June 2019  
 
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.  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. 
 
Questions?
Jennifer Corby: jcorby@fas.harvard.edu | 617-495-1590  
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News, Announcements, & Special Features

Feature: N ew Investigator Opportunity Spotlight
Quick links to early career opportunities in this month's newsletter.

Upcoming Event:  DARPA Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) 
Summit 2019

DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) established the Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) in 2017 to develop techniques and technologies for advancing microelectronics performance beyond the limits of traditional transistor scaling. Through the ERI, DARPA seeks to collaborate with a range of defense industry, academic, and commercial sector partners to explore new, beyond-scaling electronics concepts while demonstrating the impact of this research on national defense. DARPA will host a 2019 ERI Summit, to be held from July 15-17 in Detroit, MI, to highlight the technical achievements of ERI programs, support continued research collaborations, and offer opportunities to solicit community input on new efforts. Participants must register through the registration website. Registration will end on June 24, 2019, or once attendance capacity is met, whichever comes first.

News: DOE Seeking Input on Quantum Centers Funding Opportunity

The Department of Energy is  soliciting input for an upcoming funding opportunity announcement on establishing new quantum research centers. The agency is seeking help from the community to identify topic areas of importance, management options, and review criteria for centers, among other items. Submissions are due by July 5, 2019.

News: Request for Information on Future Topics for the NSF Convergence Accelerator 

The purpose of this RFI is to seek input from industry, institutions of higher educa ti on, non-profits, government entities, and other interested parties on future NSF Convergence  Accelerator tracks within NSF's Big Ideas, or on other topics that may not relate directl y to a Big Idea but that may have national impact. The NSF Convergence Accelerator supports fundamental research while encouraging rapid advances through partnerships that include, or will include, multiple stakeholders. This RFI does not invite research proposals, however this process may suggest topics for future funding opportunities. Proposers may separately submit conference proposals to refine these ideas.  Conference proposals for FY19 funding and concepts for future topics will be accepted through June 24, 2019.

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)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
National Science Foundation: Directorate for Computer & Information Science and Engineering (NSF: CISE)

Foundation Opportunities
PVA
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: June 24, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: July 1, 2019
Award Amount: Varies; see below
 
The mission of the Paralyzed Veterans of America Research Foundation is to promote innovative research to find better treatments and cures for paralysis; support efforts to improve the quality of life of individuals with spinal cord dysfunction until treatments are found; and train post-doctoral fellow investigators and encourage them to specialize in the area of spinal cord research. 

The Foundation supports one or two-year grants in four areas of emphasis:
  1. Laboratory research in the basic sciences related to spinal cord injury or disease. Grants funded up to $75,000 for 1 year or up to $150,000 for 2 years.
  2. Clinical and functional studies of the medical, psychosocial, and economic effects of spinal cord injury or disease, and/or interventions proposed to alleviate these effects. Grants funded up to $75,000 for 1 year or up to $150,000 for 2 years.
  3. Design and Development: Design and development of new or improved rehabilitative and assistive devices to improve function for individuals with spinal cord injury or disease. Funding may be used to develop drawings, schematics, or prototypes, and for the testing necessary to further the design of assistive technology devices. Grants funded up to $75,000 for one year or up to $150,000 for 2 years.
  4. Fellowships for postdoctoral students in basic science, clinical applications, or design and development, intended to encourage training and specialization in the field of spinal cord research. Grants funded up to $50,000 for 1 year or up to $100,000 for 2 years.
Fdn_SmithFamBio
SEAS Pre-Proposal Deadline: July 1, 2019 by 5:00 PM
SEAS/OSP Deadline (if nominated): July 26, 2019
Sponsor Deadline (if nominated): August 2, 2019 by 12:00 PM
Award Amount: $300,000 over 3 years, inclusive of 5% institutional overhead
Target Faculty: Full-time faculty appointed to  first independent faculty position on or between July 1, 2017 and December 1, 2019. If an applicant has been on medical or family leave, or if research was interrupted for other reasons, this period of absence does not count towards eligibility.
 
The Smith Family Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research supports promising junior faculty who are beginning to establish their own independent laboratories and research programs. The mission of the program is to launch the careers of newly independent biomedical researchers with the ultimate goal of achieving medical breakthroughs. The three-year award supports newly independent faculty engaged in basic biomedical research. 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.
 
Applicants are not eligible if they have combined federal and non-federal funding totaling $500,000 or more in direct costs at any time during either of the first two years of Smith Family Award funding (12/1/2019 through 11/30/2021). This figure refers to external funding only and not an applicant's start-up package, other intramural support or the Smith Award. Applicants are also ineligible if they were previously or are currently a Principal Investigator or Co-PI on an R01, P01, Pioneer Award, New Innovator Award or similar large awards from other federal agencies or national foundations. Applicants who have pending R01s or other large applications to the NIH and other agencies are encouraged to submit proposals to the Smith Family Foundation.
 
