make it difficult for women to find the time and institutional support needed to publish their research. These grants help women overcome these barriers by funding research projects that will culminate in scholarly publications. The grantee must publish their research in a scholarly publication and be listed as a primary author.

 

Grant candidates must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Tenured professors are not eligible.

Burroughs Wellcome Fund Next Gen Pregnancy Initiative*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 22, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: December 1, 2021 by 3 PM EST
Award Amount: Up to $500,000 over 4 years. Overhead is not allowed. This falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss with your grants administrator before preparing an application.  

 

Growing evidence suggests the interrelatedness of the duration of pregnancy, fetal growth, and adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm birth, preeclampsia, intrauterine growth restriction, stillbirth, and maternal medical complications including maternal mortality. Other areas of interest are climate change and environmental impact on pregnancy, complications associated with ART, and epigenome-wide association studies. The initiative is designed to stimulate both creative individual scientists and multi-investigator teams to approach healthy and adverse pregnancy outcomes using creative basic and translation science methods. The formation of new connections between reproductive scientists and investigators who are involved in other areas is particularly encouraged. Molecular and computational approaches such as genetics/genomics, immunology, microbiology, evolutionary biology, mathematics, engineering, and other basic sciences hold enormous potential for new insights independently or in conjunction with more traditional areas of parturition research such as maternal-fetal medicine, obstetrics, and pediatrics. BWF encourages applications seeking actionable therapeutic interventions, novel diagnostics, and device development for real time data capture, and particularly

those investigating mechanisms of racial disparities in pregnancy outcomes.

 

BWF is also interested in Preterm Birth Risk Stratification using artificial intelligence and machine learning. Applications from women and underrepresented minorities, including Blacks or African-Americans, Hispanics or Latinos, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives or Native Hawaiians, are strongly encouraged.

Brain Research Foundation Seed Grant Program*

Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: November 22, 2021

Sponsor Letter of Intent Deadline (if nominated): January 4, 2022

Award Amount: $80,000 for 2 years

 

The Brain Research Foundation's Annual Seed Grant Program provides start-up funding for new research projects in the field of neuroscience that will likely lead to extramural funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or other public and private funding entities. The objective of the BRF Seed Grant Program is to support new and innovative projects, especially those of junior faculty, who are working in new research directions. To be eligible, the PI must be a full-time Assistant or Associate Professor studying brain function. This includes molecular and clinical neuroscience as well as studies of neural, sensory, motor, cognitive, behavioral, and emotional functioning in health and disease. Additional information about this grant program is available on the Brain Research Foundation website.

 

Harvard University is limited to submitting one proposal to this opportunity. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research is facilitating the internal application and review process for applicants. To be considered for the Harvard nomination, potential applicants must first submit a pre-proposal via the link above.

McKnight Foundation: Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Awards*

Sponsor LOI Deadline: December 6, 2021
SEAS/FAS/OSP Deadline: April 18, 2022

Full Proposal Deadline: April 25, 2022

Award Amount: $100,000 per year for two years

 

This program seeks to advance and enlarge the range of technologies available to the neurosciences. The fund is especially interested in how technology may be used or adapted to monitor, manipulate, analyze, or model brain function at any level, from the molecular to the entire organism. Technology may take any form, from biochemical tools to instruments to software and mathematical approaches. Because the program seeks to advance and enlarge the range of technologies available to the neurosciences, research based primarily on existing techniques will not be considered. A goal of the Technological Innovations awards is to foster collaboration between the neurosciences and other disciplines; therefore, collaborative and cross-disciplinary applications are explicitly invited.

 

Recent recipients include Alexander Schier (MCB, 2017-2018)

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine: Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: not required for grants awarded directly to individuals

Sponsor Deadline: December 9, 2021 by 5 PM EST

Award Amount: $50,000

 

Through its program of Fellowships, the Ford Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation's college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, to maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and to increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students. Postdoctoral fellowships will be awarded in a national competition administered by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) on behalf of the Ford Foundation. The awards will be made to individuals who, in the judgment of the review panels, have demonstrated superior academic achievement, are committed to a career in teaching and research at the college or university level, show promise of future achievement as scholars and teachers, and are well prepared to use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students.   

 

Awards will be made for study in research-based programs. Examples include the following major disciplines and related interdisciplinary fields: American studies, anthropology, archaeology, art and theater history, astronomy, chemistry, communications, computer science, cultural studies, earth sciences, economics, education, engineering, ethnic studies, ethnomusicology, geography, history, international relations, language, life sciences, linguistics, literature, mathematics, performance study, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, religious studies, sociology, urban planning, and women's studies. Also eligible are interdisciplinary ethnic studies programs, such as African American studies and Native American studies, and other interdisciplinary programs, such as area studies, peace studies, and social justice. Each Fellow is expected to begin their Fellowship appointment on June 1 (for 12 months) or September 1 (for 9 or 12 months) of the year in which the award is received. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and must have completed all the requirements for a Ph.D. or Sc.D. degree, including successful defense of the dissertation, no earlier than December 9, 2014 and no later than December 9, 2021.

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) Single-Cell Biology Data Insights*
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 7, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: December 14, 2021 by 5PM PST; two other funding cycles will follow
Award Amount: The maximum budgets for proposed projects are $400,000 in total costs for Expanded Projects and $200,000 in total costs for Focused Projects. All projects awards will be for an 18-month duration.

 

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) seeks applications for projects that aim to use and gain insights into health and disease from existing single-cell datasets to help accelerate progress toward challenges associated with the compilation and exploration of large atlas-scale data. Given the growth of single-cell biology and the rapid increase in available data, CZI is looking to support projects that will advance the fields of single-cell biology and data science. Grantees will be expected to interact with a network among participating groups that builds community and accelerates progress. Applications are encouraged from computational experts outside the field of single-cell biology but with expertise relevant to overcoming current bottlenecks. Projects may include dedicated efforts to refine existing computational tools, benchmark classes of tools, improve standards, integrate available data that enables greater biological insight, develop new features that support interoperability of data or tools, and other major challenges brought forward.

Motsepe Presidential Research Accelerator Fund for Africa*

Deadline: October 29, 2021

Award Amount: Up to $100,000 in direct costs for one or two years. A total of $350,000 is available in funding for the current cycle, and it is anticipated that 4-7 grants will be awarded.

 

The primary purpose of the Motsepe Presidential Research Accelerator Fund for Africa is to support faculty-led and student-driven research projects that focus on advancing key challenges and opportunities facing Africa, including, but not limited to, the following areas:

• emerging technologies and the Fourth Industrial Revolution
• climate change and its effect on health, agriculture, water, and/or sanitation
• renewable energy and its benefit to infrastructure and/or society
• health
• aging
• materials science
• governance and policies needed for an entrepreneurial economy

Activities the Fund may support include but are not limited to research; associated travel costs; and the publication and dissemination of findings. Special consideration will also be given to projects that propose multidisciplinary collaboration between Harvard faculty across more than one school and Africa-based academics.

Harvard Office of Technology Development Physical Sciences and Engineering Accelerator

Pre-Proposal Deadline: November 1, 2021 by 6 PM

Full Proposal Deadline (if invited): December 17, 2021 by 6 PM

Award Amount: $50,000-$100,000 

 

The Office of Technology Development (OTD) is now accepting pre-proposals for the Physical Sciences and Engineering (PSE) Accelerator. The PSE Accelerator is designed to support Harvard's innovative physical science research by extending preliminary observations, establishing a solid proof of concept, scaling up a product or process, and generating (or enhancing) intellectual property positions. This program provides critical financial support, guidance, and resources to enable focused development of early-stage technologies with commercial potential. Proposals need to be directed towards one or more aspects of the applied sciences, physical sciences, computer software or engineering.

 

The intent of the PSE Accelerator is to advance research projects towards one of the following value-creating inflection points: 

• Formation of a startup company 
• Licensing the technology to an established company 
• Securing follow-on industrial funding to support continued research and development 

In this RFP, the OTD is especially seeking projects with strong potential to launch a start-up company. Such projects, while faculty-led, will benefit from having a postdoc or final-year PhD student working on the project who is interested in being a founding member of the startup team. Consideration will also be given to projects with other development goals such as licensing the technology to an existing company, or securing follow-on industrial funding for continued R&D.  

 

Questions may be directed to Alan Gordon in the Office of Technology Development at alan_gordon@harvard.edu.

Harvard Catalyst Translational Innovator Program Pilot Funding: The Five Senses: Input & Response*

Deadline: November 10, 2021 by 5 PM

Award Amount: Up to $50,000

Eligibility: Any faculty member who holds a Harvard University appointment as assistant professor, associate professor, or professor, irrespective of degree or institutional affiliation, is eligible to serve as the PI. Investigators who hold appointments such as lecturer, instructor, or research scientist/associate are eligible to apply with approval and support of their department chair.

 

To foster cross-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration, Harvard Catalyst makes available seed funding in the form of pilot grants and prizes. This funding opportunity will sponsor investigations on any aspect of human sensory systems or systems enabling sensory perception in human health or disease. Although traditional sensory systems (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) gather, organize, and integrate external stimuli, proposals for internal sensory systems (vestibular, spatial orientation, pain, and others) would also be welcome. Proposals can address but are not limited to sense functionality, injury, disease states, treatment, mitigation, social and societal impacts, or public policy. Proposals describing the formation of interdisciplinary teams to address multi-sensory integration projects would also be welcome. This RFA is intended to offer applicants opportunities to conduct important translational research across a wide range of topics. Proposals addressing healthcare disparities and/or health equity or focus on or actively recruit underserved, understudied, or special populations, and impacts across the lifespan are encouraged.

 

A mini-symposium to learn more about this opportunity will be held October 19, 2021 11:30AM-1:00PM via Zoom. Register here by October 18 to attend.

Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs: The Middle East Initiative: Faculty Research Grants*

Deadline: November 14, 2021

Award Amount: Unspecified

 

The Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs funds research for projects that target major policy issues affecting the Middle East and North Africa. The Middle East Initiative is now accepting research proposals for the 2022 Emirates Leadership Initiative (ELI) and Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) Faculty Research Grant Cycle. The ELI will consider proposals on issues of critical importance to the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab World with priority given to those focused on the following topics: Improving Governance; Building Peace; Revitalizing the State; Broadening Financial and Labor Markets; Governing Technology; and Adapting to the Environment. The Kuwait program will consider proposals primarily on Kuwait and GCC countries with priority given to those focused on the following topics: Education Reform; Economic Development; Political Reform; Energy Policy; and Science, Technology, and Innovation. Please see attached document for more information.

 

For each program, there are two categories of research proposals:

1. Major Research Projects may be for one- and two-year grants to support research by Harvard faculty members. Funding can be applied toward research assistance, travel, summer salary, workshops, and course buy-out.
2. Exploratory Research Projects are intended to support travel to Kuwait or to the UAE to participate in academic seminars and conferences, develop research projects with local scholars and institutions, and share the results of Harvard faculty research with local audiences.

Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative: Urban Research Grants*

Deadline: December 1, 2021

Award Amount: $2,500

 

The Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative (HMUI) invites applications for grants to support research projects with an urban focus, ideally with an interdisciplinary approach. Projects might include but are not limited to such issues as inequality, diversity, and climate change. HMUI is particularly interested in linking humanistic approaches to cities with spatial investigations of the built and natural environments. HMUI seeks proposals in two broad areas:

1. Research in archives and online data sets that will lead to publication and/or course-related projects and programming to strengthen Urban Studies at Harvard.
2. Innovative strategies for disseminating knowledge (e.g.: data visualization, maps, multimedia history, etc.).

All Harvard affiliates are eligible to apply. Faculty and instructors can only apply to hire student research assistants. Currently-enrolled students, both undergraduate and graduate, may apply to undertake their own independent or collaborative projects. Collaborative projects that bring together faculty and students from across the university to develop new cross-disciplinary approaches to the study of urban environments, societies, and cultures are welcome. Projects can be conducted in Spring and/or Summer of 2022. 

Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator

Pre-Proposal Deadlines: December 17, 2021 for Development and Pilot applications

Award Amount: $100,000 for 1 year for Pilot grants; $300,000 for 2 years for Development grants

 

The Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator at Harvard University provides essential gap funding, development support, and business expertise to help faculty investigators achieve the full potential of their work. The Accelerator seeks to support innovative, investigator-initiated research, and to develop preliminary observations into robust intellectual property positions. Its primary goal is to advance technologies to the point where an industry partnership can commence. Proposals are welcomed from Harvard principal investigators with early-stage research in a range of life science areas, including therapeutics, diagnostics, drug delivery technologies, medical devices/instruments, and enabling technologies for drug discovery. Pilot Grants are intended to support proof-of-concept activities that (if successful) would establish a basis for a subsequent Development Grant proposal. Development Grants are expected to generate partnerable technology within the proposed timeframe.

Harvard Office of Technology Development (OTD) staff will work with applicants to develop a pre-proposal. Only one pre-proposal per applicant will be accepted per cycle. Based on recommendations from the Accelerator Advisory Committee and OTD, a subset of applicants will be invited to submit a full proposal. Questions about this opportunity may be directed to Anu Natarajan (anuradha_natarajan@harvard.edu) or blavatnik_accelerator@harvard.edu.

 

 

Harvard Solar Geoengineering Research Program: Residency Program and Harvard Faculty Research Grants

Facebook: Mathematical modeling and optimization for large-scale distributed systems*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: N/A for gifts

Sponsor Deadline: October 27, 2021

Award Amount: $50,000. Please discuss gift assessment requirements with your grants administrator before beginning an application.

 

Facebook’s mission of bringing the world closer together requires supporting one of the world’s most complex backend systems. Operating infrastructure at scale with a high level of efficiency and stability raises new and interesting challenges, providing a natural laboratory for developing highly impactful solutions at the intersection of applied math, probability, computer science, and other quantitative disciplines. Facebook teams of research data scientists are at work onboarding the latest in machine learning and more general mathematical modeling technologies to drive continual improvement in automation and management of these large-scale systems. To foster further innovation in this area and to deepen collaboration with academia, Facebook invites faculty to respond to this call for research proposals pertaining to the aforementioned topics.

 

Proposals should advance mathematical techniques with a clear, practical application to one area of interest in backend systems. The range of mathematical techniques includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Convex and nonconvex optimization
• Stochastic control and optimization
• Graph algorithms
• Online algorithms
• Reinforcement learning and adaptive control
• Machine learning
• Dynamic programming
• Decisions under uncertainty
• Scheduling and assignment
• Hidden Markov models
• Monte Carlo and simulation methods
• Multi-agent learning and game theory
• Randomized search heuristics
• Semi-supervised and weak supervised learning

Areas of interest can be categorized as the following:

1. Data center and hardware operations
2. Cloud computing and cluster management
3. Application tuning and optimization

Google Research Scholar Program*

Sponsor Deadline: December 1, 2021

Award Amount: Up to $60,000. For planning purposes, while we work to determine how this award would be handled at Harvard, of the $60,000 total costs, researchers should be prepared to have ~85% of the award available in direct project support costs. Please note no detail budged is required upon submission.

 

The Research Scholar Program aims to support early-career professors who are pursuing research in fields relevant to Google. Areas of interest to Google in Computer Science and related fields include:

• Algorithms and optimization
• Augmented and virtual reality
• Cooling and power
• Geo/maps
• Health research
• Human-computer interaction
• Information retrieval and real time content
• Machine learning and data mining
• Machine perception
• Machine translation
• Mobile
• Natural language processing
• Networking
• Privacy
• Quantum computing
• Security
• Software engineering and programming languages
• Speech
• Structured data, extraction, semantic graph, and database management
• Systems (hardware and software)

This opportunity is open to faculty at a university or degree-granting research institution who received their PhD within seven years of submission (e.g. an applicant in 2021 must have received PhD in 2014 or later). Exceptions will be made for applicants who have been teaching seven years or fewer and had delays, such as working in industry, leave of absence, etc. Applicants may submit one application per round and apply a maximum of three times.

DARPA Assessing Immune Memory (AIM)

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: October 19, 2021

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: October 26, 2021

Award Amount: The amount of resources made available under this BAA will

depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. The AIM program is divided into two sequential phases over 60 months. Phase 1 (24 months): Assemble an immune memory road map; and Phase 2 Option (36 months): Platform capability development.

 

Why some vaccines provide lifetime protection and others protect for only a few months remains enigmatic and difficult to predict during vaccine product development. The Assessing Immune Memory (AIM) program seeks to determine early on if a vaccine candidate will later provide long-lasting immune protection in humans, a current impossibility that would benefit the warfighter and nation immensely. To accomplish this goal, AIM will take a systems-level view of the immune response to vaccination and dissect it with next-generation analytical and computational approaches to determine the host response mechanisms that lead to long-lasting protection. This systems-level understanding will then be implemented as a tool that can predict vaccine duration of protection and the associated mechanisms without waiting years for retrospective determination. Upon successful demonstration of the underlying principles of AIM, the same technology can be explored for use in a prognostic capacity to predict individual levels of immune protection.

 

Multiple awards are possible.

DARPA Learning Introspective Control (LINC)

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: October 19, 2021

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: October 26, 2021

Award Amount: The amount of resources made available under this BAA will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. LINC is being planned as a 48-month, 3-phase program. Up to $24M may be awarded for TA1: up to $10.3M may be awarded for Phase 0 (18 months), up to $8.4M may be awarded for Phase 1 (15 months), and up to $5.3M may be awarded for Phase 2 (15 months).

 

The Learning Introspective Control (LINC) program aims to develop machine learning-based introspection technologies that enable physical systems, with specific interest in ground vehicles, ships, drone swarms, and robotic systems, to respond to events not predicted at design time. LINC technologies will update control laws as required in real time while providing guidance and situational awareness to the operator, whether that operator is human or an autonomous controller.

 

LINC has two Technical Areas (TAs):

• TA1: Learn Control Using Onboard Sensors and Actuators
• TA2: Communicate Situational Awareness and Guidance to the Operator

This BAA is soliciting proposals for TA1 only. TA2 details are provided solely for informational purposes. Proposals for TA2 will be solicited under a separate BAA, approximately 12 months into the program. TA1 performers will begin work with Phase 0 of the program and continue into Phase 1 and Phase 2. TA2 performers will be awarded at the start of Phase 1 following the issuance of a second LINC BAA.

 

Multiple awards are anticipated.

ONR FY22 Young Investigator Program (YIP)

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: October 22, 2021

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: October 29, 2021

Award Amount: Typical awards are $510,000 over a 36-month period of performance. Applicants may request up to $170,000 for each 12-month interval. Additional funding may be requested (under the 36-month period) up to $250,000 to cover equipment costs, testing, ship time, etc. These funds must be included as an option and the applicant MUST discuss any request for additional funding with the Program Officer prior to submission.

 

The objectives of ONR's Young Investigator Program are to attract outstanding faculty members to the Department of the Navy's Science and Technology (S&T) research program, to support their research, and to encourage their teaching and research careers. Proposals addressing research areas (as described in the ONR Science and Technology Department section of ONR's website) which are of interest to ONR Program Officers will be considered. The YIP program seeks to identify and support academic scientists and engineers who are in their first or second full-time tenure-track or tenure-track-equivalent academic appointment, who have received their PhD or equivalent degree on or after January 1, 2014, and who show exceptional promise for doing creative research. The Principal Investigator of a proposal must be a U.S. citizen, national, or permanent resident (on the date proposals are due).

 

Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact the appropriate Program Officer who is the point of contact for a specific technical area to discuss their research ideas before submitting a proposal. A list of most Program Officers and their contact information can be found at: https://www.onr.navy.mil/our-research/technology-areas or at: https://www.onr.navy.mil/our-research/our-program-managers. Brief informal pre-proposals may be submitted to facilitate these discussions but are not required. Such discussions can clarify the content and breadth of the priority research areas and enhance the match between a subsequent proposal and Department of the Navy research needs.

 

15-35 awards are anticipated in FY22.

NSWC Naval Engineering Education Consortium (NEEC) Broad Agency Announcement for FY22*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: October 25, 2021

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: November 1, 2021

Award Amount: Approximately $100,000-$150,000 total for the first year with two option years. If funded for three years, the totals would generally be $300,000-$450,000.

 

On behalf of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) Warfare Centers, the Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division (NSWC IHD) is soliciting research of interest in support of the Naval Engineering Education Consortium (NEEC). This BAA is open only to colleges and universities.

 

The topics of interest include:

• CD-01: Innovative algorithms in signal processing to improve acoustic and vibration propagation modeling in a complex medium for near real-time assessments.
• CD-02: Research initiatives, both in modeling and simulation and experimental techniques that would advance the Navy’s ability to perform design assessment of resistance and propulsion, maneuvering, and loads on vessels transiting in ice.
• CO-01: Federated Machine Learning -- Explore the applicability of federated learning, aka federated machine learning, to enable models to be trained and/or utilized at edge computing nodes and groups.
• CO-02: Distributed Data Replication and Synchronization -- Study optimal techniques for distributed data replication and synchronization.
• CO-05: Measurement-focused Modeling and Simulation (M&S) and Big-Data Analytics capabilities -- Research and development of numerical methods for solution and study of physical phenomena incorporating measurement uncertainty quantification.
• CR-01: Mitigating Supply Chain Threats to Hardware and Firmware Security
• CR-02: Adaptive Mapping, Sensing, and Decision Making for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and Autonomous Surface Vehicles
• DD-01: Intelligent Automation - Research on intelligent architectures that combine and exploit some or all of the following techniques: AI-ML, reinforcement learning, deep learning, probabilistic, generative adversarial networks, or expert systems capabilities.

