December 2018  
 
The FAS Research Development group publishes this monthly Funding Newsletter for SEAS faculty and researchers. The newsletter includes notable Federal, private, and internal Harvard funding opportunities. 
 
Questions?
Erin Hale: [email protected] | 617-496-5252 
Jennifer Corby:  [email protected] | 617-495-1590  
 
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Did you know?
 Harvard affiliates have access to Pivot , a funding opportunity database. 
 
You are receiving this newsletter because you are subscribed to our mailing list. All Harvard University faculty and administrators may subscribe  here , and you may unsubscribe at any time. In addition, you may access the Science Division Funding Spotlight here. Visit our  email archive  to see our past newsletters.  


News, Announcements, & Special Features

Feature: N ew Investigator Opportunity Spotlight
Quick links to early career opportunities in this month's newsletter.
News: DARPA to Host Artificial Intelligence Colloquium
 
DARPA will host an Artificial Intelligence Colloquium (AIC) on March 6-7, 2019 in Alexandria, VA, to inform the public of the range of DARPA research programs focused on advancing the  state of the art in Artificial Intelligence AI, as part of DARPA's AI Next effort. DARPA will also provide opportunities at the Colloquium for sidebar meetings between selected AIC attendees and DARPA program managers to discuss mutual research interests.


Blog Post: IOS in Focus: NSF EAGERs
 
Early Concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) is NSF's way of encouraging research that is risky but potentially impactful.  EAGERs are limited to 2 years in duration and a maximum budget of $300,000. This blog post focuses on the key points that Program Directors look for in an NSF EAGER inquiry. Read more here.

Funding Opportunities

Click on the links below to read a program synopsis
 * Indicates an UPDATED or NEW opportunity added this month

Foundation Opportunities

Internal Opportunities

Industry/Corporate Opportunities

U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)

Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA)
National Institutes of Health (NIH)

National Science Foundation: Dear Colleague Letters

National Science Foundation: Directorate for Computer & Information Science and Engineering (NSF: CISE)

Foundation Opportunities

Fdn_Coop
OSP review not required
Sponsor Deadline: January 8, 2019
Award Amount: Postdoctoral Visiting Fellowships are available for two-year terms with an annual salary TBD and a research budget of up to $4,000, along with a modest relocation stipend for the individual; Sabbatical Fellowships for senior scientists are available for between 3 and 12 months. Modest requests for compensation, relocation support, and a $4,000 research budget may be included in the award.
 
CIRES sponsors a prestigious Visiting Fellows program, inviting scientists to join the thriving community of researchers in Boulder, Colorado. Visiting Fellowships are intended to stimulate interdisciplinary research across the institute through engagement with CIRES researchers on campus and in Boulder's NOAA Laboratories. Visiting Fellows work with CIRES researchers on a wide range of environmental science topics. Two-year Visiting Fellowships are available for postdoctoral researchers, and terms of up to 12 months for senior scientists on leave or sabbatical. Applicants should contact possible CIRES Fellow collaborators well in advance of submitting an application. Successful proposals are typically designed in collaboration with your potential host at CIRES.
 
 

Fdn_Google
OSP Deadline: January 14, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: January 22, 2019
Award Amount: Grants are expected to range from $500,000 to $2,000,000, but will ultimately be sized based on project needs. 15% overhead must be included in budgets submitted from FAS and SEAS.
 
The Google AI Impact Challenge is an open call to nonprofits, social enterprises, and research institutions around the world to submit their ideas to use AI to help address social and environmental challenges. Google.org is looking for projects across a range of social impact domains and levels of technical expertise, from organizations that are experienced in AI to those with an idea for how they could be putting their data to better use. Selected organizations will receive education and coaching from Google's AI experts, access to computing resources, and Google.org grant funding from a $25M pool.

Fdn_Dana
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: January 15, 2019 at 1:00PM
Award Amount: $100,000-$200,000
Eligible Applicants: Faculty at the Assistant Professor level or early in their Associate Professor career. Senior investigators will only be considered if they can convincingly demonstrate a new research direction. 
 
The Dana Foundation supports research on imaging innovations that help reveal how the human brain functions normally, how disorders and injuries alter these functions, and how various therapies affect these conditions. Since immune cells are often integrally involved in the development of, protection against, or responses to brain diseases and injuries, funded research also can focus on immune cell interactions with brain cells. Scientists using either conventional brain imaging techniques, cellular and molecular imaging technologies, or a combination of both, are supported to undertake pilot tests of novel hypotheses. Studies tend to focus on how imaging can enhance understanding of normal brain functioning; improve diagnosis; expand understanding of disease or injury processes; and assess treatment effects. Additionally, studies designed to refine existing imaging techniques, or to further develop new techniques to address specific clinical questions, are supported. 
 
Please Note: This is a limited submission opportunity and Harvard University may put forward only one nomination. The applicant for the Harvard nomination must be nominated by a department chair or area chair and must submit a pre-proposal to an internal competition administered by the Office for Vice Provost of Research (OVPR) at the link above.



Fdn_AHA
OSP Deadline: January 22, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: January 29, 2019
Award Amount: $200,000 over 2 years and up to $50,000 in Amazon Web Services service credit. 10% is allowed for overhead. This amount falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss with your grants administrator before preparing an application.
 
The purpose of this program is to test and refine artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms using learning health care system data and/or multiple longitudinal data sources to improve our understanding of all data related to precision medicine. Data source examples include but are not limited to: images, electronic health records, genetics and omic-related data, community engagement data (including social determinants of health), wearable devices, smart phone and other sensor related technology. Applicants are encouraged to use multiple sources of data, or longitudinal data to continue to refine algorithms.
 
Example topics for applicants include but are not limited to:
  • identifying machine learning approaches for classification of images from multiple data sources;
  • predicting behavioral and lifestyle choices from data sources;
  • predicting income level, educational level from data sources;
  • new pipelines to enable more effective and efficient workflows for analyzing data in the cloud.



Fdn_Packard
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: January 22, 2019 by 12:00PM
Award Amount: $875,000 over five years
Eligible Disciplines: physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, astronomy, computer science, earth science, ocean science, and all branches of engineering
Eligible Faculty: Faculty members appointed between May 31, 2016 and May 31, 2019
 
The Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering provides the nation's most promising early-career scientists and engineers with flexible funding and the freedom to take risks and explore new frontiers in their fields of study. Packard Fellows are encouraged to think big and look at complex issues with a fresh perspective. The Foundation encourages them to use their funds in whatever ways would best advance their research. Initial faculty appointments should have begun no earlier than May 31, 2016 and no later than May 31, 2019. 
 
Please Note: This is a limited submission opportunity and Harvard University may put forward only two nominations. Applicants for the Harvard nomination must be nominated by a department chair or area chair and must submit a pre-proposal to an internal competition administered by the Office for Vice Provost of Research (OVPR) at the link above.



Fdn_Moore
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: January 22, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: March 4, 2019
Award Amount: $200,000/year for 3 years plus $25,000/year to the applicant institution to cover costs associated with administering the grant award. Each host institution will be required to contribute $50,000 in annual direct support of the inventor's work (see details below).
Eligible Applicants: Faculty, research scientists, postdocs or other full-time staff at eligible institutions who received their terminal degree on or after January 1, 2009.
 
The Moore Inventor Fellows program focuses on supporting outstanding inventors and innovators at a critical stage of research to capture opportunities that otherwise might be missed. The program seeks to support early-career scientist-inventors who create new tools, technologies, processes, or approaches with a high potential to accelerate progress in the foundation's three main areas of interest: scientific research, environmental conservation and patient care. Fellows are expected to be personally engaged in pursuing their invention and required to devote at least 25 percent of their own time to their invention. Fellows may use the grant funds to support their own salary to create this opportunity. Fellows may also hire undergraduates, graduate assistants or postdoctoral scholars and purchase services, equipment, or supplies.
 
Each host institution is required to contribute $50,000 in annual direct support of the inventor's work each year of the fellowship. 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 a fellow's use before the fellow was awarded a Moore Inventor Fellowship (such as start-up funds) do not qualify.The internal application requires a brief statement written by the applicant acknowledging the cost share associated with this opportunity and confirming the source of this funding. This statement must be signed by the applicant's Department Chair or Area Dean.
 
Please Note: This is a limited submission opportunity and Harvard may put forward only two proposals.  The Office of the Vice Provost for Research will conduct the internal competition to select the Harvard nominees. To be considered for the Harvard nomination, potential applicants must submit an internal pre-proposal via the link above.

Fdn_SmithFam
FAS/SEAS Pre-Proposal Deadline: January 22, 2019 by 5:00PM
Award Amount: $300,000 over two years
Eligible applicants: Untenured faculty appointed to their first independent faculty appointment on or between July 1, 2010 and July 1, 2015. Time taken for leaves of absence does not count toward the eligibility window.
 
The Smith Family Foundation Odyssey Award was created to fuel creativity and innovation in junior investigators in the basic sciences. The two-year award supports established junior faculty in pursuit of high impact ideas to generate breakthroughs and drive new directions in biomedical research. The awards will fund high-risk, high-reward pilot projects solicited from the brightest junior faculty in the region. Investigators in the physical sciences (physics, chemistry and engineering) whose projects focus on biomedical science are also encouraged to apply. Clinical research is beyond the scope of this program.

Please Note:  This is a limited submission opportunity and FAS and SEAS may put forward only two nominations each. To be considered for the Harvard nomination, potential applicants must submit an internal pre-proposal via the link above.



Fdn_GrandChallenges
OSP Deadline: February 5, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: February 12, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $250,000 CAD over 18 to 24 months. 10% is allowed for overhead. This amount falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss with your grants administrator before preparing an application.
 
The OPTions Initiative seeks innovative and transformative ideas that have potential to improve access to safe abortion in low- and middle-income countries where there are one or more legal grounds to support it. These ideas could originate from innovators worldwide and across a wide range of disciplines. OPTions seeks innovations that:
  • Increase access to existing abortion products and services for women and girls who have chosen to terminate their pregnancy.
  • Develop and test new methods of pregnancy termination that are an improvement over existing methods.

Internal Opportunities
Internal_HarvardGlobal
Expression of Interest Deadline: December 19, 2018
Full Proposal Deadline (if invited): April 17, 2019
Award Amount: $50,000-$100,000 annually for 1-2 years (Small Grants); $500,000-$1M annually for 1-2 years (Large Grants)
Target Applicants: The principal investigator must be an active tenure-stream faculty member. Students and postdoctoral scholars may participate in a grant under the supervisory auspices of the faculty member who applies for an award.
 
In the 2019-20 academic year, HGI will fund research projects in China and India that have the potential for impact both locally and globally. Project activities are not limited to the Harvard campus but also include work that happens in China and/or India. Faculty conducting research in China have access to space at the   Harvard Center Shanghai ,  and HGI encourages project teams to make use of the Center as a convening site. Faculty from across the Schools who are already working on China and/or India-related topics, as well as those who wish to begin doing so, are invited to apply for funding by submitting preliminary expressions of interest (EOIs).
 
Funding will be provided at two levels:
  1. Large grants will support multi-faculty, cross-School, cross-discipline, integrative projects on problems or issues of global relevance that build on existing research and include significant collaboration with scholars in China. The goal is to help innovative research "scale up" and "scale out." There should thus be a substantial track record of prior work upon which a more ambitious project would be developed.
  2. Small grants will support innovative, interdisciplinary projects that, like the large grants, focus on issues of global significance that would be unlikely to find funding from other sources. Funding is available at this level for projects with a focus on China and/or on India, or for comparative work. The majority of the funding, however, is available for projects that are related to China.

Internal_Leman
Deadline: January 22, 2019
Award Amount: up to $150,000 payable over one or two years
Target Applicants: Applications are invited from individuals who hold a faculty appointment at a Harvard school and who have principal investigator rights at that school.
 
Applications are invited from researchers across disciplines proposing research projects relating to Brazil. Proposals are sought for projects that address education management and administration; social science and its applications; public administration and policy; technological advances in education; and evidence-based research.  Consideration will also be given to projects that propose collaboration between Harvard faculty and Brazilian academics in the life sciences, physical sciences and engineering, and basic and applied sciences.
 