Please Note: This is a limited submission opportunity and only two nominations may be put forward from  SEAS. Potential applicants must first submit an internal pre-proposal via email to Jennifer Corby ( jcorby@fas.harvard.edu ) and Susan Gomes ( sgomes@fas.harvard.edu by 5:00 PM on July 1, 2019. Pre-proposals must include the following materials in a single PDF:

  • Description of proposed research (Limit two pages. A third page may be used for references and graphics.)
  • Nomination letter from department chair. The letter should:
    • Confirm the applicant's faculty appointment, date training was completed, any leaves of absence, and research independence
    • Discuss the applicant's qualifications to conduct the proposed research and potential to carry out independent research
    • Provide any comments regarding strength of Applicant's research project and/or academic accomplishments
  • Biosketch (current NIH format)
 
Questions about this opportunity may be directed to Jennifer Corby ( jcorby@fas.harvard.edu , 617-495-1590) or Susan Gomes ( sgomes@fas.harvard.edu , 617-496-9448).
Fdn_greenwall
Sponsor Letter of Intent Deadline: July 1, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline (if invited): August 20, 2019
Sponsor Full Proposal Deadline (if invited): August 27, 2019
Award Amount: Unspecified; recent awards have been made in the $50K - $330K range. The Greenwall Foundation will fund 10% indirect costs for salary and benefits only. This falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss with your grants administrator before preparing an application.
 
The Greenwall Foundation is requesting proposals for its bioethics grants program, Making a Difference in Real-World Bioethics Dilemmas, to support research to help resolve an important emerging or unanswered bioethics problem in clinical, biomedical, or public health decision-making, policy, or practice. While all innovative proposals that will have a real-world impact are welcome, the foundation is particularly interested in proposals that address the ethical and policy issues raised by the following priority topics:
  • Developments in artificial intelligence;
  • Responses to the opioid epidemic;
  • Bias and discrimination in clinical care against patients or clinicians, based on a broad range of characteristics;
  • Advances in biomedical and clinical research and their translation into clinical practice; and
  • Healthcare access, costs, and resource allocation.
Grantees will be expected to disseminate their research through practical articles in peer-reviewed journals that reach the appropriate audience for the topic studied, through presentations in relevant professional meetings, and in other ways that will increase real-world impact. 
Fdn_BIRD
Executive Summary Deadline: July 2, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: August 14, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: August 21, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $1M, but no more than 50% of the R&D costs associated with the joint project. This award provides 5% in overhead costs, which falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss with your grants administrator before preparing an application.
 
"BIRD Energy" is the implementation of a cooperation agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), the Israel Ministry of Energy jointly with the Israel Innovation Authority, and the BIRD Foundation.
 
To be considered, a project proposal should include:

  • R&D cooperation between two companies or cooperation between a company and a university/research institution (one from the U.S. and one from Israel)
  • Innovation in all areas of renewable energy and energy efficiency, such as solar and wind power, advanced vehicle technologies and alternative fuels, smart grid, storage, water-energy nexus, advanced manufacturing, etc.
  • Innovation in natural gas and other associated technologies
  • Significant commercial potential; the project outcome should lead to commercialization
Fdn_MacArthur
Sponsor Registration Deadline: July 16, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: July 30, 2019
Sponsor Application Deadline: August 6, 2019
Award Amount: $100,000,000 over a five-year grant period
 
100&Change is a MacArthur Foundation competition for a $100 million grant to fund a single proposal in any field that proposes a bold and lasting solution to an urgent, significant problem of our time. Applicants must identify both the problem they are trying to solve, as well as their proposed solution.   The MacArthur Foundation seeks projects that are   impactful, evidence-based, feasible, and durable. Interested applicants are encouraged to review   the last round's semi-finalists  to get a sense of these qualities. Applicants are also encouraged to review the   Trait Scoring Rubic   that will be used to assess all applications. The   organizational readiness tool   may be utilized to help potential applicants determine their readiness to compete in 100&Change. The program is not intended to support basic or clinical research, or fund tool/technology development, and does not support general operating expenses for established programs.
 
While the 100&Change opportunity does not limit the number of applications that may be submitted from Harvard University, given the scale of funding involved, it is recommended that applicants ensure that their cognizant dean is aware of their intent to apply. Applicants should work with their pre-award office to assemble and submit their proposal. If your team consists of two or more organizations, a fully-executed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) must be submitted in which one organization clearly has control and discretion over the use of the grant funds.
 
Questions regarding this opportunity may be directed to Jennifer Chow in the Office of the Vice Provost of Research ( Jennifer_chow@harvard.edu, 617-496-2170).
Fdn_BeckmanYIP
SEAS Deadline to Request Institutional Endorsements: July 19, 2019 by 12:00 PM EST
Sponsor LOI Deadline: August 9, 2019 by 8:00 PM EST
Award Amount: $600,000 over four years
Eligible Faculty: Assistant professors within the first three years of a tenure-track position, or an equivalent independent research appointment. Tenure track dates for the 2020 program must start after August 6, 2016 AND before August 6, 2019. Candidates must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States at the time of application.
 
The Beckman Young Investigator (BYI) Program provides research support to the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences, particularly to foster the invention of methods, instruments and materials that will open up new avenues of research in science. Projects proposed for the BYI program should be truly innovative, high-risk, and show promise for contributing to significant advances in chemistry and the life sciences. They should represent a departure from current research directions rather than an extension or expansion of existing programs. Proposed research that cuts across traditional boundaries of scientific disciplines is encouraged. Proposals that open up new avenues of research in chemistry and the life sciences by fostering the invention of methods, instruments and materials will be given additional consideration.  

Investigators can have no more than $225,000 in direct, annualized external funding grants during any BYI Program Year (Aug-July) at time of application. Start-up funds, department-wide instrumentation grants, and "Transition" grants (such as NIH K99/R00) are not counted toward this total. No individual may apply for a Beckman Young Investigator award more than two times.