DARPA Quantum-Inspired Classical Computing (QuICC)*

Sponsor Deadline for Abstracts (strongly encouraged): October 25, 2021

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 1, 2021

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: December 8, 2021

Award Amount: The amount of resources made available under this BAA will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. The QuICC program is a 60-month, three phase effort with a 24-month Phase 1 (base), 18-month Phase 2 (option), and 18-month Phase 3 (option).

 

The DARPA Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) is soliciting innovative proposals for the research and development of quantum-inspired solvers for hard optimization problems and for the demonstration of feasibility in achieving at least two orders of magnitude improvements in computational efficiency over all existing techniques. The QuICC program will focus exclusively on classical, hybrid (mixed-signal) solver systems; technologies such as all-digital solvers or quantum computing are not within the scope of this program.

 

This QuICC program BAA is soliciting comprehensive research proposals for efforts in two technical areas:

• Technical Area 1 (TA1): Solver Co-design and Mission Relevant Benchmarking
• Technical Area 2 (TA2): Analog Hardware Prototyping

Approximately $58M of total funding is anticipated for awards made against this BAA, with a distribution of: $17M for Technical Area 1 (TA1) and $41M for Technical Area 2 (TA2). Multiple awards are anticipated.

DARPA Arcadia*

Sponsor Deadline for Abstracts (strongly encouraged): October 25, 2021

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 8, 2021

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: December 15, 2021

Award Amount: The amount of resources made available under this BAA will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. Phase I is 24 months (Base) and Phase 2 is a 24-month Option period.

 

DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO) is soliciting innovative proposals to develop beneficial, functional biofilms capable of reducing drag, decreasing corrosion, or inhibiting black mold growth on military material. The Arcadia program will combat DoD asset degradation by generating “material probiotics”—biofilms with a beneficial function. Arcadia will focus on biofilm-mediated problems, advancing our understanding of how biofilms form and survive which, when combined with advances in bacterial control, will enable us to build the tools and understanding for biofilm management. This will require advances in modeling biofilm and developing testbeds to replicate in-the-field conditions. Multiple testbeds must run in parallel to grow, track, and test biofilms, capturing variables associated with growth and resilience to perturbation, and enabling further model parameterization. Biofilm management strategies will be rigorously tested not only in the laboratory, but also in the field to foster model refinement and to ensure that models predict real-world biofilms.

 

To focus technology development, performers will choose one of four application tracks: (1) Drag on UUVs/Gliders; (2) Commercial UUV/Glider Corrosion; (3) Fuel-Tank Corrosion; or (4) Black Mold Inhibition. Each track will address the same Technical Areas (TAs): Modeling & Analysis of Community Interactions (TA1) and Engineering a Functional and Resilient Biofilm (TA2). An individual proposal must address both Technical Areas and must address only one application track.

 

Multiple awards are anticipated.

DARPA Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE) Opportunity: Stabilizing Hostilities through Arbitration and Diplomatic Engagement (SHADE)*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: October 28, 2021

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: November 4, 2021

Award Amount: The total award value for the combined Phase 1 Base (up to $300,000 for Feasibility Study) and Phase 2 Option (up to $700,000 for Proof of Concept) is a maximum of $1,000,000 per proposal. Combined, Phase 1 and Phase 2 efforts should not exceed 18 months.

 

DARPA is issuing an Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE) Opportunity inviting submissions of innovative basic research concepts in the technical domain of negotiation agents in multi-party interaction environments. The Stabilizing Hostilities through Arbitration and Diplomatic Engagement (SHADE) Opportunity aims to pursue technologies that understand nuanced communications and combine this with situational understanding to inform improved strategic decision-making, collaboration, and deception. It is important to develop techniques that can identify and address the complications of multi-party interactions with deception, collusion, profiling, and other real-world features. Negotiations among nation-states are extremely complex and have long lasting ramifications making real-world trials infeasible. Using the surrogate simulated (gaming) environment of Diplomacy, SHADE will train and evaluate fully automated and AI-assisted solutions. Phase 1 will focus on AI agent development and generation of an agent communication specification. Phase 2 will focus on agent refinement to play against other agent and human players in a Diplomacy tournament.

 

This AIE Opportunity is issued under the Program Announcement for AIE, DARPA-PA-21-04.

DARPA ELectronics for G-band ARrays (ELGAR)*

Sponsor Deadline for Abstracts (strongly encouraged): October 29, 2021

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 6, 2021

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: December 13, 2021

Award Amount: ELGAR is a 48-month, three-phase program: Phase 1 (Base) will be 18 months, and Phases 2 (Option 1) and 3 (Option 2) will be 15 months each. Approximately $55M of total funding is anticipated for awards made against this BAA.

 

The Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) at DARPA seeks innovative proposals to develop fabrication and integration technologies needed to create compact, high-performance III-V RF electronics, including monolithic microwave/millimeter wave integrated circuits (MMICs) and transmit and receive array front-end test articles, to enable communication and sensing systems at G-band frequencies.

 

To achieve its objectives, the ELectronics for G-band ARrays (ELGAR) program must overcome two technical challenges:

• Achieving efficient, compact G-band MMICs with high output power density; and
• Achieving low-loss off-chip interconnects between adjacent G-band array components.

The ELGAR program has one technical area which will focus on addressing the two major technical challenges. Performers must address both technical challenges and meet all metrics in one proposal.

 

Multiple awards are anticipated.

DARPA Hardening Development Toolchains Against Emergent Execution Engines (HARDEN)*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: November 4, 2021 (proposals submitted after this deadline may be received and evaluated up to solicitation closing of March 21, 2022, at 5:00 pm Eastern Time; however, the likelihood of available funding is greatly reduced for proposals submitted after the initial closing date)

Award Amount: The amount of resources made available under this BAA will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. The HARDEN program is a 48-month program organized into three phases: Phases 1 and 2 will each be 18-months, followed by a 12-month Phase 3.

 

DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O) is soliciting innovative proposals in the following areas of interest: tools to anticipate, isolate, and mitigate adversarially programmable emergent behaviors in integrated software systems, and tools to protect intended software abstractions from adversarial reuse. The Hardening Development Toolchains Against Emergent Execution Engines (HARDEN) program will explore novel approaches that use formal verification methods and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-aided program models, analyses, and logics to develop practical tools to anticipate, isolate, and mitigate emergent execution engines throughout the entire software development lifecycle in order to disrupt the patterns of robust, reliable, and composable exploit primitives that empower attackers.

 

The program is divided into four Technical Areas (TAs) to support program goals:

• TA1: Tooling for developers
• TA2: Modeling of emergent behaviors
• TA3: Voice of the offense
• TA4: Integration and systems engineering evaluation

Each proposal may address any one TA, or a combination of TA1 and TA2. A proposer submitting combined TA1 and TA2 proposals may be selected to perform on one, or both, of these TAs. If selected to perform on TA3, a proposer cannot be selected to perform on any other TAs, whether as a prime, subcontractor, or any other capacity from an organizational to individual level, to protect the integrity of the program evaluation. Similarly, a proposer submitting proposals to TA4 and some other TA(s), if selected to perform on TA4, cannot be selected to perform on any other TAs in any capacity. Multiple awards are anticipated in Technical Area 1 and Technical Area 2, and a single award is anticipated in Technical Area 3 and Technical Area 4.

DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA)*

Sponsor Deadline for Executive Summaries (strongly encouraged): November 4, 2021

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 18, 2022

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 25, 2022

Award Amount: Each award will include a 24-month base period (maximum of $500,000; PIs may request up to $250,000 per year) and a 12-month option period (maximum of $500,000). This option period, referred to as the “Director’s Fellowship,” will be reserved for a limited number of awardees who demonstrate exceptional YFA project performance over the 24-month base period.

 

DARPA’s Young Faculty Award (YFA) program aims to identify and engage rising stars in junior research positions in academia and equivalent positions at non-profit research institutions, particularly those without prior DARPA funding, to expose them to Department of Defense (DoD) needs and DARPA’s mission to create and prevent technological surprise. The YFA program will provide high-impact funding to elite researchers early in their careers to develop innovative new research that enables transformative DoD capabilities. Once awards are made, each YFA program performer will be assigned a DARPA Program Manager with interests closely related to their research topic. The Program Manager will act as project manager and mentor to the YFA award recipients. As part of the program, a number of visits/exercises at a variety of DoD sites and facilities will be scheduled. Participation is open to individuals who are U.S. Citizens, U.S. Permanent Residents, and Foreign Nationals who are: current Tenure-Track Assistant/Associate Professors; current Tenured faculty within 3 years of their Tenure date; or an equivalent at a non-profit research institution within 12 years of the receipt of their Ph.D. Recipients of non-YFA DARPA awards are eligible to propose. Submissions to young investigator programs sponsored by other agencies are not restricted.

 

This Research Announcement (RA) solicits single PI proposals for research and development in the following specific TAs of interest:

1. Modulation of Brown Adipose Tissue for Arctic Resilience
2. Engineered Cellular Symbiosis (ECS)
3. Hierarchical Control of Biomaterial Structure, Function, and Organization for Injury Repair
4. Metabolic Engineering Enabling Rare Chemistries
5. Strongly Correlated Material Systems and Sensors
6. Benchmarking Power Requirements for Electromagnetic Non-reciprocity
7. Autonomous Manufacturing and Repair for Austere Environments
8. Neuromorphic Metamaterials
9. Computational Theory of Information Control
10. Threat Modeling of the Influence Platform Ecosystem
11. Patch Process Leapfrogging
12. Computational Theory of Insecurity
13. Effective Assurance for 5G Technologies
14. Adaptive Conventions for Human-Machine Partnership
15. Embodied Physical Intelligence
16. Physics of Charge Trapping in Bulk Dielectrics
17. In-Situ Characterization of Additively Manufactured Materials in Complex Structures
18. Self-Assembled Transistor Fabrication to Support Manufacturing as a Technology Differentiator
19. Highly-reliable and Bandwidth-scalable Electrical Interconnects
20. Intelligent Sensor Management for Undersea Environmental Characterization
21. Distributed Machine Learning over Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs)
22. Trust Architectures to Enable Space Infrastructure as a Service
23. Scaling Challenges in Metal Additive Manufacturing
24. Platform Design Optimization Leveraging Power Beaming
25. Integrated Perception Learning and Control for Autonomous Robots

Each submission (executive summary or full proposal) must specify ONE and only one TA for the submission. At the executive summary phase, proposing PIs are limited to one executive summary per TA. At the full proposal phase, proposing PIs are limited to submitting only one full proposal to only one topic under this RA.