Proposed projects must meet at least one of the following three criteria:
  1. Include collaboration with Brazilian academics
  2. Be undertaken in Brazil in whole or in part
  3. Focus on Brazil
Applications must be submitted online here by January 22, 2019.



Internal_Radcliffe
Deadline: February 4, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $20,000
 
The Accelerator Workshop Program provides funding to scholars, practitioners, and artists to propel their original research programs or projects toward a specific outcome: a publication, a grant application, a course curriculum, an exhibition, a performance, or policy recommendations, to name only a few possibilities. With an eye toward accelerating the spread of innovative ideas and knowledge into the academic or public realm, this program brings participants together to further develop and refine their work as they prepare for its eventual dissemination. 

Funding of up to $20,000 is available to support one- to two-day workshops hosted on the campus of the Radcliffe Institute. For workshops to be held in 2019-2020, the theme of the human body is of special interest. Applications in all disciplines are welcome, however, regardless of whether they reflect a focus on the human body.



Internal_HDSI
Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: Up to $5,000
Target Applicants: Applications are invited from individuals who hold a faculty appointment at a Harvard school and who have principal investigator rights at that school.
 
The Faculty Special Projects Fund is intended to support one-time data science opportunities for which other funding is not readily available. Applicants may request funding of up to $5,000 to support research, community-building, outreach, and educational activities. Examples of projects that the Fund is intended to support include offsetting the cost of running workshops or seminars, data visualization or research dissemination, and video production. The HDSI welcomes applications from all fields of scholarship.  
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, and funding will be awarded throughout the year until available funding is exhausted. The total annual budget is $50,000.



Internal_SolarGeo
Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: Varies by award type
 
Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program (SGRP) aims to focus on advancing solar geoengineering science and technology; assessing efficiency and risks; and laying out governance options and social implications. The following funding mechanisms are currently available: 
 
Residency Program:  This program will accept a small number of researchers focused on solar geoengineering to spend between 1 and 3 weeks at Harvard University, working directly with researchers at SGRP and other members of the Harvard community. The main purpose of this program is to enable visitors to work in collaboration with Harvard researchers and each other on discrete research projects. SGRP will cover the cost of travel and accommodations as well as per diem for meals.
 
Harvard Faculty Research Grants:  SGRP will provide direct support for research activities that cannot be fulfilled by students or fellows. That could involve multi-investigator collaborations, field or laboratory work in the sciences, or field or survey work in the social sciences.

Industry/Corporate Opportunities
Cisco  
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: Budgets depend on the institution and geography. Overhead is limited to 5%. This falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss with your grants administrator before preparing an application.
Cisco Research Center (CRC) connects researchers and developers from Cisco, academia, governments, customers, and industry partners with the goal of facilitating collaboration and exploration of new and promising technologies. Cisco is primarily interested in exploring issues, topics, and problems that are relevant to its core business of improving the Internet. It is also deeply interested in adjacent technologies that leverage the power of the network to change the world around us.
 
CRC supports a broad range of research interests and award types in engineering and applied sciences. For a complete list of Requests for Proposals (RFPs), please scroll to the bottom of this link. Please note that CRC also welcomes research proposals that do not fit cleanly into any of the RFPs listed.
 
IBM_World
OSP Deadline: Please note that OSP review and approval is required for any User Agreements between the sponsor and Harvard University. 
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: up to 150,000 years of computing power through World Community Grid; weather data from The Weather Company, an IBM Business; and cloud storage from IBM Cloud.
IBM invites scientists studying climate change or ways to mitigate or adapt to its impacts to apply for free crowdsourced supercomputing power, weather data and cloud storage to support their climate or environmental research projects. In return, awardees are asked to publicly release the research data from their collaboration with IBM, enabling the global community to benefit from and build upon those findings.
 
Grantees will receive free, 24/7 access to computing power though World Community Grid, an award-winning IBM Citizenship initiative that enables anyone with a computer or Android device to support scientific research by carrying out computational research tasks on their devices. This allows researchers to conduct large-scale investigations, often magnitudes larger than they would have otherwise been able to conduct. Grantees may also request access to weather data and cloud storage.

U.S. Department of Defense

DoD_NSWC
OSP Deadline: December 21, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 8, 2019
Award Amount: $200,000
 
Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division desires advanced trusted and reliable hardware to support strategic missions. Electronic components used in strategic missions have unique requirements such as the ability to operate and survive in harsh radiation environments. Current radiation-hardened electronics available to the Government often lag many generations behind that of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components. This leads to a significant gap in performance between the capability of strategic hardware and commercial hardware. To help bridge this gap, NSWC Crane is interested in research for innovative approaches that have the potential to bridge this capability gap. Research areas can include (but are not limited to) fault tolerant system design, radiation-hardened by design techniques, and projections of radiation hardness with technology node scaling.
 
The Government may make multiple awards. The amount of resources made available to this BAA will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds.


DoD_AFRL
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (required): January 3, 2019
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): TBA
Award Amount: The government's anticipated share is $5M. The government is anticipating cost sharing from the Recipient to the maximum extent practicable. This program is anticipated to be a single phase consisting of a 60-month technical effort plus 3 months for the final report.
 
The technical effort of this program will focus on the development and application of artificial intelligence, data analytics, and decision science to advance materials problems of interest to the U.S. Air Force (USAF) through strong, organic collaborations between the Recipient and USAF researchers. The program will seek to grow these collaborations by funding graduate students at the Recipient institution(s) performing exceptional basic research in materials problem spaces via application and adaptation of approaches in data analytics. Research under this program should produce actionable, quantifiable information that furthers fundamental knowledge of materials systems.
 
The Recipient is expected to consist of an interdisciplinary team including both materials researchers and researchers from the fields of artificial intelligence, data analytics, machine learning, signals processing or equivalent field. To ensure the collaborative effort, graduate students participating in the Center of Excellence are expected to perform research under the direction of an AFRL S&E for approximately 8-12 weeks each year on site at AFRL, Wright Patterson AFB. Additional quarterly visits between the Recipient and AFRL S&Es involved in the program are expected.
 
A single Cooperative Agreement is anticipated under this announcement.


DOD_DARPASIGMA
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 11, 2019
Award Amount: The level of funding for individual awards will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. The overall SIGMA+ program is being conducted in two 2.5-year phases (Period A will be 27 months and Period B 24 months). At this time, detailed proposals are solicited for the network development, analytics, and integration portion of the program, Period A.
 
The Defense Sciences Office (DSO) at DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the areas of: automated and sensor fused data analytics, network infrastructure and system integration, and interfaces and interoperability to support a networked system for the detection, interdiction, and deterrence of clandestine weapons of mass destruction (WMD) activities.
 
SIGMA+ consists of three integrated thrusts: sensors, network and analytics, and test and evaluation. Radiological and nuclear (RN) WMD threats sensors and algorithms were developed under the SIGMA program and will be integrated into SIGMA+; this is referred to as Technical Area 0 (TA0). Chemical and biological sensors and sensor algorithms were addressed in a previous BAA, referred to as TA1 and TA2, respectively. The network and analytics thrust, the focus of this Program Announcement, is composed of three additional technical areas:
  • TA3: Automated and Sensor Fused Analytics for Multi-Source Data
  • TA4: Network Infrastructure and System Integration
  • TA5: Interfaces and Interoperability 
Performers may propose to one or all technical areas, or provide approaches that combine technical areas.
 
DARPA anticipates multiple awards.

DoD_AFOSR
OSP Deadline: January 11, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 18, 2019
Award Amount: Approximately $4.8M over 5 years. If any subawards are proposed, the prime university must receive at least 50% of the total funding requested.
 
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) seeks unclassified proposals from educational institutions in the United States for deployable, reconfigurable, multifunctional antennas research. Proposals are sought from academic institutions capable of research that will lead to advances in science and technology that can yield potentially transformational impacts. This topic requires multidisciplinary research in design, stimuli-response reconfiguration, mechanical and structural characterization, and electromagnetic measurement and optimization.
 
A single grant award is anticipated under this announcement.

PIPES
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 17, 2019 (proposals may be submitted after this date until March 1, 2019, but proposers are warned that the likelihood of available funding is greatly reduced for proposals submitted after the initial deadline)
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. A total of $35M is anticipated for Technical Area 1 (TA1) including Technical Area 1B (TA1B); $20M for Technical Area 2 (TA2); and $10M for Technical Area 3 (TA3). DARPA expects that individual awards in TA1B will not exceed $600,000. PIPES is a 42-month program divided into three Phases.
 
The DARPA Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) is soliciting research proposals for the development of package-level optical signaling technologies for advanced microelectronic systems to enable disruptive performance scaling through parallelism.
 
PIPES is soliciting innovative research proposals in three main Technical Areas (TAs):
  • Technical Area 1 (TA1) - Photonically-Enabled MCMs will develop high-performance optical I/O technology for co-packaging with state-of-the-art packaged ICs, including FPGAs, CPUs, GPUs, and ASICs.
  • Technical Area 1, Track B (TA1B) - Defense Applications and Demonstration will be a separate effort within TA1 that investigates the application of photonically-enabled MCMs for DoD-specific use cases.
  • Technical Area 2 (TA2) - Photonics for Massive Parallelism will develop revolutionary new approaches to in-package optical I/O scalable to 1 Pbps aggregate bandwidth for future microelectronic systems.
  • Technical Area 3 (TA3) - Interconnect Fabrics will develop key technologies to facilitate the use of package-level photonic I/O in future systems and amplify its impact.
A total of approximately $65M of funding is anticipated for awards made against this BAA. Multiple awards are anticipated in each technical area.

DOD_ONR_EWT
OSP Deadline: 5 days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: Rolling through February 28, 2019
Award Amount: ONR plans to allocate $25-30M for efforts related to the Technical Areas in this Special Notice. The period of performance for projects will be 1-3 years.
 
This announcement describes a research thrust, entitled "Electronic Warfare Technology," to be launched under ONR's Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology . The research opportunity described in this announcement specifically falls under BAA Appendix-1-Program Description, Section II B, Electronics, Sensors and Network Research of the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (Code 31) sub-section. The submission of proposals, their evaluation and the placement of research grants and contracts will be carried out as described in that Broad Agency Announcement.
 
The proposed topic will explore and exploit the technical opportunities for discovery and invention in the area of Electronic Warfare (EW). The goal of EW is to control the Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) by exploiting, deceiving, or denying enemy use of the spectrum while ensuring its use by friendly forces. To that end, the ONR EW Discovery and Invention (D&I) program invests in Science and Technology (S&T)  initiatives that will provide naval forces (including Navy and Marine Corps) with improved threat warning systems; Electronic warfare Support (ES); decoys and countermeasures against weapon tracking and guidance systems; Electronic Attack (EA) against adversary Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR); and Electronic Protection (EP) of our own weapons and C4ISR from intentional and unintentional interference.
 
ONR Code 312 Electronic Warfare (312EW) seeks proposals to develop and demonstrate
technologies for the next generation systems in electronic warfare. White papers and subsequent  proposals should address technology developments in one or more of the following Research  Opportunity Technical Areas (TA) 1-4:
  • Technical Area 1 (TA1): Alternative Computational Approaches Applied to EW
  • Technical Area 2 (TA2): Compact, Efficient, Beam-Agile Transmitters
  • Technical Area 3 (TA3): Compact, Efficient, EO/IR Transmitters
  • Technical Area 4 (TA4): Component Technologies for Innovative Distributed EW
It is anticipated that multiple awards will be made based on the quality of the proposed efforts.

DOD_SERDP
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: January 8, 2019 for pre-proposals to the Core Solicitation; March 5, 2019 for full proposals to the SEED Solicitation
Award Amount: Typical projects funded by the Core Solicitation range from $200,000-$600,000 per year for 3-5 years. SEED awards provide up to $200,000 for 1 year.
 