Please Note:   This is not a limited submission opportunity but does require signatures from Dean Frank Doyle ("Dean") and Colleen  Shanahan ("Chief Academic Officer").  The deadline to obtain the required endorsements is on Friday, July 19 by 12:00 PM.  The process to obtain the required endorsements is as follows:
  1. Prepare the LOI using the application instructions at the Beckman website. The LOI should be complete before requesting the required institutional endorsements.
  2. For the endorsement of the Chief Academic Officer:
    • Send an email to Colleen Shanahan, Manager of Grants and Contracts Operations (colleen_shanahan@harvard.edu). This email should include a PDF of the LOI and a brief note alerting Colleen that an automated email will be forthcoming from the Beckman application portal.
    • The online portal will have a section labeled "Request" where applicants should provide colleen_shanahan@harvard.edu as the recipient address for the Chief Academic Officer's endorsement.
  3. To obtain endorsement from Dean Frank Doyle:
    • The online portal will have a section labeled "Request" where applicants should provide dean@seas.harvard.edu as the recipient address to request the Dean's endorsement.

Past award recipients from Harvard FAS/SEAS include Kang-Kuen Ni (CCB, 2015), Hopi Hoekstra (OEB, 2006), Xiaowei Zhuang (CCB, 2003), and David Liu (CCB, 2002).
 
Questions may be directed to Jennifer Corby ( jcorby@fas.harvard.edu, 617-495-1590 ) or Susan Gomes ( sgomes@fas.harvard.edu ,  617-496-9448).
Fdn_Searle
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: July 29, 2019 by 11:30 PM
Sponsor Deadline: September 27, 2019
Award Amount: $100,000 per year for three years
Eligible Faculty: Applicants should have begun their appointment as an independent investigator at the assistant professor level on or after July 1, 2018 but no later than September 26, 2019. The appointment must be their first tenure-track position (or its nearest equivalent).
 
The Searle Scholars Program is a limited submission award program which makes grants to selected academic and research institutions to support the independent research of outstanding early-career scientists who have recently been appointed as assistant professors on a tenure-track appointment. Applicants for the 2020 competition are expected to be pursuing independent research careers in biochemistry, cell biology, genetics, immunology, neuroscience, pharmacology, and related areas in chemistry, medicine, and the biological sciences. The Searle Scholars Program Scientific Advisory Board is primarily interested in the potential of applicants to make innovative and high-impact contributions to research over an extended period of time.  This program does not ordinarily support purely clinical research but has supported research programs that include both clinical and basic components.
 
Please Note: This is a limited submission opportunity and Harvard may submit only three proposals to this program. 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, eligible applicants must submit an internal pre-proposal via the link above.  Questions about this opportunity may be directed to Jennifer Corby ( jcorby@fas.harvard.edu , 617-495-1590).
Fdn_AAAS
Sponsor Nomination Deadline: August 1, 2019
Award Amount: $5,000
 
The AAAS Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science recognizes early-career scientists and engineers who demonstrate excellence in their contribution to public engagement with science activities. For the purposes of this award, public engagement activities are defined as the individual's active participation in efforts to engage with the public on science- and technology-related issues and promote meaningful dialogue between science and society. Types of public engagement activities might include: informal science education, public outreach, public policy, and/or science communication activities, such as mass media, public dialogue, radio, TV and film, science cafés, science fairs, and social and online media.
 
Candidate must be an individual scientist or engineer who has completed their terminal degree within seven years of the deadline for nominations. Groups or institutions will not be considered for this award. One scientist or engineer will be chosen to receive the award each year. A monetary prize of $5,000, a commemorative plaque, complimentary registration to the AAAS Annual Meeting, and reimbursement for reasonable hotel and travel expenses to attend the meeting to receive the prize are given to the recipient.
 
Nominations may be made by individuals, universities, government agencies, media, research organizations, and AAAS affiliate organizations. One nominator can nominate multiple candidates. Self-nominations are allowed.
 
Fdn_Templeton
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Online Funding Inquiry: August 9, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Online Funding Inquiry: August 16, 2019
Award Amount: up to $234,800 (Small Grants); over $234,800 (Large Grants)
 
The Templeton Foundation offers grants in support of research and public engagement in the following major funding areas:
  • The Science & the Big Questions Funding Area supports innovative efforts to address the deepest questions facing humankind. Why are we here? How can we flourish? What are the fundamental structures of reality? What can we know about the nature and purposes of the divine?
  • The Character Virtue Development Funding Area seeks to advance the science and practice of character, with a focus on moral, performance, civic, and intellectual virtues such as humility, gratitude, curiosity, diligence, and honesty.
  • The Individual Freedom & Free Markets Funding Area supports education, research, and grassroots efforts to promote individual freedom, free markets, free competition, and entrepreneurship. Grounded in the ideas of classical liberal political economy, we seek and develop projects that focus on individuals and their place in a free society.
  • The Exceptional Cognitive Talent & Genius Funding Area supports programs that aim to recognize and nurture exceptional cognitive talent, especially for those at an early stage of life. This Funding Area also supports research concerning the nature of cognitive genius, including extraordinary creativity, curiosity, and imagination.
  • The Genetics Funding Area seeks to advance genetics research by supporting novel approaches and contrarian projects, especially research that is undervalued by traditional funding sources. In addition to basic and translational research, this Funding Area supports educational programs that increase public awareness concerning the ways in which genetics-related research and its applications can advance human flourishing at the individual, familial, and societal levels.
  • The Voluntary Family Planning Funding Area supports programs that provide such resources for parents and families worldwide.
The Foundation generally funds specific projects and favors proposals where the applicant has sought or secured partial funding from other sources. Grant consideration begins with an initial Online Funding Inquiry and, if invited, a detailed Full Proposal.
Fdn_Eppley
Sponsor LOI Deadline: September 15, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline (if invited): October 7, 2019
Sponsor Full Proposal Deadline (if invited): October 15, 2019
Award Amount: Unspecified; the foundation disburses up to $460,000 a year; recent past awards have ranged from $11K to $28K
 
