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

• Postdoctoral Training Phase: Fellows will receive an annual salary of $70,000 for the initial year and a $20,000 expense allowance. It is anticipated that an annual 3% salary increase will be provided in each subsequent training year. This phase of the award is for a minimum of two and a maximum of four years.
• Faculty Phase: To transition to the faculty phase of the program, fellows must obtain a tenure-track (or equivalent) faculty position at a U.S. research institution with a doctoral-level graduate program in their area of interest. Fellows will receive $250,000 in research funding and a $20,000 expense allowance per year. This phase of the award has a maximum length of four years.

Physical Science and Engineering Accelerator *

Deadline: October 18, 2019 (pre-proposal)

Award Amount: $50,000 - $100,000 for 6-12 months

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

• Explore the viability of early-stage research ideas in any discipline or multiple disciplines
• Invite the perspectives of diverse participants and stakeholders to the discussion
• Integrate senior and junior scholars from institutions in the greater Boston area, across the United States, or around the world
• Demonstrate risk taking and creativity

The following areas, while not exclusive, are of special interest:

• Radcliffe supports engaged scholarship. The Institute welcomes proposals that connect research to law, policy, pressing social issues, and/or seek to actively engage audiences beyond academia.
• Reflecting Radcliffe's unique history, proposals that focus on women, gender, and society or draw on the Schlesinger Library's rich collections.

Toyota Material Handling North America University Research Program *

SEAS/FAS/OSP Deadline: November 20, 2019

Sponsor Deadline: December 1, 2019

• Material handling for last mile delivery
• Material handling for urban environments
• Material handling for piece picking
• Material handling for reverse logistics
• Material handling automation
• Remote operation of material handling equipment
• Warehousing Energy Infrastructure
• VR/AR for material handling applications
• Machine learning in material handling
• ADAS systems for material handling equipment
• Industry 4.0

• Technical Area 1 (TA1): Design and synthesis of novel drug chemotypes with receptor specificity and signaling pathway bias.
• Technical Area 2 (TA2): Demonstrate drug effects and determine mechanisms of action. 

• Technical Area 1 (TA1): Curving SOA FPAs
• Technical Area 2 (TA2): Structured FPAs

• Scalable solutions for wound care that can address prevention of bleeding and infection, delivery of therapeutics, and promotion of healing;
• Decision-support solutions, such as algorithms, artificial intelligence, deep learning, telemedicine, etc. for triage and management of severely injured Warfighters;
• Solutions that address hemorrhage control; and
• Wearable sensors with multiple capabilities to identify and monitor medical management of injuries and/or exposures. 

• CA-01: Polymers, composites, smart materials, and intelligent coating systems (including adhesives) for improved performance require focus on multi-scale analysis approaches that may evolve into low-fidelity, high-reliability design tools.
• CA-02: Techniques to aid in the prediction, quantification, and validation of ship motions and loads in conventional and/or extreme behaviors. 
• CO-01: System, subsystem, and component identification utilizing Natural Language Processing (NLP). 
• CO-02: Innovative concepts for automated data ingestion and combination for disparate Datasets.
• CR-01: Development of foundational theories, methods, and techniques for advanced modeling and simulation of complex hypervelocity flight systems-of-systems at the component scale.
• CR-02: Techniques and methodologies to automate the design and security assessment of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) bitstreams.

• Technical Area 1: "Breakdown" - The objective of TA1 is to use prepared, pre-treated waste as a feedstock.
• Technical Area 2: "Buildup" - The objective of TA2 is to utilize organic upgradeable intermediates to generate strategic materials and chemicals in unpurified forms at high efficiency and scale.
• Technical Area 3: TA3A "Release" and TA3B "Recovery" - The objective of TA3 is to devise up- and down-stream processes that will enable the maximized functions of TA1 and TA2 technologies.

• Protocols for efficient atom, ion or molecule cooling and trapping.
• Techniques for robust and/or high performance optical atomic clocks.
• Novel approaches to quantum inertial or electromagnetic field sensing and applications thereof that have the potential to significantly outperform the current state of the art.
• Innovative protocols for the preparation, readout, characterization and utilization of quantum correlated states for improved sensing and quantum information processing.
• Protocols for enhancing coherence in quantum systems by engineering the environment that are compatible with applications in quantum information processing.
• Novel approaches to quantum simulation of complex, correlated quantum systems and quantum algorithms for finding approximate solutions to hard problems with Navy relevance that may outperform all known classical techniques.
• Approaches to implementing quantum information processing tasks using phonons and phonon-based devices.