DTRA Strategic Trends Division Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Amendment 12: FY22 Thrust Areas

Sponsor Deadlines for White Papers (required): November 9, 2021 for Thrust Area 2; November 16, 2021 for Thrust Area 1; November 23, 2021 for Thrust Area 3

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of full proposal

Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals (if invited): TBA

Award Amount: The amount and period of performance of each selected proposal may vary depending on the research area and the technical approach. DTRA SI-STT estimates the total program budget divided among multiple awardees at approximately $1,950,000 per year.

 

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) enables the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S. Government (USG), and International Partners to counter and deter Weapons of Mass Destruction and emerging threats. The Strategic Integration Directorate, Strategic Trends and Effects Department, Strategic Trends Division’s (SI-STT) primary responsibility is to generate operationally-relevant, timely, credible, actionable insights and recommendations into emerging threats within DTRA’s mission space in order to enable and guide warfighter understanding of the range of military operations in an era of Great Power Competition. Per priorities identified by the 2018 National Defense Strategy, SI-STT seeks proposals and white papers for research studies, strategic dialogues, and tabletop exercises (TTXs).

 

SI-STT has identified the following three thrust areas for FY2022:

• Thrust Area1: Research Studies to Characterize the 2027 to 2032 Battlespace
• Thrust Area 2: Track 1.5 and Track 2 Strategic Dialogues with Allies, Partners, and Non-Traditional Partners
• Thrust Area 3: WMD-Relevant Tabletop Exercises

SI-STT will hold a virtual Research Topic Information Session (RTIS) for interested participants on October 19, 2021 from 8:00 AM to 11:15 AM EST. To register for the RTIS, please email: dtra.belvoir.si.mbx.hdtra1-stri-adm@mail.mil. In the registration email (Subject: STRI RTIS Registration), please include the participant’s full name, title, organization, and email address. On or before October 15, 2021, SI-STT will send a link for the virtual session on the Zoom4Gov platform.

AFRL Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP)

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: not required for awards made directly to individuals

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: November 30, 2021

Award Amount: Weekly stipend based on the applicant’s career status plus travel and daily expense allowances.

 

The U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship Program offers hands-on exposure to Air Force research challenges through 8- to 12-week research residencies at participating Air Force research facilities for full-time science, mathematics, and engineering faculty at U.S. colleges and universities. Applicants' research interests must be in line with the interests and needs of the various Air Force Research Facilities. These include the nine Air Force Research Laboratory Directorates, Air Force Test Center, the United States Air Force Academy, and the Air Force Institute of Technology. Click here to learn more about the areas of interest to the various Air Force Research Facilities as well as for contact information for each facility. Applicants should only upload their proposals after receiving approval from the advisor of the program to which they are applying. U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship Program faculty participants have the opportunity to bring a graduate student with them. Graduate student applications must be completed and submitted to the faculty member to be uploaded as a part of their application proposal.

 

Applicants to the U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship Program must be citizens of the United States. Dual U.S. Citizens may apply with an exception to those applying to Directed Energy (RD) and Space Vehicles (RV) Directorate programs. Those applying to RD and RV must be U.S. Citizens only. Participating graduate students must be U.S. citizens for all SFFP programs.

• Identify the utility of deeper, more meaningful relationships with existing allies, partners, and establish new relationships with non-traditional partners as a mechanism to compete against key strategic competitors;
• Understand the implications of key strategic competitors' emerging capabilities on the United States' ability to maintain operational advantage and project power;
• Identify emerging WMD-related threats of concern for the future battlespace;
• Consider the role and application of WMD risk reduction tools and approaches (e.g. arms control) in an era of Great Power competition; and/or
• Explore the utility and applicability of applying a Counter Threat Network (CTN) approach to better characterize and address cross-domain threats posed by priority threat actors.

• Thrust Area 1: Competition with Revisionist Powers
• Thrust Area 2: Emerging Threats
• Thrust Area 3: Counter Threat Networks (CTN)
• Thrust Area 4: Strategic Security and Risk Reduction

• Thrust Area 5: Allies, partners, and non-traditional partners
• Thrust Area 6: Key strategic competitors

• Thrust Area 7: Competition with Revisionist Powers (with a focus on WMD-related issues)
  

 

 

Early Career Research Program

Sponsor Pre-Application Deadline (required): October 21, 2021

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 12, 2022
Full Proposal Deadline: January 20, 2022

Award Amount: $750,000 over 5 years

 

DOE Office of Science (SC) invites applications for support under the Early Career Research Program in the following program areas: Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR); Basic Energy Sciences (BES); Biological and Environmental Research (BER); Fusion Energy Sciences (FES); High Energy Physics (HEP); Nuclear Physics (NP); Isotope R&D and Production (DOE IP); or Accelerator R&D and Production (ARDAP). The purpose of this program is to support the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and to stimulate research careers in the areas supported by SC.

 

The PI must be an untenured Assistant Professor on the tenure track or an untenured Associate Professor on the tenure track at a U.S. academic institution as of the deadline for the application. No more than 10 years can have passed between the year the PI’s Ph.D. was awarded and 2021. For the present competition, those who received doctorates no earlier than 2011 are eligible. If a PI has multiple doctorates, the discipline of the one they have earned within the 10-year eligibility window should be relevant to the proposed research. Extensions to eligibility will be considered for individuals who have had a major life event requiring an extended absence (three months or longer) from the workplace, including but not limited to active military service, an absence due to personal disability, or an absence covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act.

 

Recent recipients include Julia Mundy (Physics, 2021), Jarad Mason (CCB, 2020), Cora Dvorkin (Physics, 2019), Stratos Idreos (SEAS, 2019), and Kang Kuen Ni (CCB, 2018).

Atmospheric System Research (ASR)*

Sponsor Pre-Application Deadline (required): November 3, 2021

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 4, 2022

Sponsor Full Proposal Deadline: January 11, 2022

Award Amount: $900,000 maximum for three-year projects, $600,000 maximum for two-year projects

 

The DOE SC program in Biological and Environmental Research (BER) announces its interest in receiving applications for Atmospheric System Research (ASR) within BER’s Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD). ASR supports research on key cloud, aerosol, precipitation, and radiative transfer processes that affect the Earth’s radiative balance and hydrological cycle, especially processes that limit the predictive ability of regional and global models. This FOA solicits research grant applications for observational, data analysis, and/or modeling studies that use observations supported by BER, including the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility, to improve understanding and model representation of:

1. Aerosol-cloud interactions;
2. Aerosol processes affecting cloud lifecycle, properties, and/or processes;
3. Convective cloud processes; and
4. High-latitude atmospheric processes.

All research supported by awards under this FOA is intended to benefit the public through increasing our understanding of the Earth system.

Environmental System Science*

Sponsor Pre-Application Deadline (required): November 17, 2021

SEAS/FAS/OSP Deadline: December 3, 2021

Sponsor Deadline: December 10, 2021
Award Amount: Up to $1M depending on research area

 

The DOE SC program in Biological and Environmental Research (BER) hereby announces its interest in receiving applications for research in Environmental System Science (ESS). This FOA will consider applications that focus on measurements, experiments, field data, and modeling to provide improved understanding and representation of ecosystems and watersheds in ways that advance the sophistication and capabilities of models that span from individual processes to Earth system scales. This FOA will encompass three Science Research Areas:

1. investigation of ecosystem and watershed responses to plant-mediated ecohydrologic processes, through their influence on biogeochemical cycling, hydrologic dynamics, and/or land-atmosphere exchange;
2. understanding the influence of wildfire and flood disturbances on hydro-biogeochemical processes and system function; and,
3. the role of fungal networks in shaping ecosystem function through coordination of ecohydrological or biogeochemical response to stress, ephemeral soil resources, or transient environmental factors.

• Developing high-throughput multiplex technologies to characterize virus-host interactions, determine phage resistance mechanisms in nature, identify the degree of specificity for each bacterial resistance mechanism across diverse phage types, and understand the coevolution of hosts and their phages, which can ultimately be used to design better phage therapeutic treatments and tools for precision microbiome engineering;
• Improved modeling for understanding natural viral populations and persistence in the environment, as well as predictive modeling for viral stability and evolution in changing environmental conditions;
• Understanding virus-microbiome community composition, function, and evolution;
• Synthetic biology of key target viral proteins to rapidly develop improved vaccines or therapeutics; and
• Synthetic biology to construct viral genome variants and test viral stability, persistence, and resilience in the environment.

Space Technology – Research, Development, Demonstration, and Infusion-2021 (SpaceTech–REDDI–2021) Appendix: NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities – Fall 2022 (NSTGRO22)

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: October 26, 2021

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: November 2, 2021

Award Amount: The maximum amount of an NSTGRO grant will be $80,000 per year to include a stipend, faculty advisor allowance, visiting technologist experience allowance, and support for health insurance and tuition and fees. Award duration is up to 4 years.

 

NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) seeks to sponsor U.S. citizen, U.S. national, and permanent resident graduate student research that has significant potential to contribute to NASA’s goal of creating innovative new space technologies for our Nation’s science, exploration, and economic future. The development of advanced and innovative space technologies is critical for our Nation to meet its goals to explore and understand the Earth, our solar system, and the universe. This call for graduate student space technology research proposals, titled NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities – Fall 2022 (NSTGRO22), solicits proposals on behalf of individuals pursuing or planning to pursue master’s or doctoral (PhD) degrees in relevant space technology disciplines at accredited U.S. universities. NASA Space Technology Graduate Researchers will perform research at their respective campuses and at NASA Centers. Each recipient will be matched with a technically relevant and community-engaged NASA researcher who will serve as the research collaborator on the award. Through this collaboration, graduate students will be able to take advantage of broader and/or deeper space technology research opportunities directly related to their academic and career objectives, acquire a more detailed understanding of the potential end applications of their space technology efforts, and directly disseminate their research results within the NASA community.

 

Awards resulting from this solicitation will be made in the form of grants to accredited U.S. universities with the faculty advisor as the Principal Investigator (PI). Awards resulting from this Appendix are planned to coincide with the start of the 2022 academic year.

Research Opportunities in Aeronautics – 2021 (ROA-2021) Appendix D.5: University Student Research Challenge (USRC)*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission

Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: November 11, 2021; February 24, 2022; June 23, 2022

Award Amount: NASA’s share of awards will not exceed $80,000 in total costs for one year. The USRC solicitation requires crowdfunded cost sharing of $2,000 by grant recipients. Funds raised from industry or professional organizations will count towards the cost sharing total. NASA anticipates making 5 awards distributed over all three cycles of this USRC Solicitation.

 

The University Student Research Challenge (USRC) seeks to challenge students to propose new aeronautics ideas/concepts that are relevant to NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD). USRC’s strategic goals are to provide broad opportunities for students at different levels, including undergraduate and graduate, to participate in aeronautics research; and assist in achieving aviation outcomes defined in the ARMD Strategic Implementation Plan through NASA-complementary research. USRC will provide students from accredited U.S. colleges or universities with grants for their aeronautics projects. Students also have the challenge of raising cost share funds (minimum of $2,000) through a crowdfunding platform. The process of creating and preparing a crowdfunding campaign acts as a teaching accelerator - requiring students to act like entrepreneurs. NASA reserves the right to fund a project even if cost sharing goals are not met. The USRC will support cutting-edge research on emerging aviation technologies and the education of new researchers in various fields of study. Additional beneficiaries are members of the aviation community who will receive new technology and concepts from USRC results.