The Eppley Foundation for Research was incorporated in 1947 for the purpose of "increasing knowledge in pure or applied science...in chemistry, physics and biology through study, research and publication." Particular areas of interest include innovative medical investigations, climate change, whole ecosystem studies, as well as research on single species if they are of particular significance in their environments, in the U.S. and abroad. The proposal is expected to be concise and incorporate clear statements of significance, objectives, novelty, methods, expectations of success, and why the researcher believes the work cannot reasonably expect federal support, or support from other conventional funding sources. It is important to the Foundation that the work proposed be novel in its insights and unlikely to be underway elsewhere. The Foundation is prepared to take risks.
 
The Eppley Foundation supports advanced, novel, scientific research by PhDs or MDs with an established record of publication in their specialties. The Foundation limits its contribution to overhead to 15 percent. Travel and fringe benefits do not qualify for overhead allocation.
Fdn_Banting
Deadline to Request Harvard Institutional Endorsement: September 16, 2019 by 12:00 PM
Sponsor Deadline: September 18, 2019 
Award Amount: $70,000 per year for two years (taxable)
 
The objective of the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships Program, offered by the Government of Canada, is to attract and retain top-tier postdoctoral talent, to develop Fellows' leadership potential and to position them for success as research leaders of tomorrow, positively contributing to Canada's economic, social and research-based growth through a research-intensive career. Applications are accepted from all fields in the humanities, social sciences, health research, natural sciences and engineering.
 
This program is open to Canadian citizens, permanent residents of Canada and non-Canadian citizens. Candidates to be hosted by Harvard must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada who have obtained or will obtain their PhD or equivalent from a Canadian university. Applicants must fulfill or have fulfilled all degree requirements for a PhD, PhD-equivalent or health professional degree between September 15, 2016 and September 30, 2020 (inclusively), and before the start date of their award. Applicants who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada may apply to hold a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at a Canadian institution. Applicants who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada and who obtained their PhD, PhD-equivalent or health professional degree from a non-Canadian university may also apply to hold a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at a Canadian institution. The program's full eligibility criteria can be viewed  here.   
 
Please Note: There are no limits to the number of applicants that may apply to the Banting Fellowship opportunity, but those who wish to be hosted by Harvard University must include with their application an  Institutional Letter of Endorsement signed by the Vice Provost for Research. To request this endorsement letter, candidates must submit their contact information and a copy of their proposed supervisor's statement here no later than 12:00 PM on September 16, 2019. After selecting "Apply" applicants will be directed to an electronic dashboard where they will provide contact information and upload a copy of their proposed supervisor's statement. Questions about this opportunity may be directed to Jennifer Corby (jcorby@fas.harvard.edu, 617-495-1590).
Simons_mps
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: A typical Targeted Grant in MPS provides funding for up to five years. The funding provided is flexible and based on the type of support requested in the proposal. There is no recommended funding limit.
 
The Simons Foundation division for Mathematics and Physical Sciences seeks to extend the frontiers of basic research. The division's primary focus is on mathematics, theoretical physics and theoretical computer science. This program is intended to support high-risk projects of exceptional promise and scientific importance on a case-by-case basis. Expenses for experiments, equipment, or computations, as well as for personnel and travel, are allowable. If invited to submit a full proposal, the deadline will be noted in the LOI notification and will be no sooner than three months from the date of the LOI approval.

Internal Opportunities
HSPH
Deadline: June 25, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $100,000 (direct costs) for a 12-month project period, with an automatic 6-month no-cost extension if needed.
Target Applicants: This award is open to faculty of any rank who have a primary appointment at the Harvard Chan School, but applications will require the substantial engagement of at least two Harvard Chan School Departments or Centers and must include collaboration from at least one other Harvard School.
 
The Dean's Fund for Scientific Advancement expands the Chan School's internal research funding with the goal of creating a pipeline of support that facilitates the exploration of early ideas, the development of strong interdisciplinary team science and creation of transformative research collaborations that advance the frontiers of science. Acceleration Awards are intended to nurture collaborations in research, develop platforms, and support educational projects. Up to three awards will be distributed annually across three focal areas:
  1. Research Grants will be aligned with two priorities with at least one overlapping with an Incubation Award priority from the previous year. This year, the two priority areas are: Confronting Climate Change and Cultivating Well-being and Nutrition.
  2. Research Platforms are adaptable and dynamic resources that can be accessed by multiple faculty to support projects in a variety of disciplines. The goal of these awards is to provide one-time support for the development of research platforms that can be funded in the future by external support mechanisms.
  3. Public Health Pedagogy awards intend to produce scalable innovations that will improve the quality of teaching and learning at the Harvard Chan School. Special consideration will be given to applications that have the potential to be scaled up School-wide to benefit teaching and learning at all levels. The goal is to provide one-time support for the development of pedagogical innovations that can be integrated into educational programs or funded in the future by external support mechanisms.
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  
FAS/SEAS/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
FAS/SEAS/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.
DoD_TAK
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: June 17, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: June 24, 2019
Award Amount: Unspecified
 