DoD's Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) Office is interested in receiving pre-proposals for research focusing in the Core Program areas of Environmental Restoration, Munitions Response, Resource Conservation and Resiliency, and Weapons Systems and Platforms technologies. SERDP supports environmental research relevant to the management and mission of the DoD and supports efforts that lead to the development and application of innovative environmental technologies or methods that improve the environmental performance of DoD by improving outcomes, managing environmental risks, and/or reducing costs or time required to resolve environmental problems. SERDP is seeking proposals responding to Statements of Need (SONs) for projects to be funded in fiscal year 2020. SONs may be found on the SERDP website . Any pre-proposal submitted to the Core Program shall be in response to only one of these SERDP SONs.
 
In addition to the Core Program described above, SERDP is soliciting SERDP Exploratory Development (SEED) proposals to allow researchers to test proof of concept in response to the following two SONs:
  • Munitions Response: Detection, Classification, and Remediation of Military Munitions Underwater
  • Weapons Systems and Platforms: Reduction of Hazardous Waste Streams from Composite Manufacturing and Repair
It is expected that multiple awards totaling approximately $12 million will be made.

DOD_DarpaAMD
OSP Deadline: January 7, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 14, 2019
Award Amount: The level of funding for individual awards made under this solicitation has not been predetermined and will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. AMD is a 48-month program divided into three Phases.
 
DARPA's Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of autonomous molecular design to accelerate the discovery, validation, and optimization of new, high-performance molecules for Department of Defense (DoD) needs. DARPA seeks to develop new, systematic approaches to increase the pace of discovery and optimization of high-performance molecules through development of closed-loop systems that exploit, build and integrate tools for: 1) extracting  existing data from databases and text; 2) executing autonomous experimental measurement and  optimization; and 3) incorporating computational approaches to develop physics-based representations and predictive tools. Such methods will ultimately enable Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based design and discovery of completely new molecules that are optimized across multiple molecular properties for specific DoD needs.
 
AMD performers will develop the approaches, methods, and tools to build closed-loop systems. These systems are divided into three Focus Areas (FAs) that pertain to the technical challenges and development necessary to realize the AMD goals:
  • FA1: Data extraction from existing sources;
  • FA2: Data generation via automated experimental platforms; and
  • FA3: Representations, AI models, and optimization frameworks. 
Proposers must address all three FAs in their proposed approach, resulting in an integrated system  that can extract and exploit existing data, generate new data, and develop and validate new  molecular representations and optimization frameworks for realizing high fidelity AI models for  molecular design and discovery. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the work, teams should be  interdisciplinary with a composition including relevant fields such as chemistry, engineering,  computer science, and mathematics.
 
DARPA anticipates multiple awards.

DARPASCORE
Sponsor Deadline for Abstracts (strongly encouraged): January 31, 2019 for TA3; abstract deadline has passed for TA1 and TA2
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: March 12, 2019 for TA3; deadline has passed for TA1 & TA2
Award Amount: The level of funding for individual awards made under this BAA will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. SCORE is a 36-month program, comprising two phases with durations of 18 months each.
 
DARPA's Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is soliciting innovative research proposals for the development and deployment of automated tools to assign Confidence Scores (CSs) to different kinds of Social and Behavioral Science (SBS) research results and claims. CSs are quantitative measures that should enable someone to understand the degree to which a particular claim or result is likely to be reproducible and/or replicable. These tools will assign explainable CSs with a reliability that is equal to, or better than, the best current human expert methods and will enable a consumer of SBS research to quickly calibrate the level of confidence in the Reproducibility and Replicability (R&R) of a given SBS result or claim.
 
To achieve its vision, the SCORE program will fund research in three Technical Areas (TAs), with an independent Test and Evaluation (T&E) team providing oversight. DARPA is soliciting proposals for TA1, TA2, or TA3 but is not soliciting proposals for participation on the T&E team. Each proposal should only address a single TA. The three TAs are:
  • TA1: Data
  • TA2: Experts
  • TA3: Algorithms
DARPA anticipates multiple awards under each Technical Area (TA).

DoD_FY19STEM
Sponsor Submission Window for White Papers (required): April 1-June 28, 2019
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): September 27, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $250,000 per year for up to 3 years
 
The ONR seeks a broad range of applications for augmenting existing or developing innovative solutions that directly maintain, or cultivate a diverse, world-class STEM workforce in order to maintain the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps' technological superiority. The goal of any proposed effort must provide solutions that will establish and maintain pathways of diverse U.S. citizens who are interested in uniformed or civilian DoN (or Navy and Marine Corps) STEM workforce opportunities. This announcement explicitly encourages projects that improve the capacity of education systems and communities to create impactful STEM educational experiences for students and workers. Submissions are encouraged to consider including active learning approaches and incorporating 21st century skill development. ONR encourages applications to utilize current STEM educational research for informing project design and advancing our understanding of how and why people choose STEM careers and opportunities of naval relevance. While this announcement is relevant for any stage of the STEM educational system, funding efforts will be targeted primarily toward projects addressing the following communities or any combination of these communities: secondary education communities; post-secondary communities; informal science communities; and current naval STEM workforce communities.
 
The technical content of any idea must establish naval relevance within the priority areas as outlined in the "Naval Research and Development Framework and Addendum" . Broad priority areas are as follows:
  • Augmented Warfighter
  • Integrated & Distributed Forces
  • Operational Endurance
  • Sensing & Sense-Making
  • Scalable Lethality
Approximately 25 awards are anticipated.


DOD_NavalPostGrad
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission 
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers and Full Proposals: Rolling through May 31, 2019 
Award Amount: The funded amount and period of performance of each proposal selected for award will vary depending on the research area and the technical approach to be pursued by the applicant selected.
 
The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is interested in receiving proposals for research initiatives that offer potential for advancement and improvement in the NPS core mission of graduate education and research. Readers should note that this is an announcement to declare NPS's solicitation in competitive funding of meritorious research initiatives across a spectrum of science and engineering, business, politics and public/foreign policy, operational and information sciences, and interdisciplinary disciplines that are in line with the NPS's graduate education and research mission.
 
Additional information on the Naval Postgraduate School's graduate education and research mission is available at:


DoD_PolyPilot2
Sponsor Deadline for Abstracts (strongly encouraged): August 14, 2019
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: September 3, 2019
Award Amount: The level of funding for individual awards made under this solicitation has not been predetermined and will depend on the scope and quality of the proposals received, as well as the availability of funds. Approximately 10 awards at the $100,000 level for 12-month projects are anticipated throughout the duration of this Broad Agency Announcement (BAA).
 
DARPA's Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is seeking participants for a pilot program designed to utilize modern connectivity to rapidly develop promising basic research pathways and then efficiently develop basic research proposals. DSO's intent is to fund research proposals resulting from this pilot program. As with other recent DARPA/DSO opportunity announcements, the goal of this program is to deliver research proposals that seek to investigate innovative approaches to enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. In particular, this announcement is intended to support the DSO mission to anticipate scientific surprise.
 
Note that submission of abstracts and proposals is not mandatory to participate in the Polyplexus platform. Researchers who desire to participate due to curiosity; the desire to learn, teach, or explore; or any other constructive reason are encouraged to do so. Pilot participation is open to all scientists and engineers who want to engage in this online platform. 

A Proposers Day webcast was held on September 13, 2018. The webcast registration site will remain open for the entire period of performance of this BAA to allow new participants to access the platform. Registration at this time will only generate an invitation to apply for an account on the Polyplexus platform. 



DOD_ONRSab
OSP Deadline: Review not required for individual fellowships
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: Rolling (proposals must be submitted 6 months prior to the start of the proposed sabbatical)
Award Amount: Participants receive a monthly stipend making up the difference between salary and sabbatical leave pay from their home institution. Relocation and travel assistance are provided to qualifying participants. Appointments will last for a minimum of one semester to a maximum of one year in length.
 
The Sabbatical Leave Program provides an opportunity for faculty members to engage in scholarly, creative, professional, research, or other academic activities at a sponsoring U.S. Navy Laboratory that will enhance the faculty member's further contributions to their institution. This program is residential and all work must be completed on site.
 
Expected benefits of the Sabbatical Leave Program:
  • Broaden the scope and horizon of faculty member's research interests and provide a foundation for future research collaborations.
  • Provide an understanding of the Department of the Navy research interests and the technological implications thereof, thus enhancing the abilities of Fellows to pursue and obtain funding for research at their home institution.
  • Foster lasting relationships between Fellows and the researchers at the Navy laboratories.
Applicants are required to identify a mentor at a Participating Laboratory that matches the applicant's research interests.
 
DODOther
Other DoD Opportunities
I f you are interested in DoD funding opportunities, please note:
The  Defense Innovation Marketplace  is a centralized source for Department of Defense science and technology (S&T) planning, acquisition resources, funding, and financial information. 

U.S. Department of Energy

DOE_CMS
Sponsor Pre-Application Deadline (required): December 21, 2018 by 12:00PM
OSP Deadline: February 21, 2019
Sponsor Full Proposal Deadline: February 28, 2019
Award Amount for Individual/Small Group Awards: $200,000-$750,000 per year for up to 4 years
Award Amount for Large Team Awards:  Ceiling: $750,000-$2,000,000 per year for up to 4 years
 
The DOE SC program in Basic Energy Sciences (BES) announces its interest in receiving new and renewal applications in Computational Materials Sciences with the aim of producing widely applicable, validated community codes and the associated databases for the design of functional materials. Proposals must include plans for the utilization of DOE's Leadership Class Computing facilities including petascale, pre-exascale and future exascale machines. The research component should meet the standards and priorities of the BES research program as determined by BES community planning documents and peer review.
 
The program will support both single investigator/small group and larger team awards. Larger awards must focus on the creation of computational codes and associated experimental/ computational databases by fully integrated teams, combining the skills of experts in materials theory, modeling, computation, synthesis, characterization, and processing/fabrication. The research may involve the development of new ab initio theory, mining data from both experimental and theoretical databases, performing advanced in situ/operando characterization to generate the specific parameters needed to validate computational models, and well-controlled synthesis to confirm the predictions of the codes. Smaller, single investigator or small group awards should address specific computational developments or techniques that can add functionality/capabilities to standard codes.


DOE_HighEnergyPhysics
OSP Deadline: January 14, 2019
Sponsor Full Proposal Deadline: January 22, 2019
Award Amount: $20,000-$5,000,000 per year
 
The mission of the HEP program is to understand how the universe works at its most fundamental level, which is done by discovering the elementary constituents of matter and energy, probing the interactions between them, and exploring the basic nature of space and time. The HEP program focuses on three experimental scientific frontiers:
  • The Energy Frontier, where powerful accelerators are used to create new particles, reveal their interactions, and investigate fundamental forces;
  • The Intensity Frontier, where intense particle beams and highly sensitive detectors are used to pursue alternate pathways to investigate fundamental forces and particle interactions by studying events that occur rarely in nature, and to provide precision measurements of these phenomena; and
  • The Cosmic Frontier, where non-accelerator-based experiments observe the cosmos and detect cosmic particles, making measurements of natural phenomena that can provide information about the nature of dark matter, dark energy, and other fundamental properties of the universe that impact our understanding of matter and energy.
Together, these three interrelated and complementary discovery frontiers offer the opportunity to answer some of the most basic questions about the world around us. Also integral to the mission of HEP are three cross-cutting research areas that enable new scientific opportunities by developing the necessary tools and methods for discoveries:
  • Theoretical High Energy Physics, where the vision and mathematical framework for understanding and extending the knowledge of particles, forces, space-time, and the universe are developed;
  • Accelerator Science and Technology Research and Development, where the technologies and basic science needed to design, build, and operate the accelerator facilities essential for making new discoveries are developed; and
  • Detector Research and Development, where the basic science and technologies needed to design and build the High Energy Physics detectors essential for making new discoveries are developed.
The three frontiers and the three cross-cutting research areas are collectively the six research subprograms supported by HEP. All applications should address specific research goals in one or more of the six research subprograms, explain how the proposed research or technology development supports the broad scientific objectives and mission of the HEP program, and aligns with its priorities.