• TA1 is Detection, Attribution, and Characterization of multi-modal media assets.
• TA2, Explanation and Integration, will combine results across TA1 performers, present explanations for system decisions, and prioritize assets for analyst review. TA2 will also develop the prototype SemaFor system.
• TA3, Evaluation, will generate and curate multi-modal media for evaluation, design the program evaluations, establish human baseline performance, and develop additional program metrics.
• TA4, Challenge Curation, will continually provide state-of-the-art (SOTA) challenges to the program to test the techniques developed by TA1 and TA2. TA4 will also develop forward-looking threat models, to anticipate future threats and ensure SemaFor defenses are focused in the right areas.

• TA1: Goal-driven decompilation; 
• TA2: Assured recompilation; and 
• TA3: Evaluation.

• Innovative/Advanced Propulsion Systems
• Advanced Manufacturing; Structures and Materials
• Technologies Supporting On-orbit and Surface Habitation Systems, including Environmental

Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS)

• Technologies Supporting Spacecraft Systems
• Technologies Enabling Science Research

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.

1. To connect student design projects to innovative, NSF-supported research and the latest advances in engineering science.
2. To expose students to the discovery process of research while preparing them for their roles in the engineering workforce.
3. To provide a team of students with the funds necessary to pursue the design process, from need finding, industry and customer discovery, through prototyping and validation.

MPS/DMS-EPSRC Lead Agency Opportunity in Mathematical Sciences

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

Sponsor Deadline: varies by opportunity

Award Amount:  Each agency has its own funding parameters and principles that will be followed when reviewing proposals. Proposals are expected to adhere to typical proposal sizes and durations for the DMS and EPSRC Themes from which funding is sought.

 

The NSF and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Research Cooperation. The MOU provides an overarching framework to encourage collaboration between US and UK research communities and sets out the principles by which jointly supported activities might be developed. The MOU allows for a lead agency opportunity whereby a single international collaborative proposal may be submitted to either NSF or UKRI.   Proposals will be accepted for collaborative research in areas at the intersection of the MPS/DMS and EPSRC missions. Proposers will be expected to review the relevant NSF-MPS/DMS Program Descriptions and the EPSRC website for information on which areas of research are eligible for support through this collaboration.  This collaboration principally covers unsolicited (NSF) or standard (EPSRC) proposals, with managed/solicited calls included on a case-by-case basis by prior agreement of MPS/DMS and EPSRC.  This collaboration covers a pilot phase from January 2020, with a review point after three years (January 2023).

 

Please Note:   At least two months in advance of the date the proposers expect to submit a formal proposal, an expression of interest/white paper must be submitted to their prospective lead agency. For the period September 1 - December 31, 2019, this stage may be waived. However, applicants are strongly advised to contact the prospective lead agency prior to application. 

• 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, embedded 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. Projects are limited to $750,000 in total budget, with durations of up to four years.
• 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. Projects are limited to $100,000 in total budget, with durations of up to 18 months.

1. 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.
2. 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.

1. NSF-supported research results: The PI or a co-PI must have had an NSF award that ended no more than seven (7) years prior to the full proposal deadline date or be a current NSF award recipient. The proposed technology development project must be derived from the research results and/or discoveries from this underlying NSF award; OR

2. NSF-supported customer discovery results through the NSF I-Corps Teams Program: The PI or a co-PI must have been a member of an award under the NSF I-Corps Teams Program. The PI or co-PI must have fully completed the training provided under the I-Corps Team award within the past four (4) years. The customer discovery activities performed under the NSF-funded I-Corps award must be based on the technology that is proposed to be translated within the PFI proposal.

1. Candidates must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents and must be 40 years old or younger, OR not more than ten years beyond the receipt of the Ph.D. degree by December 31, 2019.
2. Candidates should have demonstrated exceptional individual achievements in scientific or engineering research of sufficient quality to place them in front of their peers. Criteria include originality, innovation, and significant impact on the field.
3. Renominations may be submitted via an updated nomination form, or may be resubmitted the year following their original submission from the Alan T. Waterman homepage using the existing nomination and references.
4. Candidates identified for final review by the selection Committee, and who remain eligible under selection criteria #1 above, will automatically be in considered in the next year's review cycle.

• Elements: These awards target small groups that will create and deploy robust services for which there is a demonstrated need that will advance one or more significant areas of science and engineering.
• Framework Implementations: These awards target larger, interdisciplinary teams organized around the development and application of common services aimed at solving common research problems faced by NSF researchers in one or more areas of science and engineering, resulting in a sustainable community framework providing Cyberinfrastructure (CI) services to a diverse community or communities.

• Distributed Chemical Manufacturing (DCheM)
• Engineering the Elimination of End-of-Life Plastics (E3P)