The Tactical Assault Kit (TAK)-a mapping system with a plugin architecture-has seen success across the DoD and DHS, where operators must routinely execute missions in spectrum denied environments. Three iterations of TAK are of interest: ATAK (Android OS), WinTAK (Microsoft Windows OS), and WebTAK (web browser based). This topic supports the development of ATAK, WinTAK, and WebTAK compatible versions of existing decision support tools for chemical and biological warning and reporting, hazard prediction, and consequence assessment. Given that warfighters must operate in environments with little to no network connectivity, proposed software applications should be able to operate both with network connectivity and without. Proposals should leverage existing tools, DoD or otherwise, implement an agile development approach with multiple releases, and deliver a final product running in multiple TAK architectures within 12 months of award. This topic will ultimately support the warfighters ability to operate in and overcome a chemical or biological threat environment through the effective promulgation of situational awareness information and the use of superior tactical decision-making tools.
DoD_fy19Acq
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (required): June 20, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: August 28, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): September 5, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $120,000 for up to 12 months
 
DoD's Acquisition Research Program (ARP) conducts and supports research in academic disciplines that bear on public procurement policy and management. These include economics, finance, financial management, information systems, organization theory, operations management, human resources management, risk management, and marketing, as well as the traditional public procurement areas such as contracting, program/project management, logistics, test and evaluation and systems engineering management. The ARP is interested in innovative proposals that will provide unclassified and non-proprietary findings suitable for publication in open scholarly literature. Studies of government processes, systems, or policies should also expand the body of knowledge and theory of processes, systems, or policies outside the government.
 
The following research areas are of special interest:
  • Leading-edge techniques in data collection, management, visual analytics and decision-making
  • Robust risk modeling techniques
  • Performance metrics and methodologies
  • Collaboration and cross-functional teams
  • Model-Based Acquisition
Applicants bear prime responsibility for the design, management, direction and conduct of research. Researchers should exercise judgment and original thought toward attaining the goals within broad parameters of the research areas proposed and the resources provided. Applicants are encouraged to be creative in the selection of the technical and management processes and approaches and consider the greatest and broadest impact possible.

DoD_Minerva 
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (strongly encouraged): June 20, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: September 19, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: September 26, 2019
Award Amount: $150,000-$1M per year for three to five years. 10-12 awards are anticipated.
 
The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) is interested in receiving proposals for the Minerva Research Initiative , a university-led defense social science program seeking fundamental understanding of the social and cultural forces shaping U.S. strategic interests globally. OSD is particularly interested in projects that align with and support the National Defense Strategy . The Minerva Research Initiative emphasizes questions of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy. It seeks to increase the Department's intellectual capital in the social sciences and improve its ability to address future challenges and build bridges between the Department and the social science community. Minerva brings together universities and other research institutions around the world and supports multidisciplinary and cross-institutional projects addressing specific interest areas determined by the Department of Defense. Proposals will be considered both for single-investigator awards as well as larger teams. Minerva funds basic, not applied, research.
 
This year's Minerva Research Initiative competition is for research related to the nine topics:
  • Topic 1: Peer/Near-peer Statecraft, Influence, and Regional Balance of Power
  • Topic 2: Power, Deterrence, and Escalation Management
  • Topic 3: Alliances and Burden Sharing
  • Topic 4: Economic Interdependence and Security
  • Topic 5: Economic Viability, Resilience, and Sustainability of Logistics Infrastructure
  • Topic 6: Multi-Domain Behavioral Complexity and Computational Social Modeling
  • Topic 7: Autonomy, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Ethics, and Social Interactions
  • Topic 8: Models and Methods for Understanding Covert Online Influence
  • Topic 9: Automated Cyber Vulnerability Analysis
DoD_DTRAasd-ura
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (required):  June 21, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: July 10, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Phase I Pre-Proposals: July 17, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Phase II Proposals (if invited): TBA
Award Amount: Estimated funding is anticipated to be $5M annually (total, including both direct and indirect costs) depending on the nature and the scope of work. Efforts may be proposed for three years with two additional two year options.
 
DTRA is seeking to support research to investigate scientific means to better understand current and emerging Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threats and threat networks, and discover better methods for seeking changing signatures of these networks and the pathways that lead to their development. Findings from this basic research are anticipated to help support future identification of proactive measures to counter WMD threats. DTRA has identified three interrelated Research Areas (RAs) that, when jointly studied, will advance the theoretical foundations of ASD in the context of future operations:
  • RA1-Image correlation with context enhanced data fusion;
  • RA2-Physical network response; and
  • RA3-Social networks.
In addition to these three RAs, Understand Adaptive Threat Responses and Counter-Threat Responses is a Cross-Cutting Research Initiative (CCRI) that is inherent in each of the RAs.
 
The overarching goal of the Adaptive Signature Discovery (ASD) University Research Alliance (URA), collectively known as ASD-URA, is to investigate the ability to deduce and be responsive to adversary capability and intent with WMDs and extract actionable information using evolving data from multimodal sensors (including imaging), physical networks, and social networks. For the purposes of this BAA, it is anticipated that an interdisciplinary effort, in which physical and social scientists work together in an integrated team, will yield insights into new measures to defeat WMD. The research performed by the URA must utilize active collaboration between the individual disciplines. The intent is to enable a team to model, predict, and discover emerging threats under a framework of broader sensor network theories, namely adaptive networks. Methods supported under this ASD effort should be useful for either strategic peer-competitor threats or more vague/non-state threat landscape determination. A signature in this effort is a piece of information derived from data correlated to an event or object of interest. This is not a data gathering effort, nor is it solely data fusion. Instead, the project is exploring adaptive approaches to the fusion of information to extract knowledge about adversary capabilities and intents with WMDs. The focus of the ASD-URA is on theory, modeling, and simulation. Proposed efforts should not include the design, development, or fabrication of hardware or extensive experimentation.
 
