The  Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems (NCS) program supports projects that provide new empirical insights, expand theoretical understanding, facilitate development of computational and bioengineered systems, promote new educational approaches, and generate new hypotheses that connect physical, biological, and cognitive mechanisms.  With this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), the NSF seeks to stimulate work in educational neuroscience in the NCS program, noting that advances in neural systems can have significant implications for research on education. NCS considers education to include learning in any context (e.g., from formal settings such as schools or workforce training programs to informal settings such as in museums, homes, or on-line environments), by people at any age, and concerning any content material appropriate for NSF. As NCS is a basic research program, the output of proposed projects need not have a direct and immediate impact on practice. Rather, the short-term goal of projects should be to advance the research literature. A broader impact of the projects should be to help foster the growth of such a multidisciplinary community of researchers.

In addition to the three proposal types solicited in the original NCS solicitation (Foundations, Frontiers and Core+ Supplements), NSF is also interested in supporting capacity-building proposals through conference proposals and Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals:

• Conference proposals seek support to conduct highly-focused conferences or workshops on topics in educational neuroscience related to the research goals of the NCS program.
• The EAGER proposal type may be used to support exploratory work in its early stages. Interested investigators must contact an NCS program director whose expertise is germane to the proposal topic prior to submission of an EAGER proposal.