 

NASA has no set expectations as to the team size. Faculty can serve as mentors and/or participants in the project team. A letter of support is required as part of each application from a faculty mentor at the accredited U.S. University or College submitting the proposal.

Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) Announcement Soliciting Postdoctoral Fellowship Applications*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 12, 2022

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 20, 2022

Award Amount: The award is for two years of funding with an optional, competitively awarded third year of funding that may be available. Stipends will be $60,000 and an additional allocation for health insurance and travel will be provided. If an institution requires a postdoctoral stipend in excess of the amount described above, the difference will need to be made up by the mentor or waived by the institution. Indirect costs will not be awarded to the funded institution. Additionally, TRISH welcomes, but does not require, cost sharing of 10% of the funded award from institutions who receive awards for the training of TRISH postdoctoral fellows.

 

This RFA is soliciting applications for the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Postdoctoral fellowships will be competitively awarded in any laboratory in the U.S. conducting biomedical/biotechnological research aligned with TRISH’s mission and goals. TRISH funds innovative space health research projects with two goals: to help astronauts stay healthy and apply the knowledge and investments to benefit all on Earth. TRISH supports programs in the areas of physical and mental health surveillance, prevention, and medical treatments. Partnered with NASA via a cooperative agreement, TRISH provides funding for very early stage as well as late stage research that can quickly be adapted for use in space. Applicants must describe how their proposed line of investigation will shed light on better defining or mitigating the risk(s) and closing or partially closing specific gaps in knowledge as outlined in the Human Research Roadmap (HRR).

 

To be eligible for this program, postdoctoral fellows may not have more than five years (cumulative) of previous postdoctoral training as of the deadline for this proposal submission. Applicants must be U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or persons with pre-existing visas obtained through their sponsoring academic institutions that permit postdoctoral training for the project’s duration. The postdoctoral fellow must contact and arrange for a mentor. The mentor and mentor’s organization must be registered with the NASA Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System (NSPIRES), and the application must be submitted by an authorized representative of the mentor’s organization. All U.S.-based researchers, regardless of support by NASA or TRISH, can serve as mentors for this opportunity. Investigators new to space life sciences are particularly encouraged to apply to TRISH opportunities. Start date must be by September 2022.

NASA Unsolicited Proposals*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: Rolling through September 30, 2022 (proposals should be submitted at least 6 months in advance of the desired starting date)

Award Amount: Proposed budget should be commensurate with the scope of the project.

 

NASA encourages the submission of unique and innovative proposals that will further the Agency's mission. While the vast majority of proposals are solicited, a small number of unsolicited proposals that cannot be submitted to those solicitations and yet are still relevant to NASA are reviewed and some are funded each year.

 

Before any effort is expended in preparing a proposal, potential proposers should:

1. Review the current versions of the NASA Strategic Plan and documents from the specific directorate, office, or program for which the proposal is intended to determine if the work planned is sufficiently relevant to current goals to warrant a formal submission.
2. Potential proposers must review current opportunities to determine if any solicitation already exists to which the potential project could be proposed. 
3. Potential proposers should review current awards (e.g., by doing key word searches at the NASA Shared Services Center (NSSC) grant status page, and the NASA Life and Physical Sciences Task Book) to learn what, if any, related work is already funded by NASA. Such preparation reduces the risk of redundancy, improves implementation, and sometimes results in collaboration.

After those three things have been done, the proposer may contact an appropriate NASA person to determine whether NASA has any interest in the type of work being proposed and if any funding is currently available.

NIGMS Maximizing Investigators' Research Award for Established Investigators (R35 - Clinical Trial Optional) *

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 10, 2022

Sponsor Deadline: January 18, 2022

Award Amount: Up to $750,000/year for five years

 

An NIGMS MIRA is intended to provide support for the NIGMS-related research program in an investigator’s laboratory. NIGMS supports research on basic biological processes as well as translational and clinical research in certain areas. In addition to research designed to answer scientific questions and generate new ideas and hypotheses, the development of technology and computational approaches are supported. Within the scope of the MIRA, investigators will have the freedom to explore new avenues of inquiry that arise during the course of their research, as long as they remain within the mission of NIGMS.

 

For this FOA, PDs/PIs with a previously funded ESI or EI NIGMS R35 or at least one NIGMS single-PD/PI R01-equivalent award (defined here as R01, R37, DP1, DP2, and SC1 awards) are eligible to apply. For new MIRA applications from PDs/PIs with qualifying single-PD/PI R01-equivalent NIGMS award(s), the application may be submitted at any time prior to the original project period end date, but no later than the end of the fiscal year following the original project period expiration date of the qualifying award. All current NIGMS research grants will be terminated upon the issuance of the new MIRA grant. The PD/PI is required to devote at least 51% of his/her total research effort to this award.

New Investigators to Promote Workforce Diversity in Genomics, Bioinformatics, or Bioengineering and Biomedical Imaging Research (R01 Clinical Trial Optional)*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: February 14, 2022

Sponsor Deadline: February 22, 2022

Award Amount: Up to $500K direct costs per year for five years

 

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) solicits R01 grant applications that propose independent research projects that are within the scientific mission areas of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), and  All of Us Research Program ( All of Us). This program is intended to support Early Stage Investigators and New Investigators from diverse backgrounds, including those from groups underrepresented in the health-related sciences.

Critical Aspects of Sustainability (CAS): Innovative Solutions to Climate Change*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: varies by proposal type; applicants must send an email inquiry prior to submission as detailed below
Award Amount: varies by proposal type

 

This Dear Colleague Letter encourages the science and engineering communities to develop forward-thinking research that will demonstrably aid in the goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and developing approaches for adapting to the change that is already occurring. CAS: Innovative Solutions to Climate Change is a call to action that encourages the submission of certain types of proposals to appropriate existing NSF core programs to lay the foundation for disciplinary and interdisciplinary research and to answer fundamental questions related to novel approaches and solutions to climate change. Research ideas focused on short- and long-term sustainable solutions are sought as are conference (workshop) proposals that identify specific gaps in existing research approaches. Investigators are encouraged to apply their expertise creatively to climate change solutions independently or where appropriate, collaboratively, including with industrial or international partners. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Energy Use
• Energy Innovations Relevant to Climate Change Mitigation
• Enhance GHG Sequestration
• Accelerating Strategies for Climate Change Adaptation
• Research Addressing Synergistic Topics

This DCL encourages the submission of conference (workshop), GOALI, or standard research proposals to appropriate existing NSF core programs to lay the foundation for disciplinary and interdisciplinary research on innovative solutions to climate change. The Division of Chemistry (CHE) and the Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) are also interested in supporting high-risk, high-reward EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) and Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (RAISE) proposals.

 

Please Note: Prospective principal investigators must send an email inquiry to cas@nsf.gov prior to submission to ascertain whether the proposal is suitable for CAS: Innovative Solutions to Climate Change DCL and for the specific program or programs in one of the participating divisions or offices. In the email inquiry, the PI should provide an indication of the target program(s) for the proposed topic in the participating divisions. Please note that the PI-indicated target program may not be the only program that will consider the submitted inquiry. Research concept outlines or brief summaries (no longer than 2 pages) are required for conference (workshop) and EAGER and RAISE proposals and are encouraged for standard research proposals. If the topic is found suitable, PIs will be directed to submit the proposal to the proper, existing disciplinary research program in one of the participating divisions.

Opportunities for Collaboration between CISE and SBE Researchers

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission

Sponsor Deadline: varies by program
Award Amount: varies by program

 

The CISE (Computer and Information Science and Engineering) and SBE (Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences) Advisory Committees recently held joint meetings to discuss research areas of mutual interest, resulting in a joint working group that engaged members of the research communities in exploring critical societal problems at the intersection of the sciences funded by the two directorates. The discussion added to the CISE and SBE directorates' ongoing recognition of possibilities for transformative research from collaboration between CISE and SBE researchers. The purpose of this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) is to acquaint the CISE and SBE communities, whose members may be unaware of these funding opportunities, with recent programs either dedicated to such collaborations or welcoming of them. These programs are in addition to the many Foundation-wide programs at NSF that are encouraging of cross-disciplinary and cross-directorate projects more generally and that also would support CISE-SBE collaborations. The cross-directorate programs are included in the DCL for completeness. This DCL is a reminder of the opportunities available to researchers and of the directorates' interest in furthering these collaborations.

Opportunity for Active EFRI, ERC and IUCRC Awardees to Apply for Supplemental Funding through the Research Experience and Mentoring (REM) Program*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 9, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: November 17, 2021
Award Amount: up to $110,000 over up to 12 months

 

The NSF Directorate for Engineering (NSF/ENG) continually seeks to advance scientific progress in research and innovation while broadening participation of underrepresented groups in STEM fields. This Dear Colleague Letter seeks to inform the community about an opportunity to pursue both goals through supplements from the Research Experience and Mentoring (REM) Program to active Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) research awards, active Engineering Research Center (ERC) awards, and active Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) awards. Active EFRI, ERC, and IUCRC awardees may apply for supplemental funding from the REM program via FastLane. REM funding will support costs associated with bringing high school students, STEM teachers, undergraduate STEM students, faculty, and veterans to be engaged as Research Participants (RPs) in a research environment. RPs are expected to participate in mentoring and research activities aligned with the EFRI-, ERC-, and IUCRC-supported research goals over the summer. REM supplement recipients are encouraged to extend structured mentoring into the academic year.

Enabling Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) CISE-SBE Interdisciplinary Collaborations*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 3, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: December 10, 2021
Award Amount: up to $300,000 for 2 years

 

The NSF Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program aims to promote research on the fundamentals of security, privacy, and trustworthy cyberspace as a multidisciplinary subject that will lead to new knowledge and approaches to design, build, and operate cyber systems, protect persons, organizations, and existing infrastructure, and motivate and educate individuals about cybersecurity and privacy. With this Dear Colleague Letter, NSF is announcing its intention to encourage the submission of EArly-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals that will foster novel, excellent interdisciplinary research in the SaTC domain to be carried out in collaborations between one or more Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) researchers and one or more Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) researchers. Many scientific and practical challenges of security, privacy, and trust have both social and technical dimensions, making it important to encourage interdisciplinary collaborations among researchers from the disciplines represented in NSF's CISE and SBE directorates on topics that draw on the strengths of their respective disciplines. Some of these topics are suggested in the most recent SaTC program solicitation, but other topics relevant to the SaTC program are also welcome. 