DOEFOAHub
Sponsor Deadline: TBD
 
The purpose of this notice is to provide potential applicants advance notice that the Advanced Manufacturing Office, on behalf of the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, intends to issue a funding opportunity announcement (FOA) entitled "Energy-Water Desalination Hub". This FOA will support the establishment of an Energy Innovation Hub in the area of Energy-Water Desalination to accelerate transformational advances in science and engineering focused on reducing the energy and cost requirements of desalination to provide clean and safe water. The Hub will include highly collaborative research teams, spanning multiple scientific, engineering, and where appropriate, economic and public policy disciplines. By bringing together top talent from across the full spectrum of research and development performers-including universities, private industry, non-profits, and National Laboratories-the Hub will serve as the world-leading R&D center in Energy-Water Desalination. 
 
This Notice is issued so that interested parties are aware of the EERE's intention to issue this FOA in the near term. All of the information contained in this Notice is subject to change.

DOE_Other
Other DOE Opportunities
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA)

IARPA_Tro
OSP review not required for responses
Response Deadline: January 4, 2019
 
Using current machine learning methods, an artificial intelligence (AI) is trained on data, learns relationships in that data, and then is deployed to the world to operate on new data. For example, an AI can be trained on images of traffic signs, learn what stop signs and speed limit signs look like, and then be deployed as part an autonomous car. The problem is that an adversary that can disrupt the training pipeline can insert Trojan behaviors into the AI. For example, an AI learning to distinguish traffic signs can be given just a few additional examples of stop signs with yellow squares on them, each labeled "speed limit sign." If the AI were deployed in a self-driving car, an adversary could cause the car to run through the stop sign just by putting a sticky note on it (see figure below). The goal of the TrojAI program is to combat such Trojan attacks by inspecting AIs for Trojans.

The Intelligence Advance Research Projects Activity (IARPA) is seeking interested parties to thoroughly review the Draft BAA Funding Opportunity Description and provide comments, questions, suggested changes, and feedback by January 4, 2019. This Draft Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) is NOT a formal request for proposal. Proposals are NOT being requested or evaluated at this time. A Final BAA will be released at a later date for which interested parties may submit proposals.

IARPA_Portable
OSP review not required for responses
Response Deadline: January 14, 2019
 
IARPA is seeking information on research efforts in the area of cooling systems for small mobile devices. This request for information (RFI) is issued solely for information gathering and planning purposes and does not constitute a formal solicitation for proposals.
 
This RFI seeks novel, and aesthetically complimentary form factor approaches to a cooling solution for mobile devices, such as smart phones. The cooling solution must be designed to both mitigate the internal heat load from the device's electronics under heavy use conditions, and shield the device from high ambient temperatures, up to 170 degrees Fahrenheit. If the proposed cooling solution requires power, the power must be supplied within the form factor of the device, i.e. the cooling solution cannot tap the phone's battery. Creative cooling solutions that do not use power are strongly encouraged.



IARPA_Future
OSP review not required for responses
Response Date: January 14, 2019
 
IARPA is seeking information on research efforts in the area of innovative, new computer hardware and software architectures with intelligent computer environments. This request for information (RFI) is issued solely for information gathering and planning purposes and does not constitute a formal solicitation for proposals.
 
IARPA seeks responses to this RFI that provide a technical description of system architectures that enable the capacity and capabilities described in this RFI and that identify the required hardware- and software enabling technologies. Responders must demonstrate expertise and experience in both computing architectures (hardware and software) and AI systems (knowledge base and machine learning  technologies).
 
Responses to this RFI should answer any or all of the following questions:
  1. Is it possible to develop a computer system that provides the above-described features of FCS within the next 20 years? Specifically, what is the design of the system capability, "understanding"; what is the computational model for FCS; and what hardware and software innovations are required to achieve the FCS challenges? What are the barriers that must be overcome?
  2. What is the time frame for the development of an FCS and what is the timeline for its development? The timeline should include a reasonable R&D path for the development of an FCS that leads to the required hardware and software technologies.
  3. What are the approximate power and environmental specifications for the FCS?
  4. What proxy applications, benchmarks and metrics can be used to drive the development of the FCS?


IARPA_Molecular
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
BAA Closing Date: January 14, 2019 (updated deadline)
Award Amount: Not specified. A cost proposal is only required to be submitted if the offeror's proposal has been selected for negotiation.
 
The overall MAEGLIN program intends to develop an ultra-low-power chemical analysis capability for the detection and identification of explosives, chemical weapons, industrial toxins and pollutants, narcotics, and nuclear materials in chemical environments with significant background and interferents. In Phase 1 the MAEGLIN program developed component technology for chemical collection, separation, and identification. In Phase 2, MAEGLIN will demonstrate integrated prototype systems in two capability tracks: Chemical Identification, and Chemical Detection. Systems in the Chemical Identification track will be able to collect target chemicals at concentrations potentially several orders of magnitude lower than the ambient chemical background, separate these chemicals from interferents, and perform a full analysis of the complex mixture with positive identification of a broad range of species.

IARPA_deep
OSP review not required for responses
Response Deadline: January 17, 2019
 
IARPA is seeking information on research efforts in the area of machine learning with a particular focus on deep learning. This request for information (RFI) is issued solely for information gathering and planning purposes and does not constitute a formal solicitation for proposals. 
 
This RFI seeks capability statements relating to machine and deep learning. Responses to this RFI should address the following points:
  1. Respondent's capabilities in the realm of machine and deep learning. Of specific interest is the respondent's knowledge of, and experience implementing, current, cutting-edge machine learning techniques.
  2. Respondent's ability to perform research and development at the TOP SECRET//SCI level. This includes the presence of qualified, cleared personnel as well as appropriate network access.
IARPA_other
Other IARPA Opportunities
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

NASA_HERO
Sponsor Deadline for Step 1 Proposals (required): January 4, 2019
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Step 2 Proposals (if invited): April 4, 2019
Award Amount: $250,000 per year for 3 years
 
This solicitation topic is seeking proposals for ground-based evaluation of countermeasures that prevent or mitigate the signs and symptoms associated with Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS) and SANS-related behavioral outcomes including cognition, sleep, and mood, as well as investigation of potential mechanisms by which SANS occurs in this ground-based analog. Please note that this solicitation is only for experiments involving human participants to be held at the German Aerospace Center's  :envihab facility in Cologne.
 
Three awards are anticipated.



NASA_ROSBio 
Sponsor Deadline for Step 1 Proposals (required): January 7, 2019
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Step 2 Proposals (if invited): March 5, 2019
Award Amount: Awards from this solicitation will range from $300,000 total over 3 years for Space Biology studies that utilize parabolic and suborbital flights, to up to $1.2M total over 3 years for team-based studies.

This Appendix to the Research Opportunities in Space Biology (ROSBio) - 2018 NASA Omnibus Research Announcement solicits proposals that will increase NASA's understanding of how living systems acclimate to spaceflight to support human space exploration.
 
The solicited research will fall into the following four research emphases:
  1. Microbiology studies that will produce new understanding to augment and expand our knowledge of the Microbiology of the Built Environment (MoBE) in Space and suggest how to manipulate and control it in the closed environment of exploration spacecraft.
  2. Plant Biology studies in support of Human Space Exploration making maximal use of the capabilities of the VEGGIE and Advanced Plant Habitat) on ISS to study environmental effects on plant growth and interactions with microbes and fungi. Proposed studies should answer fundamental questions about how plants adapt to spaceflight and provide new understanding of how to grow plants in space that will enable human space exploration.
  3. Animal Biology (vertebrate and invertebrate) in support of Human Space Exploration.
  4. Studies designed to compare results and validity of microgravity "simulators" in parallel with flight and ground-based studies. 
The types of experiments solicited by this Appendix include the following, based on the award type (please see the solicitation for descriptions of specific award types): flight experiments using the ISS, or suborbital and parabolic flight platforms to test, develop, or refine flight hypotheses; ground-based experiments conducted in non-NASA or NASA laboratories, including drop tower facilities, and/or specialized centrifuge facilities to study gravity as a continuum; individual PI- led or team-based studies.
 
Up to 15 new awards are anticipated.


NASA_FINESST
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: February 1, 2019
OSP Deadline: January 25, 2019
Award Amount: The maximum amount of a FINESST award is $45,000 per 12-months and up to $135,000 total for a period of performance maximum of 36 months. The university should prorate the FINESST stipend and allowances if the projected schedule for completion is known to be less than 12 months.
 
Through this Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) solicitation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Science Mission Directorate (SMD) solicits proposals from accredited U.S. universities for research grants to begin in the 2019-2020 Academic Year that identify an individual pursuing a graduate degree in Earth and space sciences related disciplines, as the participating Future Investigator (FI). The purpose of the FINESST is to provide relevant research and/or technology development project training in disciplines needed to achieve the goals of NASA SMD. FINESST grants are for student-designed research projects that contribute to SMD's science, technology and exploration goals. FINESST succeeds the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF).

NASA_MSFC
Sponsor Deadlines for Step-1 Proposals (required): May 1, 2019
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Amount: NASA awards will range from $10,000 to $100,000 for up to 12 months, and must be matched or exceeded by Offeror contributions. Contributions can be cash, in-kind (non-cash) resources, or a combination of each.
 
Under this program, NASA seeks to award cooperative agreements for technology development partnerships with United States commercial businesses and/or colleges and universities with the goal of developing a technology to meet a specific NASA need at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), as well as those of the partner. This goal will be accomplished by selecting Offerors who will cooperatively share in the development cost of the technology that meets the specified NASA need. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center located in Huntsville, Alabama, is one of NASA's largest and most diversified installations. The Marshall Center provides leadership in the complex engineering of space transportation and propulsion systems, large space structures and systems, and scientific research to make human space exploration a reality.
 
This CAN will follow a 2-step process for proposal submissions. Step-1 of the proposal process is submission of a White Paper by the Offeror. The Offeror may submit a Step-1 White Paper at any time prior to the due date of either one of two White Paper open periods. In Step-2 of the process, NASA will assess each White Paper submitted in the 2 applicable open periods and invite selected Offerors to submit a full project Proposal.
 
Multiple awards are anticipated.

NASA_unsol
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling through September 30, 2019
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. Proposals should be submitted at least six months in advance of the desired starting date.

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 Research.gov, or 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. Proposals should be submitted at least six months in advance of the desired starting date.

NASAJohnsonSpace
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to sponsor deadline
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: Rolling through December 31, 2019 (see solicitation for schedule of review cycles)
Award Amount: Details below
 
This announcement is for the development of experiment hardware with enhanced capabilities; modification of existing hardware to enable increased efficiencies (crew time, power, etc.); development of tools that allow analyses of samples and specimens on orbit; enhanced ISS infrastructure capabilities (eg, communications or data processing); and specific technology demonstration projects. Submission of a white paper is recommended in advance of a full proposal.
 
Within the NASA International Space Station (ISS) Research Integration Office, the Technology and Science Research Office (TSRO) and Commercial Space Utilization Office (CSUO) act as "gateways" to the ISS. The Technology and Science Research Office serves as the gateway for NASA-funded technology demonstrations. The Commercial Space Utilization Office serves as the gateway for non-NASA government-funded investigations, as well as non-profit or commercially-funded investigations.
 
Proposed technology demonstrations submitted to TSRO should address at least one of the technology areas mentioned in the ISS Technology Demonstration Plans .

NASA also seeks technological concepts via CSUO related to the National Lab Thrust Areas and to expand the onboard research and analytical capabilities. The general thrust areas are:
  • Innovative uses of the ISS or ISS hardware that leverage existing capabilities to stimulate both utilization of the ISS and economic development in the U.S.
  • Other improvements to existing ISS capabilities, including but not limited to infrastructure, in situ analytical tools, and communication/data transmittal, to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the technology demonstrations and science investigations performed on the ISS.
  • Unique partnering arrangements that leverage NASA's existing capabilities but increase the commercial participation in research and on board services. 
Funds are not currently available for awards under this NASA Research Announcement (NRA). The Government's ability to make award(s) is contingent upon the availability of appropriated funds from which payment can be made and the receipt of proposals that NASA determines acceptable for award under this NRA. Successful proposals will have launch and integration costs covered by NASA. 