This BAA is expected to result in a single Cooperative Agreement (CA), to be awarded to an Alliance of organizations that may include U.S. institutions of higher education, DoD-Degree Granting Colleges and Universities, and DoD Service Labs.

DoD_DTRAiirm 
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (required):  June 21, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: July 10, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Phase I Pre-Proposals: July 17, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Phase II Proposals (if invited): TBA
Award Amount: Estimated funding for the CA is anticipated to be from $5M to $6M annually (total, including both direct and indirect costs) depending on the nature and the scope of work. Efforts may be proposed for five years with two additional two year  options.
 
DTRA invests in research for innovative materials or methods that can shield or defend against the effects of nuclear weapons, ensuring that the warfighter can operate in a nuclear environment. Additionally, the DoD will also be charged with collecting and analyzing debris samples from a nuclear event. Furthermore, DTRA is tasked with maintaining and operating the United States (U.S.)-owned stations of the International Monitoring System, which monitors the planet for any sign of a nuclear explosion. A joint theme through all of these missions is the interaction of ionizing radiation with matter. While the material, radiation type, or desired interaction may differ, there is significant overlap in the relevant physics, modeling approaches, and device design. The Interaction of Ionizing Radiation with Matter (IIRM) University Research Alliance (URA), collectively known as the IIRM-URA, seeks to exploit these overlaps in physics and approaches for collaborative and synergistic advances in understanding material radiation interaction, advancing devices and integration, and advancing nuclear survivability and response. The Research Areas (RAs) for the IIRM-URA are as follows:
  • RA1-Materials (~35%)
  • RA2-Devices and Integration (~20%)
  • RA3-Survivability and Response (~20%)
In addition to these three RAs, Modeling and Simulation (5-10%) has been identified as a Cross Cutting Research Initiative (CCRI) that is inherent in each of the RAs and that must be jointly studied with the RAs to make fundamental advances in IIRM. Finally, DTRA anticipates that the remaining 10-15% of the research dollars will be utilized for Student Pipeline Development.
 
This BAA is expected to result in a single Cooperative Agreement (CA), to be awarded to a U.S. institution of higher education to lead an Alliance organization that may include U.S. and foreign institutions of higher education, DoD-Degree Granting Colleges and Universities, DoD Service Laboratories, Federally-funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) to include Department of Energy (DOE) National Laboratories, U.S. industrial partners, and/or U.S. and foreign non-profit organizations to include University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs).

DoD_DTRAmsee 
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (required):  June 21, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: July 10, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Phase I Pre-Proposals: July 17, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Phase II Proposals (if invited): TBA
Award Amount: The award may range from $5M to $7M annually (total, including both direct and indirect costs) depending on the nature and the scope of work. Efforts may be proposed for five years with two additional two year options.
 
DTRA is seeking to develop the capability to understand material properties and associated mechanisms in various extreme environments that may lead to future exploitation. The approach is to realize a materials and properties capability by establishing a new University Research Alliance (URA) focused on Materials Science in Extreme Environments (MSEE). The focus of the MSEE-URA will be to advance the fundamental understanding of various material properties and mechanisms in non-equilibrium high pressure, high temperature, and high photon number regimes. The foundational problem to be addressed by the MSEE-URA is the lack of knowledge and predictive modeling capability for various material classes and their associated formation/decomposition mechanisms within harsh Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)-related environments. That lack of knowledge poses a challenge in the ability to control and exploit future material-WMD interactions. To address this problem, the MSEE-URA seeks proposals focusing on understanding, controlling, characterizing, and predicting interactions of materials in extreme pressure, temperature, and optical environments. The four research areas for the MSEE-URA are:
  • RA1-Material Properties and Failure (~20% of the research dollars);
  • RA2-Materials Development and Manufacturing for Synergistic Effects (~25% of the research dollars);
  • RA3-Chemistry in Extreme Environments (~30% of the research dollars); and
  • RA4-Photon-Material Interactions (~15% of the research dollars).
In addition to these four RAs, the area of Modeling and Diagnostics has been identified as a Cross Cutting Research Initiative (CCRI) that is inherent in each of the RAs and that must be jointly studied with the RAs to make fundamental advances in MSEE-URA. The CCRI-Modeling and Diagnostics should account for ~10% of the research dollars and is an integral part of the RA efforts.
 
This BAA is expected to result in a single Cooperative Agreement (CA), to be awarded to an Alliance of organizations that may include U.S. and foreign institutions of higher education, DoD-Degree Granting Colleges and Universities, DoD Service Laboratories, Federally-funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) to include Department of Energy (DOE) National Laboratories, U.S. industrial partners, and/or U.S. and foreign non-profit organizations to include University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs).
DoD_LogX
Sponsor Deadline for Abstracts (strongly encouraged): June 25, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: July 30, 2019; however, proposals received after this deadline may be received and evaluated up to six months from date of the BAA's posting (June 6, 2019). Proposers are warned that the likelihood of available funding is greatly reduced for proposals submitted after the initial closing date 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. This BAA solicits proposals for only the 18-month base period (or Phase 1) of the program.
 
DARPA's Strategic Technologies Office (STO) is soliciting innovative proposals in logistics and supply chain automated reasoning and information fusion, real-time demand forecasting, and system resilience assessment. LogX will develop and demonstrate a new paradigm for achieving logistics information awareness across the enterprise to enable responsive and resilient operations. This enhanced situational awareness will not only be of value to logisticians but also to operational elements whose tempo and effectiveness are ultimately dependent on survivable logistics support, critically so in future operating concepts.
 