 

Please Note: Prior to submitting an EAGER proposal, send an email to satc-cise-sbe@nsf.gov with a description of the project concept. Full guidelines for this email submission can be found within the full Dear Colleague Letter linked above.

ANR - NSF/Physics/MCB Lead Agency Opportunity at the Physics - Molecular and Cellular Biosciences Interface*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 7, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: December 14, 2021
Award Amount: unspecified

 

NSF and the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) have signed an agreement on Research Cooperation. The agreement provides an overarching framework to encourage collaboration between U.S. and French research communities and sets out the principles by which jointly supported activities might be developed. The agreement is a lead agency opportunity whereby collaborative proposals between U.S. and French researchers are submitted to only the lead agency for review, and the partner agency agrees to accept the review. Based on the lead agency review of collaborative proposals, NSF and ANR will make joint funding decisions to support meritorious collaborative projects. The lead agency opportunity allows for reciprocal acceptance of merit review through unsolicited mechanisms with the goal of reducing some of the current barriers to international collaborations. Proposals relevant to the following priority areas and agency programs are eligible to apply for the lead agency opportunity in FY 2022:

 

Physics from Molecules to Cells: The emergence, evolution, dynamics and function of self-organized cellular systems stem from the interaction of biological components and the environment to yield robust, resilient and adaptive living systems. Through this DCL, NSF and ANR seek proposals that use multidisciplinary approaches that emphasize quantitative, predictive and theory driven science aimed at understanding mechanisms underlying these essential life processes at the molecular, subcellular and cellular scales. The agencies are seeking proposals that integrate approaches from theoretical and experimental physics and biology to develop testable and quantitative understanding of biological questions. Projects providing innovative methodological or conceptual approaches to a biological question together with a strong theoretical physics component are strongly encouraged. Purely descriptive projects without predictive quantitative components are of low priority. Projects that leverage unique resources and capabilities of partners in the U.S. and France will be given priority. Projects that focus on the etiology and pathogenesis of disease and projects that focus on tissue or organismal level problems are not appropriate for NSF/MCB and, therefore, would not be appropriate for this lead agency opportunity. Proposals should be submitted to: NSF 21-593 Division of Physics: Investigator-Initiated Research Projects. 

CHE Mid-scale Research Infrastructure Planning Workshops*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 7, 2022
Sponsor Deadline: January 14, 2022
Award Amount: generally up to $50,000; up to $100,000 under exceptional circumstances

 

Through this Dear Colleague Letter, the NSF Division of Chemistry (CHE) in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) Directorate invites requests to fund workshops addressing critical needs for unique research infrastructure at the national level, with potential to significantly advance chemistry research, broadly defined. Members of the academic chemistry research community, broadly defined, are invited to propose conferences that identify specific gaps in existing research infrastructure that are needed to address important chemistry research questions and may/will also impact other disciplines.

 

Please Note: Prior to submitting a proposal in response to this DCL, the PI must submit a conference outline by email to one of the individuals listed within the DCL to ensure that the proposal fits the DCL’s goals. Full guidance for this outline can be found via the link above.

International Collaboration Supplements in Quantum Information Science and Engineering Research

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: For consideration in a given fiscal year (running from October 1 to September 30), requests must be received before June 14 of that fiscal year. Requests received after June 14 might be considered in the next fiscal year.
Award Amount: unspecified; if the budget exceeds $30,000, discuss the budget with the cognizant NSF program officer of the original award prior to submission.

 

With this Dear Colleague Letter, NSF invites requests for supplemental funding from existing quantum information science and engineering research awardees to add a new — or strengthen an existing — international dimension to their award. International collaboration should advance fundamental knowledge and discovery in quantum fields and enhance the NSF Principal Investigator's (PI) own research and/or education objectives as outlined in the existing NSF award. Supplemental funding requests should represent mutual benefit and true intellectual collaboration with international partners. International collaborations may consist of short-term visits (up to 1 month) to establish relationships or mid- to long-term visits (up to 12 months) to engage in research activities. Given the status of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is expected that travel will not take place until domestic and foreign travel restrictions are eased and risk to the collaborators as related to COVID-19 has dissipated. While collaboration with Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, and the UK are of particular interest, requests for international supplements to collaborate with other countries will also be considered. Information on quantum initiatives in the noted countries can be found here. PIs are strongly advised to consult with their cognizant NSF program officer of the original award to confirm eligibility prior to submitting a supplemental funding request.

A New Supplemental Funding Opportunity for Allowable Patent Expenses (APEX) in the Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) Program

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Supplemental funding requests may be submitted at any time. However, a target date of June 15 is requested for each fiscal year’s funding.
Award Amount: up to 20% of the original PFI award or $50,000, whichever is less.

 

To support translation of national investments in research and development, the Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) Program, in the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP), is offering an Allowable Patent EXpenses (APEX) supplement for active awardees. This supplement is intended to assist current PFI grantees in their technology commercialization efforts. Specifically, the APEX supplement enables awardees to: a) defray internal costs incurred by their technology transfer office (TTO) during the evaluation and protection of intellectual property reduced to practice with PFI funding; or b) secure the services of one or more third-party service providers to assist in the evaluation and protection of the intellectual property. Filling expenses of both provisional and non-provisional patents are appropriate for this supplement. The expected goals of the APEX supplement are to:

• To protect intellectual property that is created as a direct result of the PFI award and that has the potential for accelerated commercialization;
• To ensure that customer discovery, market fit, and commercial market value of PFI-funded proof-of-concept work are considered through participation of PFI teams in the I-Corps Teams program prior to protecting NSF-funded intellectual property rights;
• To accelerate the transfer and commercialization of technology from the lab bench to the marketplace;
• To contribute to the professional development, mentoring, and understanding of deep technology-based business of the next generation workforce through the participation in the patenting process.

NSF/NSFC Joint Research on Sustainable Regional Systems

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 7, 2022
Sponsor Deadline: January 17, 2022
Award Amount: unspecified

 

The NSF Engineering Directorate (ENG) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Department of Interdisciplinary Sciences are partnering to encourage joint research by U.S. - China teams collaborating on fundamental research on Sustainable Regional Systems (SRS). The goal of the "Sustainable Regional Systems (SRS: U.S.-China)" initiative is to fund convergent research and education that will advance sustainable regional systems science, engineering, and education to facilitate the transformation of current regional systems to enhance sustainability. U.S.-based researchers, through their U.S. institutions, may submit unsolicited proposals to collaborate with China-based researchers to the ENG/CBET Environmental Sustainability program. Please note that even though the Environmental Sustainability program has no submission deadline, proposals submitted for consideration under this DCL must come in by the January 17, 2022 deadline.

Special Guidelines for Submitting Collaborative Proposals under the National Science Foundation and Czech Science Foundation Collaborative Research Opportunities

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission

Sponsor Deadline: varies by program

Award Amount: varies by program

 

NSF and the Czech Science Foundation (GACR) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Research Cooperation. The MOU provides a framework to encourage collaboration between U.S. and Czech research communities and sets out the principles by which jointly supported activities might be developed. The MOU provides for an international collaboration arrangement whereby U.S. researchers may receive funding from NSF and Czech researchers may receive funding from GACR. Through a "lead agency model," NSF and GACR will allow proposers from both countries to collaborate to write a single proposal that will undergo a single review process at NSF. This NSF-GACR collaborative research opportunity focuses on discoveries and innovations in the areas of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and plasma science. Specific participating NSF programs are listed on the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE) website here. Proposals must represent an integrated collaborative effort between the U.S. and Czech researchers and be submitted to NSF by an eligible U.S. organization.

Supplemental Funding Requests to Conduct US-EU Collaborative Research
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: The deadline for submission is within a week of any NGIatlantic.eu open call deadline. This DCL will remain active until June 1, 2022.
Award Amount: supplements up to $100,000, limited to strictly less than 20% of the original award

With this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) wishes to notify the community of its intention to support supplemental funding requests for active research awards to conduct United States ‒ European Union (US-EU) Collaborative Research. This collaborative research is coupled with European Commission's (EC) The Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative, which aims to shape the future internet as an interoperable platform. In particular, this DCL is coupled with NGIatlantic.eu, which has periodic open calls with the main goal of incentivizing EU ‒ US NGI teams to carry out experiments using EU and/or US based experimental platforms. Active NSF-funded researchers within NSF's Computer and Network Systems Core and Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace programs may propose, as part of their supplemental funding requests, a collaborative project with their EU counterpart, where the EU counterpart applies to the NGIatlantic.eu open call. Supplemental funding awarded pursuant to this DCL may be used by the project team to support the time of the PI, co-PIs, other senior personnel, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, undergraduate students or travel to conduct collaborative research with EU researchers.

Japan-U.S. Network Opportunity (JUNO): R&D for Programmable Networking for Next Generation Core and Beyond 5G/6G Networks*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: September 20, 2021 - December 13, 2021
Award Amount: up to $450,000 over 3 years

 

In this program, NSF and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) of Japan have agreed to embark on a collaborative research program to address compelling research challenges associated with programmable networks for next generation core and beyond 5^th Generation/6^th Generation mobile networks (beyond 5G/6G). Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has been a particularly successful area of research interest and commercial innovation over the last decade. SDN increases the flexibility of networks, providing greater control of network behavior, performance, monitoring and problem diagnosis. SDN is thus one of the essential technologies for ensuring robust, flexible and high performing wired and wireless beyond 5G/6G networks. The first generation of SDN focused primarily on the implications of control and data plane separation, and control plane programmability. Today the networking research community focus also includes the second generation of SDN – data plane programmability – as enabled at transmission line rates through the relatively recent introduction of programmable layer 2/3 switches, programmable Network Interface Cards (NICs), and increasingly flexible physical layer transmission technologies such as software defined radios and optical transceivers. This program focuses on enabling flexible and scalable programmable networks for next generation core and beyond 5G/6G networks. This calls for creative and innovative ways of approaching the associated challenges and experimental demonstration and verification on research testbeds where appropriate. This program seeks joint Japanese-US research projects that leverage each nation's expertise and address the following topic areas:

• Network Architectures/In-Network Intelligence and Programmable Network Functionality: Develop the foundation for next-generation programmable functionality for enhanced core, optical and beyond 5G/6G networks
• Smart Services, Applications, and Experimentation on Research Testbed: Develop experimental demonstrations of novel future services and essential networking applications on campus, Japan and/or US testbeds

Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE): Core Programs*
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: December 01, 2021 - December 22, 2021 (Medium and OAC Core Projects); Rolling (Small Projects)
Award Amount: up to $600,000 over up to 3 years (Small Projects and OAC Core Projects); $600,001 - $1.2M over up to 4 years (Medium Projects)

 

This solicitation covers submission to the following CISE core programs. Please see the individual program webpages below for more information on what is within scope for these programs:

• Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF)
  • Algorithmic Foundations (AF) supports potentially transformative projects in the theory of algorithms and computational complexity, characterized by algorithmic innovation and rigorous analysis
  • Communications and Information Foundations (CIF) supports foundational research that addresses the theoretical underpinnings of information acquisition, transmission, and processing in communications and information processing systems
  • Foundations of Emerging Technologies (FET) supports foundational research at the intersection of computing and biological systems, nanoscale science and engineering, quantum information science, and other promising disruptive technologies supporting novel computing/communication models
  • Software and Hardware Foundations (SHF) supports foundational research in the design, verification, operation, and evaluation of computer hardware and software through novel approaches, robust theories, high-leverage tools, and lasting principles
• Computer and Network Systems (CNS):
  • CNS Core (CNS Core) supports research that advances computer and network systems, develops a better understanding of the fundamental properties and tradeoffs involved, as well as the abstractions and tools used in designing, building, measuring, and using them
• Information and Intelligent Systems:
  • Human-Centered Computing (HCC) supports research in human-computer interaction (HCI), taken broadly, integrating knowledge across disciplines to design new computing systems
  • Information Integration and Informatics (III) supports research on computational approaches to the full data lifecycle to maximize the utility of information resources
  • Robust Intelligence (RI) supports computational research to understand and enable intelligent systems in complex, realistic contexts
• Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure:
  • OAC Core Research (OAC Core) supports translational research on the design, development, deployment, experimentation, and application of advanced research cyberinfrastructure (CI) to enable new frontiers of discovery and innovation

CISE Community Research Infrastructure (CCRI)*

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Full Proposal: January 4, 2022

Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposal: January 11, 2022

Award Amount: $50,000 - $100,000 over 1.5 years (Planning); $750,000-$2M over up to 3 years (Medium); $2M- $5M over up to 5 years (Grand)

 

The Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community Research Infrastructure (CCRI) program drives discovery and learning in the core CISE disciplines of the three participating divisions [(Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF), Computer and Network Systems (CNS), and Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS)] by funding the creation and enhancement of world-class research infrastructure. This research infrastructure will specifically support diverse communities of CISE researchers pursuing focused research agendas in computer and information science and engineering. This support involves developing the accompanying user services and engagement needed to attract, nurture, and grow a robust research community that is actively involved in determining directions for the infrastructure as well as management of the infrastructure. This should lead to infrastructure that can be sustained through community involvement and community leadership, and that will enable advances not possible with existing research infrastructure. Further, through the CCRI program, CISE seeks to ensure that researchers from a diverse range of institutions of higher education (IHEs), including minority-serving and predominantly undergraduate institutions, as well as researchers from non-profit, non-academic organizations, have access to such infrastructure. The CCRI program supports three classes of awards:

• Planning Community Infrastructure (Planning) awards support planning efforts to engage research communities to develop new CISE community research infrastructures (Planning).
• Medium Community Infrastructure (Medium) awards support the creation of new CISE community research infrastructure or the enhancement of existing CISE community research infrastructures with integrated tools, resources, user services, and research community outreach to enable innovative CISE research opportunities to advance the frontiers of the CISE core research areas. The Medium award class includes New (New) and Enhance/Sustain (ENS) awards.
• Grand Community Infrastructure (Grand) awards support projects involving significant efforts to develop new CISE community research infrastructures or to enhance and sustain an existing CISE community research infrastructure to enable world-class CISE research opportunities for broad-based communities of CISE researchers that extend well beyond the awardee organization(s).

Each CCRI Medium or Grand award may include support for operation of the infrastructure, ensuring that the awardee organization(s) is (are) well positioned to provide a high quality of service to CISE community researchers expected to use the infrastructure to realize their research goals.

Division of Materials Research: Topical Materials Research Programs
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling after October 15, 2021. Investigators are advised that the dates from April 15th to June 15th should, optimally, be avoided for submissions.
Award Amount: varies by program

 

Research supported by the Division of Materials Research (DMR) focuses on advancing the fundamental understanding of materials, materials discovery, design, synthesis, characterization, properties, and materials-related phenomena. DMR awards enable understanding of the electronic, atomic, and molecular structures, mechanisms, and processes that govern nanoscale to macroscale morphology and properties; manipulation and control of these properties; discovery of emerging phenomena of matter and materials; and creation of novel design, synthesis, and processing strategies that lead to new materials with unique characteristics. These discoveries and advancements transcend traditional scientific and engineering disciplines. DMR supports research and education activities in the United States through funding of individual investigators, teams, centers, facilities, and instrumentation. Projects supported by DMR are not only essential for the development of future technologies and industries that address societal needs, but also for the preparation of the next generation of materials researchers. This solicitation applies to seven DMR Topical Materials Research Programs (TMRPs): Biomaterials (BMAT), Ceramics (CER), Condensed Matter Physics (CMP), Electronic and Photonic Materials (EPM), Metals and Metallic Nanostructures (MMN), Polymers (POL), and Solid State and Materials Chemistry (SSMC).

Division of Physics: Investigator-Initiated Research Projects (PHY)

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: see details below
Award Amount: varies

 

The Division of Physics (PHY) supports physics research and the preparation of future scientists in the nation's colleges and universities across a broad range of physics disciplines that span scales of space and time from the largest to the smallest and the oldest to the youngest. The Division is comprised of disciplinary programs covering experimental and theoretical research in the following major subfields of physics: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics; Elementary Particle Physics; Gravitational Physics; Integrative Activities in Physics; Nuclear Physics; Particle Astrophysics; Physics at the Information Frontier; Physics of Living Systems; Plasma Physics; and Quantum Information Science. Principal Investigators (PIs) are encouraged to consider including specific efforts to increase diversity of the physics community and broaden participation of under-represented groups in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). The following program deadlines apply:

• November 15, 2021 – Plasma Physics
• November 24, 2021 - AMO - Theory and Experiment; Gravitational Physics - Theory and Experiment; LIGO Research Support; Integrative Activities in Physics
• December 7, 2021 - Nuclear Physics - Theory and Experiment; Elementary Particle Physics - Experiment; Particle Astrophysics – Experiment
• December 14, 2021 - Elementary Particle Physics - Theory; Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology - Theory; Quantum Information Science; Physics of Living Systems

NSF-Simons Collaboration on a National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology (NITMB)

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Preliminary Proposals: November 22, 2021
Sponsor Deadline for Preliminary Proposals: December 1, 2021
Award Amount: $50M over 5 years

 

The purpose of the NSF-Simons Collaboration on a National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology (NITMB) is to support a research institute to enable innovative research at the intersection of mathematical and biological sciences to facilitate new developments of biology-inspired mathematical theories, methodologies, and innovative modeling approaches to advance the understanding of challenging biological problems. The institute should promote interdisciplinary education and workforce training between these two disciplines. The National Science Foundation Directorates for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (NSF/MPS) and for Biological Sciences (NSF/BIO) and the Simons Foundation Division of Mathematics and Physical Sciences (SF/MPS) shall jointly sponsor a new research institute to facilitate collaborations among groups of mathematicians (including statisticians and computational scientists) and biologists. Research activities conducted at the institute should be focused on emerging and important topics at the interface of the mathematical and biological sciences, with the expectation to develop new mathematical methodologies inspired by biological problems. The institute should primarily focus on advances in theory and mathematics that are motivated by and applicable to the analysis of complex biological systems. The institute will conduct interdisciplinary education and training through research involvement of doctoral degree recipients and graduate students from across this multi-disciplinary spectrum. The institute is also expected to conduct convening activities, including short-term and/or long-term visitor programs, workshops, and/or outreach activities. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility are expected to be core values of the institute and should be reflected in its research, education, outreach programs, and its leadership. The institute will serve as a national resource that aims to advance research in the mathematical and biological sciences through programs supporting discovery and knowledge dissemination in mathematical biology and enhancing connections to related fields.

• Geometric Analysis - November 2, 2021
• Topology - November 2, 2021
• Applied Mathematics - November 1-15, 2021
• Condensed Matter and Materials Theory (CMMT) - Rolling
• Conferences and Workshops in the Mathematical Sciences - Rolling
• National Facilities - Rolling

NSF and US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF): New Opportunities for Joint Applications

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: varies by individual program
Award Amount: varies by individual program

 

The BSF is pleased to announce three new interdisciplinary NSF-BSF programs welcoming joint applications. These opportunities allow scientists from the U.S. and Israel to work together on funded research projects and expand scientific ties between the two countries.

• Foundational Research in Robotics: The US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) is accepting applications in joint funding programs in Foundational Research in Robotics, with the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and Engineering (ENG) Directorates of the NSF. The Foundational Research in Robotics program supports research on robotic systems that exhibit significant levels of both computational capability and physical complexity. Deadline: Rolling.
• Computer Networks and Systems: The BSF is accepting applications in a joint funding program with the Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS) in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) of the NSF. The program in Computer and Network Systems supports research activities that invent new computing and networking technologies and explore new ways to make use of existing technologies. Deadline: Rolling.
• The deadline for Mathematical and Scientific Foundations of Deep Learning has passed.

A complete list of available NSF-BSF opportunities can be found here.  

Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI-2022/23)*
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Letter of Intent: November 3, 2021

Sponsor Deadline for Letter of Intent: November 10, 2021
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Preliminary Proposal: December 9, 2021
Sponsor Deadline for Preliminary Proposal: December 16, 2021

Award Amount: up to $2M over 4 years

The Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) program of the NSF Directorate for Engineering (ENG) serves a critical role in helping ENG focus on important emerging areas in a timely manner. This solicitation is a funding opportunity for interdisciplinary teams of researchers to embark on rapidly advancing frontiers of fundamental engineering research. For this solicitation, NSF will consider proposals that aim to investigate emerging frontiers in one of the following two research areas:

• Engineered Living Systems (ELiS)
• Brain-Inspired Dynamics for Engineering Energy-Efficient Circuits and Artificial Intelligence (BRAID)

This solicitation will be coordinated with the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO), the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS), the Directorate for Geosciences (GEO), and the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE), along with Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Department of Defense - Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). EFRI seeks proposals with potentially transformative ideas that represent an opportunity for a significant shift in fundamental engineering knowledge with a strong potential for long term impact on national needs or a grand challenge. 

Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 3, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: November 10, 2021
Award Amount: up to $1.2M over up to 4 years (up to $300,000 per year)

 

The purpose of this interagency program solicitation is to support the development of transformative high-risk, high-reward advances in computer and information science, engineering, mathematics, statistics, behavioral and/or cognitive research to address pressing questions in the biomedical and public health communities. Transformations hinge on scientific and engineering innovations by interdisciplinary teams that develop novel methods to intuitively and intelligently collect, sense, connect, analyze and interpret data from individuals, devices and systems to enable discovery and optimize health. Solutions to these complex biomedical or public health problems demand the formation of interdisciplinary teams that are ready to address these issues, while advancing fundamental science and engineering. Themes of interest include but are not limited to:

• Information Infrastructure
• Transformative Data Science
• Novel Multimodal Sensor System Hardware
• Effective Usability
• Automating Health
• Medical Image Interpretation
• Unpacking Health Disparities

Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering and Computer Science Sites and Supplements

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 8, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: November 16, 2021
Award Amount: up to $600,000 over up to 3 years (Sites); up to $10,000 per teacher (Supplements)

 

The Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering and Computer Science program supports authentic summer research experiences for K-14 educators to foster long-term collaborations between universities, community colleges, school districts, and industry partners. With this solicitation, the Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) focus on a reciprocal exchange of expertise between K-14 educators and research faculty and (when applicable) industry mentors. K-14 educators will enhance their scientific disciplinary knowledge in engineering or computer science and translate their research experiences into classroom activities and curricula to broaden their students’ awareness of and participation in computing and engineering pathways. At the same time, the hosting research faculty will deepen their understanding of classroom practices, current curricula, pedagogy, and K-14 educational environments.

Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR): Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science Phase II (TRIPODS)

Letter of Intent Deadline: November 01, 2021 - November 16, 2021
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: January 04, 2022 - January 18, 2022
Award Amount: up to $1.5M

Harnessing the Data Revolution: Transdisciplinary Research In Principles Of Data Science Phase II (HDR TRIPODS Phase II) aims to bring together the electrical engineering, mathematics, statistics, and theoretical computer science communities to develop the theoretical foundations of data science through integrated research and training activities. Phase I, described in solicitation NSF 19-550, supported the development of small collaborative Institutes. Phase II will support a smaller number of larger Institutes, selected from the Phase I Institutes via a second competitive proposal process. All HDR TRIPODS Institutes must involve significant and integral participation by researchers representing the four aforementioned communities.

Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS): Innovative Approaches to Science and Engineering Research on Brain Function
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 16, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: November 23, 2021
Award Amount: $100,000 to $250,000 per year in combined direct costs over 3-5 years (on average)

 

Computational neuroscience provides a theoretical foundation and a rich set of technical approaches for understanding the principles and dynamics of the nervous system. Building on the theory, methods, and findings of computer science, neuroscience, biology, the mathematical and physical sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, engineering, and other fields, computational neuroscience employs a broad spectrum of approaches to study structure, function, organization, and computation across all levels of the nervous system. Advances in computational neuroscience are being accelerated by new methods for integrating and analyzing complex data; conceptual frameworks deriving from many different theoretical sources; and new modalities for data collection, simulation, modeling, and experimental manipulation. Furthering these advances, collaboration plays a pivotal role. Collaborative research enables close interaction between theory, modeling, simulation and analysis, and experimental neuroscience. This provides a framework for interpretation of data, quantitative hypotheses for empirical testing, and grounding of theories and models in an empirical and evaluation context. International collaborations bring together diverse research perspectives, expand the range of research partnerships, and develop a community of globally engaged scientists and engineers. Sharing of data, software, and other resources provides a powerful modality for larger-scale interaction and collaborative discovery.

 

Through the CRCNS program, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Department of Energy (DOE); the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF); the French National Research Agency (Agence Nationale de la Recherche, ANR); the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF); Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT); and Spain's State Research Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigación, AEI) and National Institute of Health Carlos III (Instituto de Salud Carlos III, ISCIII) support collaborative activities that will advance the understanding of nervous system structure and function, mechanisms underlying nervous system disorders, and computational strategies used by the nervous system. Domestic and international projects will be considered.

 

 Two classes of proposals will be considered in response to this solicitation:

• Research Proposals describing collaborative research projects, and
• Data Sharing Proposals to enable sharing of data and other resources.

Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID)

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 17, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: November 24, 2021
Award Amount: up to $3M for the U.S. component

 

The multi-agency Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases program supports research on the ecological, evolutionary, organismal, and social drivers that influence the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases. The central theme of submitted projects must be the quantitative or computational understanding of pathogen transmission dynamics. The intent is discovery of principles of infectious disease (re)emergence and transmission and testing mathematical or computational models that elucidate infectious disease systems. Projects should be broad, interdisciplinary efforts that go beyond the scope of typical studies. They should focus on the determinants and interactions of (re)emergence and transmission among any host species, including but not limited to humans, non-human animals, and/or plants. This includes, for example, the spread of pathogens; the influence of environmental factors such as climate; the population dynamics and genetics of vectors and reservoir species or hosts; how the physiology or behavior of the pathogen, vector, or host species biology affects transmission dynamics; the feedback between ecological transmission and evolutionary dynamics; and the cultural, social, behavioral, and economic dimensions of pathogen transmission and disease. Research may be on zoonotic, environmentally-borne, vector-borne, enteric, or respiratory pathogens of either terrestrial or aquatic systems and organisms, including diseases of animals and plants, at any scale from specific pathogens to inclusive environmental systems. Proposals for research on disease systems of public health concern to Low- or Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) are strongly encouraged, as are disease systems of concern in agricultural systems. Investigators are encouraged to develop the appropriate multidisciplinary team, including for example, anthropologists, modelers, ecologists, bioinformaticians, genomics researchers, social scientists, economists, oceanographers, mathematical scientists, behaviorists, epidemiologists, evolutionary biologists, entomologists, immunologists, parasitologists, microbiologists, bacteriologists, virologists, pathologists or veterinarians, with the goal of integrating knowledge across disciplines to enhance our ability to predict and control infectious diseases.

Coastlines and People Hubs for Research and Broadening Participation (CoPe)

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 29, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: December 6, 2021
Award Amount: up to $1M per year for 3-5 years (Focused Hubs); $2M-$4M per year for up to 5 years (Large-Scale Hubs)

 

Scientific research into complex coastal systems and the interplay with coastal hazards is vital for predicting, responding to, and mitigating threats in these regions. Understanding the risks associated with coastal hazards requires a holistic Earth Systems approach that integrates improved understanding of and, where possible, predictions about natural, social, and technological processes with efforts to increase the resilience of coastal systems. The Coastlines and People program supports diverse, innovative, multi-institution awards that are focused on critically important coastlines and people research that is integrated with broadening participation goals. The objective of this solicitation is to support Coastal Research Hubs, structured using a convergent science approach, at the nexus between coastal sustainability, human dimensions, and coastal processes to transform understanding of interactions among natural, human-built, and social systems in coastal, populated environments.

NSF-DFG Lead Agency Activity in Chemistry and Transport in Confined Spaces (NSF-DFG Confine)*

Sponsor Deadline for Expression of Interest (Required): November 29, 2021

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: February 28, 2022
Sponsor Deadline: March 7, 2022
Award Amount: unspecified; the program estimates a Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 budget of $2M to $5M and expects to make 4-10 awards

 

Recognizing the importance of international collaborations in promoting scientific discoveries, NSF and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on research cooperation. The MoU provides an overarching framework to enhance opportunities for collaborative activities between US and German research communities and sets out the principles by which jointly-supported activities might be developed. To facilitate the support of collaborative work between US researchers and their German counterparts under this MoU, the Division of Chemistry (CHE) and the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET) at the NSF and the Divisions of Physics and Chemistry (PC) and Engineering Sciences (ING 1) at the DFG are pleased to announce a Lead Agency Opportunity in the areas of Chemistry and Transport in Confined Spaces. Chemical and physical processes that operate under spatial confinement often exhibit complex, interesting, and poorly understood variations in chemical properties and physical dynamics. Many such systems are intrinsically nonlinear and dynamic, often involving simultaneous reaction, diffusion and convection and/or chemical processes far from equilibrium. Improved experimental and computational tools are needed to predict how variations over the confinement length scale affect the overall dynamics and efficiency of large-scale processes. Much of the needed research requires synergistic efforts among those versed in the applications and experts in measurement techniques, modeling methods, and data analysis.

 

The goal of this Lead Agency Opportunity is to reduce current barriers to working internationally by allowing US and German researchers to submit a single collaborative proposal that will undergo a single review process while funding organizations maintain budgetary control over their awards. Proposals eligible for funding consideration through this Lead Agency Opportunity in FY 2022 will need to have a research focus relevant to the topic areas identified above, within the scope of research supported through these divisions. Proposers should review the CHE, CBET, PC, and ING 1 program descriptions for research supported through these divisions/organizations. Proposals are expected to adhere to typical proposal budgets and durations for the relevant CHE, CBET, PC, and ING 1 programs from which funding is sought.

 

Please Note: Prior to submission, prospective PIs are strongly encouraged to contact appropriate program officers to discuss the suitability of their proposed research. An Expression of Interest (EOI) is also required prior to submission of a full proposal. The EOI is due to NSFDFG@nsf.gov no later than November 29, 2021, 5:00 pm local time. Full guidelines and requirements for the EOI can be found in the full NSF solicitation.

National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Institutes*
Preliminary Proposal Deadline: January 14, 2022

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: May 6, 2022
Sponsor Deadline: May 13, 2022

Award Amount: NSF plans to make approximately one Institute award in each of themes 1-5, and one award to each of the two tracks listed in theme 6. Institute awards will be made for between $16,000,000 and $20,000,000 for four to five years 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has advanced tremendously and today promises personalized healthcare; enhanced national security; improved transportation; and more effective education, to name just a few benefits. Increased computing power, the availability of large datasets and streaming data, and algorithmic advances in machine learning (ML) have made it possible for AI research and development to create new sectors of the economy and revitalize industries. Continued advancement, enabled by sustained federal investment and channeled toward issues of national importance, holds the potential for further economic impact and quality-of-life improvements. The 2019 update to the National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan, informed by visioning activities in the scientific community as well as interaction with the public, identifies as its first strategic objective the need to make long-term investments in AI research in areas with the potential for long-term payoffs in AI. The National AI Research Institutes program enables longer-term research and U.S. leadership in AI through the creation of AI Research Institutes.

 

This program is a joint government effort between the National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), U.S. Department of Education (ED) Institute of Education Sciences (IES), U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science & Technology Directorate (S&T), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Department of Defense (DOD) Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD (R&E)), and IBM Corporation (IBM). This program solicitation expands upon the nationwide network established by the first 18 AI Research Institutes to pursue transformational advances in a range of economic sectors, and science and engineering fields. In this round, the program invites proposals for institutes that have a principal focus in one of the following themes, detailed in the Program Description:

• Theme 1: Intelligent Agents for Next-Generation Cybersecurity
• Theme 2: Neural and Cognitive Foundations of Artificial Intelligence
• Theme 3: AI for Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry
• Theme 4: AI for Decision making
• Theme 5: Trustworthy AI
• Theme 6: AI-Augmented Learning to Expand Education Opportunities and Improve Outcomes
• Track A: AI-Driven Digital Platforms to Expand and Accelerate STEM Learning in PreK-12 Settings
• Track B: AI-Augmented Learning for Individuals with Disabilities

Please Note: This is a limited submission opportunity, and Harvard may only submit two proposals to this program. Please contact Erin Hale at erin_hale@fas.harvard.edu if you are interested in applying.