OtherNASA
Other NASA Opportunities
National Institutes of Health (NIH)

OtherNIHOpps
NIH Opportunities

National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation: Dear Colleague Letters

NSFDCL_fairness
OSP Deadline: N/A
Sponsor Deadline: N/A
Award Amount: N/A
 
With this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), CISE invites principal investigators (PIs) to submit proposals to its core programs [spanning the   Computer and Network Systems (CNS) ,  Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF) , and   Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS)   divisions and the   Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) ] that contribute to discovery in research and practice related to fairness, ethics, accountability, and transparency (FEAT) in computer and information science and engineering. Specifically, CISE is interested in receiving, through these programs:
 
  • Proposals pertaining to general topics in computer and information science and engineering while also integrating or applying approaches to advance FEAT; and
  • Proposals whose primary foci are on methods, techniques, tools, and evaluation practices as means to explore implications for FEAT.
 
In explorations and use of FEAT, PIs are strongly encouraged to select and articulate their own disciplinary or interdisciplinary definitions consistent or aligned with these concepts. This DCL is not a special competition or a new program. Proposals responsive to this DCL will be reviewed with other proposals submitted to CISE's core program solicitations and in accordance with NSF's merit review criteria as well as any additional solicitation-specific review criteria identified in the corresponding solicitations.

NSTDCSTEMFuture
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: varies by program
Award Amount: varies

Through this DCL, NSF aims to support STEM educational research and development projects whose results can enable our country to better prepare its scientific and technical workforce for the future; use technological innovations effectively for education; advance the frontiers of science; and adapt to both new work environments and new education pathways needed to prepare students at all levels for those environments. This DCL encourages educational research and development proposals that are original, creative, and tran sformative, and that can help the nation educate the STEM workforce of the future, in contexts of: 
This DCL will support three categories of proposals:
  1. Proposals focused on educational transformation: These proposals will leverage technology, computation and/or big data to develop, implement, and analyze educational interventions designed to prepare a diverse workforce, researchers, and innovators of the future. Proposals that explore how students learn to integrate knowledge across disciplines to solve complex problems fall into this category. 
  2. Proposals focused on the science of teaching and learning: These proposals will leverage technology, computation and/or big data to develop, implement, and analyze new tools for assessing and evaluating convergent education strategies that aim to promote student learning at all levels
  3. Planning grants, Research Coordination Networks, Conference, and Workshop Proposals: These proposals will create communities of STEM educators to address convergent curriculum and pedagogical challenges across disciplinary boundaries brought about by the human-technology frontier, the data revolution, or both.
To determine whether a research topic is within the scope of this DCL, principal investigators are strongly encouraged to contact the director(s) of the participating program(s) to which they plan to submit their proposal.

NSFDCL_EarlyConcept
Prospectus Deadline: January 9, 2019
OSP Deadline: January 18, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: January 28, 2019 (earlier submissions are encouraged)
Award Amount: up to $300,000 for up to 2 years
 
NSF's Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) together with the  Partnership on AI   (PAI) wish to notify the community of their interest in supporting EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGERs) to understand the social challenges arising from AI technology and enable scientific contributions to overcome them. NSF and PAI will jointly support high-risk, high-reward research at the intersection of the social and technical dimensions of AI. Priority will be given to collaborative projects that integrate computer/computational science with the social, behavioral, and economic sciences.Proposals may expand understanding of the influences of AI on people and society or contribute technical innovations that overcome the emerging social challenges. Topics include, but are not limited to: 
 
  • Safety, robustness, and accountability of AI systems; 
  • Bias and fairness of AI systems;
  • Intelligibility, explanation, and transparency of AI inferences; 
  • Privacy challenges with AI development and use;
  • Sociotechnical challenges involving ethical considerations; 
  • Economic impacts of AI on society; and
  • Social consequences of AI system deployments.
 
Prior to submitting an EAGER proposal, PIs must first send a one-page prospectus to  [email protected] . Once NSF program officers have approved the prospectus, the PI will be invited to submit a full EAGER proposal to a specific program. The prospectus should be responsive to the DCL and make a compelling case that the project is suitable for an EAGER. 


NSFDCL_transition
OSP Deadline: March 8, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: March 15, 2019
Award Amount: Supplemental funding requests may not exceed more than one-third of the original award amount or $400,000 (whichever is less).
 
Through this Dear Colleague Letter, NSF CISE wishes to notify the community of its intention to support   Transition to Practice (TTP) supplemental funding requests for active awards funded through its   Cyber-Physical Systems   (CPS) and   Smart and Connected Communities   (S&CC) programs . Funded TTP supplements will provide support for periods of up to two years.  TTP activities relevant to each of the programs could include, but are not limited to, the following:
 
  • In the case of active CPS awards that do not include a previously funded TTP option:
    • Accelerated maturation of the research technology readiness level, moving from laboratory and subscale deployment to integration in operational CPS in one or more application domains; and/or
    • Integration of research with one or more industrial or other transition partner(s), thereby demonstrating real-world utilization in an operational environment.
  • In the case of active S&CC awards:
    • Expanding pilot activities to one or more communities-which could be in a new city, town, or region-considering the unique character(s) and challenge(s) of that (those) new community(ies);
    • Increasing the scale of the research beyond what was envisioned in the original project, which may create new technological and social challenges that would need to be overcome for successful integration within a community; and/or
    • Partnering with industry, as well as a community including a state or local government, to harden or commercialize the technology or approach emerging from the research project for performance in a larger, real-world context.
 
PIs interested in submitting TTP supplemental funding requests are strongly encouraged to contact one of the program directors listed in the Dear Colleague Letter prior to submitting.


NSFDCL_REUsupplemental
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Request for supplemental funding may be submitted any time but priority will be given to requests received before March 30, 2019
Award Amount:  $8,000 per student per year

The NSF Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) invites grantees with active CISE awards to submit requests for  Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Supplemental  funding, following the guidelines in the NSF REU program solicitation . To be eligible for this opportunity, a student must be a US citizen or permanent resident of the US. The duration for new requests is typically one year. REU stipend support helps encourage talented students to pursue research-based careers, while providing meaningful research experiences. The participation of students from groups underrepresented in computing - underrepresented minorities, women, and persons with disabilities - is strongly encouraged. In addition, CISE encourages submission of REU supplemental funding requests that specifically afford US veterans an opportunity to engage in meaningful research experiences.

NSFDCLD3SC
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission 
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling; EAGER, RAISE, and supplemental funding requests can be submitted at any time but are encouraged by April 15, 2019
Award Amount:  varies by program type

This Dear Colleague Letter invites research proposals that utilize modern data science in the context of chemical and chemical engineering research. Successful D3SC proposals will emphasize  new information that can be obtained from better utilization of data (including data from multiple laboratories, techniques, and/or chemical systems), and how this can lead to new research directions . Proposals that foster and strengthen interactions among chemists and data scientists, and that jointly engage theory, modeling, and experimentation to advance research goals are strongly encouraged. The most competitive proposals will provide detailed discussion of specific data-enabled approaches to be used, the significant chemical problem to be studied, new fundamental chemical knowledge to be gained and the broader relevance of the proposed activities to other areas of chemical research. Proposal elements that consider error and uncertainty analysis, record and store appropriate metadata, and determine the robustness and reliability of data are encouraged. Examples of possible topics include (but are not limited to) using tools of data visualization, data mining, machine learning (including emerging approaches such as deep learning and active learning), or other data analysis approaches to:
  • Accelerate the discovery of homogeneous or heterogeneous catalysts with improved activity and selectivity, as well as the discovery of new catalytic transformations;
  • Advance the design of new chemical species and/or synthetic reactions, and forecast improved synthetic conditions;
  • Map the mechanisms by which chemicals interact and transform, both covalently and noncovalently, and predict structure/property relations based on existing chemical datasets;
  • Discover principles of multiscale organization underlying emergent chemical phenomena in macromolecular systems;
  • Enable real-time feedback loops between chemical data collection and processing for rapid identification and correlation of key events during chemical measurements;
  • Harness chemistry's rich, diverse but distributed datasets and identify novel ways of sharing and utilizing chemical data derived from multiple instruments, datatypes, and locations;
  • Develop innovative approaches for integrating, correlating, and analyzing chemical simulation or measurement data to provide new chemical insights.

NSFSitS
OSP Deadline: April 10, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for IUCRC Planning Grant Preliminary Proposal: April 17, 2019 (second round)
Award Amount: The award amount for a planning grant seeking to establish a new IUCRC is $15,000 per academic institution with a 12-month duration. The $15,000 is for all applicable planning expenses including travel to the IUCRC "boot camp" and is inclusive of applicable Indirect Costs. 
 
This DCL encourages the submission of planning grant proposals, through the submission process described in the   IUCRC solicitation , for an eventual SitS-themed IUCRC. The planning grant theme should integrate fundamental science and engineering knowledge in different disciplines with the aim of developing a next generation of sensor systems capable of in situ measurement of dynamic soil biological, physical, and chemical variables over time and space in managed and unmanaged soils. These sensor systems will also require associated advances in ground penetration, data transmission, data analytics, dynamic models, and visualization tools. If successful, these research concepts will enable scientists and engineers to advance basic understanding of dynamic processes in soils and provide the underlying science and engineering to enable others to develop new ways of studying soil properties and managing soils and natural resources. Advances in measurement systems, understanding, and models will provide new capabilities that will enable practitioners to use new sensors, models, and time series data to achieve a better understanding of soil processes and higher efficiencies of resource use; this improved understanding will in turn help meet societal goals such as less contamination of soil and water supplies and greater food security, as well as address the "National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenge" of managing the Nitrogen cycle.
 
For information on the appropriate SitS themes, please see the earlier NSF DCL on Signals in the Soil (https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf18047). For submitting a SitS-Themed IUCRC planning grant preliminary proposal, please review the current IUCRC program solicitation (https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf17516). Submitters are strongly encouraged to contact IUCRC Program Officers Prakash Balan ([email protected]) or Andre Marshall ([email protected]) and relevant SitS Program Officers at [email protected] for guidance and topic approval prior to submitting a preliminary proposal for an IUCRC planning grant. 

NSFDCL_stemworkforce
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of proposal
Sponsor Deadline: varies; please see details
Award Amount: varies; please see details
 
NSF seeks proposals that will broadly inform development of personalized learning systems or generalize the research results generated during the deployment of online courses. This could be accomplished either by using the data generated by those systems or by studying the systems themselves. NSF encourages innovative educational research and development proposals that will help the nation educate the STEM workforce of the future. For example, proposals may address topics including but not limited to:
 
  • effective design of personalized learning systems for STEM education at any level;
  • factors that increase persistence, motivation, self-efficacy, and retention of learners;
  • the influence of public/private partnerships on workforce preparation;
  • the design of educational interventions that meet workplace expectations for knowledge and competencies; and
  • measuring the effectiveness of these interventions for different audiences.
 
Proposals responding to this DCL should be made through one of the existing NSF programs listed below. Supplemental funding requests responding to this DCL for existing awards in the programs listed below are also welcome. To determine whether a research topic is within the scope of this DCL, principal investigators are strongly encouraged to contact the managing NSF Program Officer(s) of the participating program(s) to which they plan to submit their proposal. These programs include:
 

NSFCISE_Stimulating
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of a full proposal
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: Varies by award type
 
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 National Science Foundation (NSF) seeks to stimulate work in educational neuroscience in the NCS program through foundational grants, noting that advances in neural systems can have significant implications for research on education. While the 2018 application period for the foundational component of this award has passed, NSF continues to accept applications on a rolling basis for capacity-building proposals through conference proposals and Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals. NSF will accept LOIs and proposals for Foundations awards again in 2019 and 2020.

NSFDCLPhotonics
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: varies by award
Award Amount: varies by award
With this Dear Colleague letter (DCL), the Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (ECCS) and the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP) within the Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation continue to encourage innovative exploratory and translational research by academic researchers and small businesses in all aspects of integrated photonics that utilize the current silicon photonics capabilities resident in AIM Photonics. Research projects utilizing the AIM Photonics fabrication process technologies via multi-project wafer runs should have an objective to bring a specific innovation to integrated photonics circuits and components or to demonstrate a new approach that uses integrated photonics as its differentiator. Examples of such challenges may include:
  • Research into new applications of PICs that have promise of breakthrough performance due to the use of an integrated photonic component;
  • New devices that are realizable within AIM Photonics standardized integrated silicon photonics processes;
  • PIC implementations that have innovative contributions to advancements of photonics circuits (i.e., low power, greater bandwidths and dynamic ranges, better tolerances, new topologies, etc.);
  • Innovative design approaches and new models of integrated photonics devices/circuits; and
  • Materials and attachment technologies for incorporating integrated photonics into novel packages.
Academic researchers   who plan on utilizing the capabilities of AIM Photonics may submit unsolicited proposals to the ECCS Electronic, Photonic, and Magnetic Devices (EPMD) core program via FastLane or Grants.gov at any time with no deadline
( https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=245720&org=ECCS ). Proposals responding to a specific solicitation must follow the solicitation's specified deadline date. Submission as CAREER proposals can be accepted by ECCS, with the solicitation deadline in July each year. 