The LogX program will have two technical areas (TAs): the Mission-Centered Applications Service (TA1) and Cloud-Based Microservices (TA2), which will have two tracks: automated knowledge engineering and  dynamic/distributed state estimation. Proposers may submit responses that address TA1 only, TA2 only to include either or both tracks, or fully integrated teams including a TA1 with both TA2 tracks.
 
Prior to the end of the Phase 1 base period, DARPA may issue proposal instructions to facilitate integration of TA1 and TA2 teams as needed for potential follow on Phases 2 and 3 of the program. It is anticipated that Phases 2 and 3 will each have a 12 month period of performance.
 
Multiple awards are anticipated. Approximately $55M will be awarded for multiple phases over 42 months.
DoD_specialprog
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (required): June 28, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: September 20, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): September 27, 2019
Award Amount: $300,000-$500,000 per year for one to three years; however, lower and  higher cost proposals will be considered. The average funding level of past awards was  approximately $500,000 per year.
 
This announcement describes a research thrust, entitled "Communications and Networks Applied Research" to be launched under the N00014-19-S-B001, Long Range Broad Agency Announcement for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology . The research opportunity described in this announcement specifically falls under, "Electronics, Sensors, and Network Research" of the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (Code 31). The submission of proposals, their evaluation and the placement of contracts will be carried out as described in that Broad Agency Announcement.
The goal of the Communications and Networking Program within the Office of Naval Research (ONR 311) is to support the Navy's Information Warfare vision by developing measurable advances in technology that can directly enable and enhance end-to-end connectivity and quality-of-service for mission-critical information exchange among widely dispersed naval, joint, and coalition forces. The vision is to provide high throughput robust communications and networking to ensure all warfighters - from the operational command to the tactical edge - have access to information, knowledge, and decision-making necessary to perform their assigned tasks.
 
White papers for potential FY20 Applied Research (Budget category 6.2) projects are sought under the following focus areas:
  1. Innovative dual use (software provisioned) LIDAR and FSO communications using shared hardware and common aperture with reduced size, weight and power;
  2. Tactical enhancements to proposed 5G standards and implementations for improved resiliency and survivability in highly contested environments;
  3. Novel approaches for low probability of detect/intercept communications against advanced electronic threats;
  4. Dynamic scheduling, routing and control mechanisms to efficiently and reliably deliver traffic with varying level of service requirements (e.g., latency, loss rate, priority); and
  5. Machine learning and other techniques/concepts for autonomous network management by translating Commander's Intent into network policies.
ONR is receptive to innovative ideas which are not within the above focus areas, but nonetheless are important to the Navy/Marine Corps communications and networking.
DoD_FY19STEM
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (required): Rolling through June 28, 2019
FAS/SEAS/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_AFOSRmedphotonics
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: Rolling (proposals for FY19 funds must be submitted by June 30, 2019)
Award Amount: AFOSR anticipates no more than $1M may be made available to fund a  small number of proposals submitted under this announcement. The period of performance anticipated is up to 3 years duration.
 
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) seeks unclassified proposals for research and development aimed at using lasers and other light source technology to develop applications in medicine, photobiology, surgery, and closely related materials sciences, with applications to combat casualty care and other military medical problems. This announcement is for a small number of individual awards. It is complementary to ongoing and future planned broad based awards, primarily directed toward university-based medical institutions, conducted by teams of physicians, biomedical scientists, physical scientists, and engineers. The efforts proposed may be basic or applied research, and must have direct relevance to combat casualty care or other military medical priorities. They must offer unique capabilities, not substantially funded by other DOD or other agency programs. Applicants must demonstrate substantial experience working to further military medical priorities, including transitioning research into clinical practice and working products. Substantial experience collaborating with military medical centers is also a requirement to establish relevance to combat casualty care or other military medical priorities, and facilitate the transition of research results to meet military needs.
DoD_arcos
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: July 1, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: July 9, 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. ARCOS is a four-year program, divided into three phases. The first and second phases will be 18 months each, and the third phase will be 12 months long for a total program length of 48 months.
 
DARPA's Information Innovation Office (I2O) is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of automating the evaluation of software assurance evidence to enable certifiers to rapidly determine that the system risk is acceptable. The process of determining that a system's risk is acceptable is referred to as "certification." Current certification practices are antiquated and unable to scale with the amount of software deployed by the Department of Defense (DoD). Two factors prevent scaling; (a) the use of human evaluators to determine if the system meets certification criteria, and (b) the lack of a principled means to decompose evaluations. Two factors will support the acceleration of software certification through the automation of evaluations. First, the DoD has articulated its intentions to have its contractors modernize their engineering processes in the DoD Digital Engineering Strategy. Second, advances in several technologies provide a basis for confidence that automated evaluation of assurance evidence to support certification is possible. If successful, ARCOS technologies will transition to program offices needing to reduce certification costs, improve their software evaluations, and/or better understand their software risks. These technologies will improve the quality of assurance evidence generated during development, and will therefore be of interest to contractors creating software for program offices that have adopted ARCOS.
 
The ARCOS program has four Technical Areas (TAs):
  • TA1: Evidence Generation
  • TA2: Evidence Curation
  • TA3: Assurance Generation
  • TA4: Quantitative Assessment
Each proposal may only address a single technical area, but proposers may submit multiple proposals. Proposers selected for award in TA4 will not be selected for award in any other technical area. DARPA anticipates single awards for technical areas 2 and 4, and multiple awards in technical areas 1 and 3.
 