National Science Foundation: Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (NSF: CISE)

NSFCISE_community
CISE Community Research Infrastructure
Letter of Intent OSP Deadline: December 21, 2018
Letter of Intent Sponsor Deadline: January 8, 2019
Full Proposal OSP Deadline: February 12, 2019
Full Proposal Sponsor Deadline: February 20, 2019
Award Amount: $750,000 - $1,500,000 (New Awards); $1,500,000 - $5,000,000 (Grand Awards); $50,000 - $100,000 (Planning Awards); $750,000 - $2,000,000 (Enhance/Sustain Awards)

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 academic institutions, 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 two classes of awards:
  • New awards support the creation of new CISE community research infrastructure with integrated tools, resources, user services, and community outreach to enable innovative CISE research opportunities to advance the frontiers of the CISE core research areas. The New award class includes Grand Ensemble (Grand), Medium Ensemble (Medium), and Planning awards.
  • Enhance/sustain (ENS) awards support the enhancement and sustainment of an existing CISE community 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 New or ENS award may support the operation of such 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.

NSFCISE__FMitF
OSP Deadline: January 8, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: January 15, 2019
Award Amount: up to $750,000 over up to 4 years (Research Proposals); up to $100,000 over up to 18 months (Transition to Practice Proposals)

The Formal Methods in the Field (FMitF) program aims to bring together researchers in formal methods with researchers in other areas of computer and information science and engineering to jointly develop rigorous and reproducible methodologies for designing and implementing correct-by-construction systems and applications with provable guarantees. FMitF encourages close collaboration between two groups of researchers. The first group consists of researchers in the area of formal methods, which, for the purposes of this solicitation, is broadly defined as principled approaches based on mathematics and logic, including modeling, specification, design, program analysis, verification, synthesis, and programming language-based approaches. The second group consists of researchers in the "field," which, for the purposes of this solicitation, is defined as a subset of areas within computer and information science and engineering that currently do not benefit from having established communities already developing and applying formal methods in their research. This solicitation limits the field to the following areas that stand to directly benefit from a grounding in formal methods: computer networks, cyber-human systems, distributed /operating systems, hybrid/dynamical systems, and machine learning. Other field(s) may emerge as priority areas for the program in future years, subject to the availability of funds.The FMitF program solicits two classes of proposals:
  • Track I: Research proposals: Each proposal must have at least one Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI with expertise in formal methods and at least one with expertise in one or more of these fields: computer networks, cyber-human systems, distributed/operating systems, hybrid/dynamical systems, and machine learning. Proposals are expected to address the fundamental contributions to both formal methods and the respective field(s) and should include a proof of concept in the field along with a detailed evaluation plan that discusses intended scope of applicability, trade-offs, and limitations. All proposals are expected to contain a detailed collaboration plan that clearly highlights and justifies the complementary expertise of the PIs/co-PIs in the designated areas and describes the mechanisms for continuous bi-directional interaction.
  • Track II: Transition to Practice (TTP) proposals: The objective of this track is to support the ongoing development of extensible and robust formal methods research prototypes/tools to facilitate usability and accessibility to a larger and more diverse community of users. These proposals are expected to support the development, implementation, and deployment of later-stage successful formal methods research and tools into operational environments in order to bridge the gap between research and practice. A TTP proposal must include a project plan that addresses major tasks and system development milestones as well as an evaluation plan for the working system. Proposals are expected to identify a target user community or organization that will serve as an early adopter of the technology. Collaborations with industry are strongly encouraged.

NSFCISE_scalable
OSP Deadline: January 10, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: January 17, 2019
Award Amount: up to $3M over 3-4 years
 
The Scalable Parallelism in the Extreme (SPX) program aims to support research addressing the challenges of increasing performance in this modern era of parallel computing. This will require a collaborative effort among researchers in multiple areas, from services and applications down to micro-architecture. SPX encompasses all five National Strategic Computing Initiative  Strategic Objectives , including supporting foundational research toward architecture and software approaches that drive performance improvements in the post-Moore's Law era; development and deployment of programmable, scalable, and reusable platforms in the national high performance computing and scientific cyberinfrastructure ecosystem; increased coherence of data analytic computing and modeling and simulation; and capable extreme-scale computing. Coordination with industrial efforts that pursue related goals are encouraged.

NSFCISE_cyber
OSP Deadline: January 15, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: January 23, 2019
Award Amount: up to $1M for up to 3 years (Secure Scientific Cyberinfrastructure and Research Data Protection); $12.5M for up to 5 years (Cybersecurity Center of Excellence)
 
The objective of the Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure (CICI) program is to develop, deploy and integrate security solutions that benefit the scientific community by ensuring the integrity, resilience and reliability of the end-to-end scientific workflow. CICI seeks three categories of projects:
  1. Secure Scientific Cyberinfrastructure (SSC): These awards seek to secure the scientific workflow by encouraging novel and trustworthy architectural and design approaches, models and frameworks for the creation of a holistic, integrated security environment that spans the entire scientific CI ecosystem.
  2. Research Data Protection (RDP): These awards provide solutions that both ensure the provenance of research data and reduce the complexity of protecting research data sets regardless of funding source.
  3. Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (CCoE): This award seeks to provide the NSF community with a centralized resource of expertise and leadership in trustworthy cyberinfrastructure.

NSFCISE_DMREF
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of a full proposal
Sponsor Submission Window: January 28, 2019 - February 4, 2019
Award Amount: $1M - $1.75M over 4 years, plus $8,000 - $20,000 in Google credits

DMREF is the primary program by which NSF participates in the   Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) for Global Competitiveness . MGI recognizes the importance of materials science and engineering to the well-being and advancement of society and aims to "deploy advanced materials at least twice as fast as possible today, at a fraction of the cost." MGI integrates materials discovery, development, property optimization, and systems design with a shared computational framework. This framework facilitates collaboration and coordination of research activities, analytical tools, experimental results, and critical evaluation in pursuit of the MGI goals. Consistent with the  MGI Strategic Plan , DMREF highlights four sets of goals:
  • Leading a culture shift in materials science and engineering research to encourage and facilitate an integrated team approach;
  • Integrating experimentation, computation, and theory and equipping the materials science and engineering communities with advanced tools and techniques;
  • Making digital data accessible, findable, and useful to the community; and
  • Creating a world-class materials science and engineering workforce that is trained for careers in academia or industry.
Accordingly, DMREF will support activities that significantly accelerate materials discovery and/or development by building the fundamental knowledge base needed to design and make materials and/or devices with specific and desired functions or properties. This will be accomplished through forming interdisciplinary teams of researchers working synergistically in a "closed loop" fashion, building a vibrant research community, leveraging data science, providing ready access to materials data, and educating the future MGI workforce. Specifically, achieving this goal will involve modeling, analysis, and computational simulations, validated and verified through sample preparation, characterization, and/or device demonstration.

NSFCISE_EarthCube
OSP Deadline: February 4, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: February 11, 2019
Award Amount: $1M - $2M per year for 3 years, pending availability of funds

EarthCube is a community-driven activity to transform the conduct of geosciences research and education, sponsored through a partnership between the NSF Directorate of Geosciences and the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. EarthCube aims to accelerate the ability of the geosciences community to understand and predict the Earth system by enabling access to geosciences data. EarthCube will require a long-term dialog between NSF and the interested scientific communities to develop new modes for sharing data that is thoughtfully and systematically built to meet the current and future needs of geoscientists.

This solicitation seeks the services of a qualified organization to act as the EarthCube Office. This organization will provide the services required to maintain and manage the community governance structures and to carry out activities consistent with EarthCube priorities as guided by community governance. The award, to be administered as a Cooperative Agreement, is intended to cover an initial 3-year period.


NSFCISE_Campus
Campus Cyberinfrastructure*
 OSP Deadline: February 12, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: February 20, 2019
Award Amount: varies; please see details below

The Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*) program invests in coordinated campus-level networking and cyberinfrastructure improvements, innovation, integration, and engineering for science applications and distributed research projects. Learning and workforce development (LWD) in cyberinfrastructure is explicitly addressed in the program. Science-driven requirements are the primary motivation for any proposed activity. Each program area will support awards pursuant to the following budget and duration:
  1. Data-Driven Networking Infrastructure for the Campus and Researcher awards will be supported at up to $500,000 total for up to 2 years;
  2. Regional Connectivity for Small Institutions of Higher Education awards will be supported at up to $800,000 total for up to 2 years;
  3. Network Integration and Applied Innovation awards will be supported at up to $1,000,000 total for up to 2 years;
  4. Campus Computing and the Computing Continuum awards will be supported at up to $400,000 total for up to 2 years; and
  5. Cyber Team-Research and Education CI-based Regional Facilitation awards will be supported at up to $1,400,000 total for up to 3 years.

NSFcise_adpating
OSP Deadline: February 25, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: March 4, 2019
Award Amount: up to $10M for up to 5 years (Category I); up to $5M for up to 5 years (Category II)
 
The intent of this solicitation is to request proposals from organizations willing to serve as service providers (SPs) within the NSF Innovative High-Performance Computing (HPC) program to provide advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) capabilities and/or services in production operations to support the full range of computational- and data-intensive research across all of science and engineering (S&E). The current solicitation is intended to complement previous NSF investments in advanced computational infrastructure by provisioning resources, broadly defined in this solicitation to include systems and/or services, in two categories:
  • Category I, Capacity Systems: production computational resources maximizing the capacity provided to support the broad range of computation and data analytics needs in S&E research; and
  • Category II, Innovative Prototypes/Testbeds: innovative forward-looking capabilities deploying novel technologies, architectures, usage modes, etc., and exploring new target applications, methods, and paradigms for S&E discoveries.
Please Note:  This is a limited submission opportunity, and Harvard may submit only one proposal. If you are interested in applying, please contact Erin Hale at [email protected].


National Science Foundation: Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences (NSF: MPS)

NSFMPS__DMS
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission 
Sponsor Deadline: January 2, 2019 - January 16, 2019
Award Amount: up to $200,000 - $300,000 per year for up to 3 years

The Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) plan to support the development of innovative and transformative mathematical and statistical approaches to address important data-driven biomedical and health challenges. The rationale for this interagency collaboration is that significant advances may be expected as the result of continued NSF investments in foundational research in mathematics and statistics as well as inter- and multi-disciplinary research and training at the intersection of the quantitative/computational sciences and domain sciences, while NIH benefits from the enhancement of biomedical data science with new approaches that strengthen the reproducibility of biomedical research and support open science.

NSFMPS_MIP
OSP Deadline: January 28, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: February 4, 2019
Award Amount: See description below
 
Materials Innovation Platforms (MIP) is a mid-scale infrastructure program in the Division of Materials Research (DMR) designed to accelerate advances in materials research. MIPs respond to the increasing complexity of materials research that requires close collaboration of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams and access to cutting edge tools. These tools in a user facility benefit both a user program and in-house research, which focus on addressing grand challenges of fundamental science and meet national needs. MIPs embrace the paradigm set forth by the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), which strives to "discover, manufacture, and deploy advanced materials twice as fast, at a fraction of the cost," and conduct research through iterative "closed-loop" efforts among the areas of materials synthesis/processing, materials characterization, and theory/modeling/simulation. In addition, they are expected to engage the emerging field of data science in materials research. Each MIP is a scientific ecosystem, which includes in-house research scientists, external users and other contributors who, collectively, form a community of practitioners and share tools, codes, samples, data and know-how. The knowledge sharing is designed to strengthen collaborations among scientists and enable them to work in new ways, fostering new modalities of research and education/training, for the purpose of accelerating discovery and development of new materials and novel materials phenomena/properties, as well as fostering their eventual deployment.
 
The scientific focus of the MIP program is subject to change from competition to competition. The first MIP competition in 2015 focused on developing new bulk and thin-film crystalline hard materials. The second MIP competition, in 2019, focuses on the convergence of materials research with biological sciences for developing new materials.
 
The number of awards will depend on the availability of funds and the quality of the proposals. Awards totaling $15,000,000 to $25,000,000 over a five-year period are anticipated. The proposed budget must be commensurate with the scope of the project and thoroughly justified in the proposal. MIP funding is provided yearly. Pending the availability of funds, it is anticipated that $12,000,000 will be available in Fiscal Year 2019.
 
Please Note: This is a limited submission opportunity and only one proposal may be submitted with Harvard as the lead.  If you are interested in submitting a proposal, please contact Erin Hale in FAS Research Development at [email protected].

NSFMPS_ATD
Algorithms for Threat Detection (ATD)
OSP Deadline: February 11, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: February 19, 2019
Award Amount: Anticipated funding amount is $3,000,000 in FY19. Estimated number of awards and funding amounts are subject to the availability of funds.

The Algorithms for Threat Detection (ATD) program supports research on new ways to use spatiotemporal datasets to develop quantitative models of human dynamics. The objectives include improved representation of complicated group dynamics and the development of algorithms that can process data in near real-time to accurately identify unusual events and forecast future threats indicated by those events. The ATD program will support research projects that aim to develop novel mathematical and statistical algorithms for analysis of large geospatial datasets. Means to quantify confidence levels are desired, as are insights into new spatiotemporal datasets and valuable means of assembling them. Models may range from those that address activities of individuals to those applicable to small groups or entire nations. These models may leverage mathematical research areas including, but not limited to, point processes, time series, dynamical systems, partial differential equations, and optimal control. Models that depend almost entirely on the spatial and temporal aspects of the data are of greatest interest. General applications of interest include threat detection, predictive analytics, human mobility, and human geography.
 
A second topic has been added for FY 2019: mathematical theory to guide the use of artificial neural networks (ANN) for computer vision tasks. Subjects of interest include cost functions for training ANNs, non-uniqueness of cost function minima, and dependence of performance on factors like training data quality, task complexity, and network depth. Of particular interest is the theory related to transfer learning - modifying an ANN trained for one set of tasks to do a new task, using only a small amount of training data for the new task.

NSFMPS_CBMS
OSP Deadline: April 19, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: April 26, 2019
Award Amount: $35,000 for 1 year
 
The NSF-CBMS Regional Research Conferences in the Mathematical Sciences are a series of five-day conferences that usually feature a distinguished lecturer delivering ten lectures on a topic of important current research in one sharply focused area of the mathematical sciences. CBMS refers to the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences, which publicizes the conferences and disseminates the resulting conference materials. Support is provided for about 30 participants at each conference. Proposals should address the unique characteristics of the NSF-CBMS conferences, as outlined in the full summary.
 
OtherNSFMPS 
Other NSF: MPS Opportunities 
National Science Foundation: Directorate for Engineering (NSF: ENG)

NSFeng_transport
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: December 7, 2018 - March 15, 2019
Award Amount: up to $400,000 over up to 4 years
 
The Division of Chemical, Bioengineering and Environmental Transport (CBET) in the Engineering Directorate of the NSF is partnering with The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) to solicit research projects in the general field of fluid dynamics, particulate and multiphase processes, combustion and fire systems, and thermal transport processes that can utilize the International Space Station (ISS) National Lab to conduct research that will benefit life on Earth. Because NSF and CASIS have a common interest in research and development in transport, thermal, combustion, and fluid phenomena at microgravity conditions, NSF and CASIS have developed a collaboration to jointly support research that can take advantage of the opportunities afforded by conducting experiments in the ISS. The purpose of this solicitation is to attract proposals that make use of the ISS National Lab for research projects in the fields related to the Transport Phenomena Cluster programs. Responsive proposals will describe using the ISS National Lab for development and testing of fluid dynamics, particulate and multiphase processes, combustion and fire systems, and thermal transport processes that will lead to Earth-based applications and increase the return on the U.S. investment in the ISS National Lab.

NSFeng_PFI
Partnerships for Innovation (PFI)
OSP Deadline: January 10, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: January 17, 2019
Award Amount: up to $250,000 for 18-24 months (PFI-TT); up to $550,000 for 36 months (PFI-RP)
 
The Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) Program within the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP) offers researchers from all disciplines of science and engineering funded by NSF the opportunity to perform translational research and technology development, catalyze partnerships and accelerate the transition of discoveries from the laboratory to the marketplace for societal benefit. This solicitation offers two broad tracks for proposals:
  • The Technology Translation (PFI-TT) track offers the opportunity to translate prior NSF-funded research results in any field of science or engineering into technological innovations with promising commercial potential and societal impact. PFI-TT supports commercial potential demonstration projects for academic research outputs in any NSF-funded science and engineering discipline. This demonstration is achieved through proof-of-concept, prototyping, technology development and/or scale-up work. Concurrently, students and postdoctoral researchers who participate in PFI-TT projects receive education and leadership training in innovation and entrepreneurship. Successful PFI-TT projects generate technology-driven commercialization outcomes that address societal needs.
  • The Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) track seeks to achieve the same goals as the PFI-TT track by supporting instead complex, multi-faceted technology development projects that are typically beyond the scope of a single researcher or institution and require a multi-organizational, interdisciplinary, synergistic collaboration. A PFI-RP project requires the creation of partnerships between academic researchers and third-party organizations such as industry, non-academic research organizations, federal laboratories, public or non-profit technology transfer organizations or other universities. Such partnerships are needed to conduct applied research on a stand-alone larger project toward commercialization and societal impact. In the absence of such synergistic partnership, the project's likelihood for success would be minimal. 
Please Note:  There is no limit on the number of PFI-TT proposals an organization may submit to a deadline of this solicitation. However, an organization may not submit more than one (1) new or resubmitted PFI-RP proposal to a deadline of this solicitation. Please contact Erin Hale ( [email protected] ) if you are interested in submitting a PFI-RP proposal.

NSFeng_tissue
NSF/CASIS Collaboration on Tissue Engineering and Mechanobiology on the International Space Station (ISS) to Benefit Life on Earth
 OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of a full proposal
Sponsor Submission Window: February 1, 2019 - February 15, 2019
Award Amount: up to $400,000 over up to 3 years

The Divisions of Chemical, Bioengineering and Environmental Transport (CBET) and Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Infrastructure (CMMI) in the Engineering Directorate of the NSF are partnering with The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) to solicit research projects in the general fields of tissue engineering and mechanobiology that can utilize the International Space Station (ISS) National Lab to conduct research that will benefit life on Earth. Because NSF and CASIS have a common interest in research and development in transformative biomedical engineering projects that utilize microgravity conditions, NSF and CASIS have developed a collaboration to jointly support research that can take advantage of the opportunities afforded by conducting experiments in the ISS. The purpose of this solicitation is to attract proposals that make use of the ISS National Lab for flight research projects in the field of biomedical engineering. Responsive proposals will describe how they will utilize the ISS National Lab to develop novel ideas into discovery-level and transformative projects that integrate engineering and life sciences.

NSF:ENG
Other NSF: ENG Opportunities
National Science Foundation: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary

NSFCross_Understanding
Preliminary Proposal Deadline (required): December 28, 2018
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: May 13, 2019
Award Amount: Approximately $10,000,000 will be available in fiscal year (FY) 2019. up to 6 awards will be made pending availability of funds and the type, scale, and variety of project ideas developed at the Ideas Lab.

This solicitation describes an Ideas Lab on "Building a Synthetic Cell." Ideas Labs are intensive workshops focused on finding innovative solutions to grand challenge problems. The ultimate aim of this Ideas Lab organized by the National Science Foundation is to facilitate the generation and execution of innovative research projects aimed at designing, fabricating, and validating synthetic cells that express specified phenotypes. The aspiration is that mixing researchers who have diverse scientific backgrounds will engender original thinking and innovative approaches that will transform our understanding of cellular processes, the molecular mechanisms that underscore the building and function of systems that reproduce life traits, the self-assembly of life-like systems, soft condensed matter, and the physics and chemistry of life that are needed to design and build cellular components, cells and multicell systems.
 
This Ideas Lab will take place at a location to be determined, in the vicinity of NSF headquarters in Northern Virginia from Monday, 25 th  February to Friday, 1 st  March, 2019. Any individual interested in participating in the Ideas Lab should respond to this solicitation by submitting a preliminary proposal application. Submission of the preliminary proposal will be considered an indication of availability to attend and participate through the full course of the five-day residential workshop.  Following the Ideas Lab, participants will be invited to submit to NSF full proposals, based on the outline developed at the Ideas Lab, by the  May 13, 2019  deadline.

NSFCross_quantumleap
Letter of Intent Deadline: January 7, 2019
OSP Deadline for Preliminary Proposal: February 13, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Preliminary Proposal: February 21, 2019
OSP Deadline for Full Proposal (if invited): May 17, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposal (if invited): May 24, 2019
Award Amount: up to $2M over 3-5 years

The  Quantum Idea Incubator for Transformational Advances in Quantum Systems program is designed to support interdisciplinary teams that will explore highly innovative, original, and potentially transformative ideas for developing and applying quantum science, quantum computing, and quantum engineering. Proposals with the potential to deliver new concepts, new platforms, and/or new approaches that will accelerate the science, computing, and engineering of quantum technologies are encouraged. Breakthroughs in quantum sensing, quantum communications, quantum simulations, or quantum computing systems are anticipated. This Quantum Idea Incubator solicitation aims to support the process of translating such ideas into reality.

This solicitation calls for proposals focused on interdisciplinary research that includes elements from the following thrust areas: (i) fundamental science such as, but not limited to, physics, chemistry, materials science, mathematics, biology, or geoscience, as well as foundational concepts and techniques in quantum information science and engineering; (ii) communication, computation, and modeling; and (iii) devices and engineered systems. Proposals must articulate how the project leverages and/or promotes advances in knowledge in the selected thrust areas. Proposals should be innovative and must focus on quantum functionality and must result in experimental demonstrations and/or transformative advances towards quantum systems and/or proof-of-concept validations. Competitive proposals will come from an interdisciplinary research team led by at least three investigators who collectively contribute synergistic expertise from one or more engineering domains, from mathematics, computational and/or computer and information science, and from one or more physical, chemical, biological, or materials science domains. Proposals will be judged on how likely the integrated effort is to lead to transformative advances in quantum systems. Both fundamental and applied topics are encouraged.



NSFCross_CCESTEM
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: January 7, 2019
OSP Deadline: February 14, 2019
Sponsor Deadline (if selected): February 22, 2019
Award Amount: $600,000 maximum for 5-year awards; $400,000 maximum for 3-year awards
 
The Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM (CCE STEM) program accepts proposals for innovative research projects that both foster and substantially contribute to understanding what it takes to foster ethical STEM research in all of the fields of science and engineering that the NSF supports. Proposed research should seek to provide answers to the following:
 
  • What constitutes ethical STEM research and practice?
  • Which cultural and institutional contexts promote ethical STEM research and practice and why?
 
Projects can include qualitative and/or quantitative approaches. Successful proposals typically have a comparative dimension, either between or within institutional settings that differ along these or among other factors, and they specify plans for developing interventions that promote the effectiveness of identified factors. The CCE STEM program will not consider proposals focused on ethics for medical students or in medical education. Proposals that address medical informatics, biomedical engineering, systems engineering and social scientific studies in health and medicine will be considered. 
 
Please Note:  This is a limited submission opportunity and Harvard may put forward only one nominee to submit a proposal. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research will conduct the internal competition to select the Harvard nominee. To be considered for the Harvard nomination, potential applicants must submit an internal pre-proposal via the link above.

NSFCross_Epigenetics
OSP Deadline: January 25, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: February 1, 2019
Award Amount: up to $500,000 over up to 3 years (Track 1); up to $3M over up to 5 years (Track 2)

The purpose of the Understanding the Rules of Life: Epigenetics (URoL:Epigenetics) program is to enable innovative research and to promote multidisciplinary education and workforce training in the broad area of epigenetics. The URoL:Epigenetics program is a wide collaboration across Directorates/Offices within the National Science Foundation with a focus on understanding the relationship between epigenetic mechanisms associated with environmental change, the resultant phenotypes of organisms, and how these mechanisms lead to robustness and adaptability of organisms and populations.
 
Successful projects of the URoL:Epigenetics Program are anticipated to use complementary, interdisciplinary approaches to investigate how epigenetic phenomena lead to emergent properties that explain the fundamental behavior of living systems. Ultimately, successful projects should identify general principles ("rules") that underlie a wide spectrum of biological phenomena across size, complexity (e.g., molecular, cellular, organismal, population) and temporal scales (from sub-second to geologic) in taxa from anywhere within the tree of life.  URoL:Epigenetics projects must integrate perspectives and research approaches from more than one research discipline (e.g., biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, geology, mathematics, physics, social and behavioral sciences).  The interdisciplinary scope of URoL:Epigenetics projects also provides unique training and outreach possibilities to train the next generation of scientists in a diversity of approaches and to engage society more generally.



NSFCross_HDRDSC
Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR): Data Science Corps (DSC)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of a full proposal
Sponsor Deadline: January 28, 2019 - February 4, 2019
Award Amount: Awards will typically be in the range of $1,000,000 to $1,200,000 for 3 years.

NSF's  Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR)   Big Idea is a visionary, national-scale activity to enable new modes of data-driven discovery, allowing fundamentally new questions to be asked and answered in science and engineering frontiers, generating new knowledge and understanding, and accelerating discovery and innovation. The  Data Science Corps  is one of the components of the HDR ecosystem, focusing on building capacity for harnessing the data revolution at the local, state, national, and international levels to help unleash the power of data in the service of science and society. The  Data Science Corps  will provide practical experiences, teach new skills, and offer teaching opportunities, in a variety of settings, to data scientists and data science students. It will also strive to promote data literacy and provide basic training in data science to the existing workforce across communities. As a first step in establishing the  Data Science Corps , this solicitation focuses specifically on enabling participation by undergraduate students in the  Data Science Corps,  by supporting student stipends for participation in data science projects and supporting integration of real-world data science projects into classroom instruction.
 
Please Note:  This is a limited submission opportunity, and Harvard may submit no more than one proposal to this opportunity. If you are interested in applying, please contact Erin Hale ( [email protected] ).

NSFCross_training
OSP Deadline: January 30, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: February 6, 2019
Award Amount: up to $300,000 over up to 2 years (Pilot Projects); up to $500,000 (Small) or up to $1M (Medium) over up to 4 years (Implementation Projects); up to $500,000 over up to 2 years (Large-Scale Project Conceptualization Projects)
 
The goals of this solicitation are to  (i) ensure broad adoption of CI tools, methods, and resources by the research community in order to catalyze major research advances and to enhance researchers' abilities to lead the development of new CI; and (ii) integrate core literacy and discipline-appropriate advanced skills in advanced CI as well as computational and data-driven science and engineering into the Nation's educational curriculum/instructional material fabric spanning undergraduate and graduate courses for advancing fundamental research. This solicitation calls for innovative, scalable training, education, and curriculum/instructional materials-targeting one or both of the solicitation goals-to address the emerging needs and unresolved bottlenecks in scientific and engineering research workforce development, from the postsecondary level to active researchers. The funded activities, spanning targeted, multidisciplinary communities, will lead to transformative changes in the state of research workforce preparedness for advanced CI-enabled research in the short- and long-terms. As part of this investment, this solicitation also seeks to broaden CI access and adoption by (i) increasing or deepening accessibility of methods and resources of advanced CI and of computational and data-driven science and engineering by a wide range of  scientific disciplines  and  institutions  with lower levels of CI adoption to date; and (ii) harnessing the capabilities of larger segments of diverse underrepresented groups. Proposals from, and in partnership with, the aforementioned communities are especially encouraged.
 
 

NSFCross_Spectrum
OSP Deadline: February 6, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: February 13, 2019
Award Amount: up to $750,000 over up to 3 years

The research and technology challenges underlying spectrum efficiency, security, and energy efficiency are inter-related and require innovations across the physical, networking and higher layers. The SpecEES program is aimed at enabling cross-disciplinary team research that transcends the traditional boundaries of existing NSF programs to tackle the spectrum efficiency, energy efficiency and security challenges in the conception, design and realization of future wireless networks. Research and development on next-generation wireless communications and networking will drive information technology and innovation-based economic growth. SpecEES will advance spectrum utilization through synergistic breakthroughs in spectrum efficiency, energy efficiency, and security.


 
NSFCross_NNA
OSP Deadline: February 7, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: February 14, 2019
Award Amount: up to $3M over up to 5 years (Track 1: Research Grants); up to $250,000 over up to 24 months (Track 2: Planning Grants)

Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) seeks innovations in Arctic observational networks and fundamental convergence research across the social, natural, environmental, and computing and information sciences, and engineering that address the intersection of natural, social, and built systems. NNA promotes initiatives that empower new research communities, diversifies the next generation of Arctic researchers, integrates the co-production of knowledge, and engages partnerships, particularly among international stakeholders. NNA also strongly encourages projects that include or focus on advancing STEM education and workforce development objectives on the scientific themes described below.

Major goals of NSF's NNA Big Idea include:
  • Improved understanding of Arctic change and its local and global effects that capitalize on innovative and optimized observation infrastructure, advances in understanding of fundamental processes, and new approaches to modeling interactions among the natural environment, built environment, and social systems.
  • New enhanced research communities that are diverse, integrative, and well-positioned to carry out productive research at the intersections of Arctic natural and built environments and social systems.
  • Research outcomes that inform U.S. national security and economic development needs and enable resilient, sustainable Arctic communities.

NSFCross_IdeasLab
Preliminary Proposal Deadline: February 8, 2019
OSP Deadline: May 22, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: May 30, 2019
Award Amount: $750,000 - $1M per year for up to 4 years
 
This solicitation describes an Ideas Lab focused on CubeSat Innovations to push the envelope of space-based research capabilities by simultaneously developing enabling technologies in several domains, including propulsion systems, sensor design, electronic circuits, antennas, satellite-to-ground and satellite-to-satellite communications and wireless networking, and power management. The vision of this Ideas Lab is to support research and engineering technology development efforts that will lead to new science missions in geospace and atmospheric sciences using self-organizing CubeSat constellations/swarms. The resulting new crosscutting concepts in CubeSat technology are expected to transform and stimulate CubeSat-enabled science and engineering research supported by NSF. The realization of self-organizing CubeSats will also require innovative approaches in educating, training, and developing a cross-disciplinary workforce with the relevant expertise spanning propulsion systems, sensors, circuits, antennas, wireless communications and networking, radio-frequency interference issues, and power management. It is anticipated that these innovations in CubeSat technology and education will enable new mission concepts for Cube-Sat based science investigations.
 
An Ideas Lab is an intensive meeting that brings together multiple diverse perspectives to focus on finding innovative cross-disciplinary solutions to a grand challenge problem. The ultimate aim of this Ideas Lab is to develop cutting edge CubeSat technologies that will enable a constellation/swarm of 10-100 satellites and transform space-based science investigations. The aspiration is that bringing together researchers from diverse scientific and engineering backgrounds will stimulate fresh thinking and innovative approaches that will provide a fertile ground for new and bold ideas on the design and fabrication of CubeSat sensors and circuits, antennas, inter-satellite and satellite-to-ground communications and networking, and innovative CubeSat missions. The goal is to form teams of scientists and engineers, who are experts in their respective domains, to come together and form interdisciplinary teams that will develop innovative and transformative ideas that will eventually be submitted as full proposals to address the challenges of building a CubeSat constellation/swarm of 10-100 CubeSats.



NSFCross_MidScale
OSP Deadline for Preliminary Proposals: February 11, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Preliminary Proposals: February 19, 2019
OSP Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): May 13, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): May 20, 2019
Award Amount: "Implementation" projects may have a total project cost ranging from $6 million to below $20 million. Only "Design" projects may request less than $6 million, with a minimum request of $600,000 and a maximum request below $20 million.

The Mid-scale Research Infrastructure Big Idea is intended to provide NSF with an agile, Foundation-wide process to fund experimental research capabilities in the mid-scale range between the MRI and MREFC thresholds. Within Mid-scale RI-1, proposers may submit two types of projects, "Implementation" and "Design". Design and Implementation projects may comprise any combination of equipment, infrastructure, computational hardware and software, and necessary commissioning. Design includes planning (preliminary and final design) of research infrastructure with an anticipated total project cost that is appropriate for future Mid-scale RI-1, Mid-scale RI-2 or MREFC-class investments. Mid-scale RI-1 uses an inclusive definition of implementation, which can include traditional stand-alone construction or acquisition and can include a degree of advanced development leading immediately to final system acquisition and/or construction.
 


NSFCross_NRI2.0
National Robotics Initiative 2.0: Ubiquitous Collaborative Robots (NRI-2.0) *
OSP Deadline: February 11, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: February 19, 2019
Award Amount: $250,000 - $750,000 for up to 3 years (Foundational Projects); $500,000 to $1.5M for up to 4 years (Integrative Projects)

The NRI-2.0 program builds upon the original National Robotics Initiative (NRI) program to support fundamental research in the United States that will accelerate the development and use of collaborative robots (co-robots) that work beside or cooperatively with people. The focus of the NRI-2.0 program is on ubiquity, which in this context means seamless integration of co-robots to assist humans in every aspect of life. Collaboration between academic, industry, non-profit, and other organizations is encouraged to establish better linkages between fundamental science and engineering and technology development, deployment, and use.

The program supports four main research thrusts that are envisioned to advance the goal of ubiquitous co-robots: scalability, customizability, lowering barriers to entry, and societal impact. Topics addressing scalability include how robots can collaborate effectively with multiple humans or other robots; how robots can perceive, plan, act, and learn in uncertain, real-world environments, especially in a distributed fashion; and how to facilitate large-scale, safe, robust and reliable operation of robots in complex environments. Customizability includes how to enable co-robots to adapt to specific tasks, environments, or people, with minimal modification to hardware and software; how robots can personalize their interactions with people; and how robots can communicate naturally with humans, both verbally and non-verbally. Topics in lowering barriers to entry should focus on lowering the barriers for conducting fundamental robotics research and research on integrated robotics application. This may include development of open-source co-robot hardware and software, as well as widely-accessible testbeds. Outreach or using robots in educational programs do not, by themselves, lower the barriers to entry for robotics research. Topics in societal impact include fundamental research to establish and infuse robotics into educational curricula, advance the robotics workforce through education pathways, and explore the social, economic, ethical, and legal implications of our future with ubiquitous collaborative robots.


NSFCross_FW
OSP Deadline: February 27, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: March 6, 2019
Award Amount: up to $150,000 for 1 year (Planning Grants); up to $1.5M over up to 3 years (Medium Research Grants); $1.5M - $3M over up to 4 years (Large Research Grants)
 
A proposal for a research grant in the FW-HTF program must focus on advancing fundamental understanding of future work, and potential improvements to work, workplaces, workforce preparation, or work outcomes for workers and society. It must be convergent research that addresses the technological as well as the human and societal dimensions and potential impact of future work, and in doing so, make significant contributions to both intellectual merit and broader impact. Achieving this goal requires integration and convergence of disciplines across computer science, engineering, learning sciences, research on education and workforce training, and social, behavioral, and economic sciences. A convergent perspective is essential to understand and shape long-term social and economic drivers, so that advanced intelligent technology will strengthen the social fabric. A convergent perspective also provides insights into education and re-skilling, so that the benefits of emerging technology can be conferred upon all citizens.

 
OtherNSFCross2 
Other NSF: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary Opportunities
_________________________________________

For assistance, please contact:

Erin Hale
Senior Research Development Officer
[email protected] | 617-496-5252

Jennifer Corby
Research Development Officer
[email protected] | 617-495-1590


Research Development | Research Administration Services | research.fas.harvard.edu