DoD_ReVector
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: July 3, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: July 11, 2019
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. ReVector is structured into a 4 year effort consisting of 3 phases with Phase I (Base effort) lasting 18 months, Phase II (Option) lasting 18 months, and Phase III (Option) lasting 12 months.
 
DARPA's Biological Technologies Office's (BTO's) ReVector program aims to develop methods to use human skin microbiomes to modulate chemical production in order to avoid mosquito attraction and feeding and reduce the threat of mosquito-borne disease to Warfighters. Human skin associated microbes interact with metabolites from the body and influence the volatile molecules of each individual, making some individuals more attractive to mosquitoes. This program seeks to develop advanced data analytics and microbiome modulation tools for engineering skin microbiomes and provide new options for the readiness and resiliency of military personnel.
 
ReVector is structured into two Technical Areas:
  • Technical Area 1 (TA1) - Metabolite Identification and Design;
  • Technical Area 2 (TA2) - Modulate and Deploy.
Interdisciplinary teams must address both TAs in parallel to develop a platform technology capable of identifying microbiome leverage points and engineering microbiomes capable of producing a microbiome  that reduces attraction and feeding by disease causing vectors.
 
Multiple awards are possible.
DoD_ari
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: July 5, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: July 12, 2019
Award Amount: No award floor or ceiling thresholds have been established for individual awards under this BAA.
 
This Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for the Foundational Science Research Unit (FSRU) of the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) solicits new proposals for its fiscal year 2019 program of basic research in behavioral science. ARI is the Army's lead agency for the conduct of research, development, and analyses for the improvement of Army readiness and performance via research advances and applications of the behavioral and social sciences that address personnel, organization, and Soldier and leader development issues. ARI's mission is to drive scientific innovation to enable the Army to acquire, develop, employ, and retain professional Soldiers and enhance personnel readiness. The mission of the Basic Research Program is to develop fundamental theories and investigate new domain areas in behavioral and social sciences with high potential impact on Army issues related to personnel readiness.
 
While all proposals will be considered, ARI has identified the following five domains as particularly germane to its basic research needs: Personnel Testing and Performance; Learning in Formal and Informal Environments; Organizational Effectiveness; Leader Development; and Culture.
 
This funding opportunity is divided into two types of proposals for basic research:
  • Standard Proposals. Most basic research awards are awarded in response to Standard Proposals provided by Applicants with experienced researchers. In recent years, the performance period of these has typically been two to three years with a median total award of $840,785.
  • Early Career Proposals. To foster the development of innovative and creative researchers, ARI solicits proposals from Applicants with individuals who are early in their research careers (PI must have received their PhD within five years of proposal submission) and have never received ARI funding as a Principal Investigator. All ARI evaluation criteria will be used to evaluate Early Career Proposals, except the criteria that address the experience of the Principal Investigator. Projects should be designed for one year of funding at a level of approximately $110,000.
DoD_DARPAvip
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: July 8, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: July 15, 2019
Award Amount: The total award value for the combined Phase 1 base and Phase 2 option is limited to $1,000,000 (up to $675,000 in Phase 1 and up to $325,000 in Phase 2). VIP is an 18-month program divided into a 12-month Phase 1 and a 6-month Phase 2.
 
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is issuing an Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE) Opportunity inviting submissions of innovative basic or applied research concepts in the technical domain of third wave AI exploring radically new and heretofore underexplored, brain-inspired and massively-scalable computing methodologies for novel machine learning approaches that have the potential to support solutions to real-world problems impacting the Department of Defense. In particular, the Virtual Intelligence Processing (VIP) program aims to develop algorithms based on mathematical models and representations that have not been the focus of AI technologies development, and that will inform next generation processors that can aid third wave AI. Proposers should address the fundamental performance limits of novel algorithms based on unexplored mathematical approaches when applied to a relevant DoD application. Specifically, proposers must describe their novel approach in terms of accuracy, robustness to environment, data and computational requirements as well as the challenges that need to be overcome for its implementation. They must also quantitatively compare the chosen approach with current state-of-the-art for the same application. The program is also interested in hardware simulations but not in actual hardware implementation.
 
This AIE Opportunity is issued under the Program Announcement for AIE, DARPA-PA-18-02. All awards will be made in the form of an Other Transaction (OT) for prototype project.
DoD_ace
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: July 22, 2019; however, proposals received after this deadline may be received and evaluated up to six months from date of the BAA's posting (June 5, 2019). Proposers are warned that the likelihood of available funding is greatly reduced for proposals submitted after the initial closing date 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. Phase 1 is the base period for TAs 2-4. The anticipated Period of Performance is 18 months. Phases 2 and 3 are Option Periods, each with an anticipated 16 month Period of Performance.
 
DARPA's Strategic Technologies Office's (STO's) Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program will increase trust in combat autonomy using human-machine collaborative dogfighting as its challenge problem, which also serves as a representation of an entry point into complex human-machine collaboration. ACE will apply existing AI technologies to the dogfight problem in experiments of increasing realism. In parallel, ACE will implement methods to measure, calibrate, increase, and predict human trust in combat autonomy performance. Finally, the program will scale the tactical application of automating a dogfight to more complex, heterogeneous, multi-aircraft, operational level simulated scenarios informed by live data, laying
the groundwork for future live, campaign-level Mosaic Warfare experimentation.
 
The ACE program is constructed to address four primary technical challenges:
  • Technical Area 1: Build combat autonomy for local (individual and team tactical) behaviors
  • Technical Area 2: Build and calibrate trust in air combat local behaviors
  • Technical Area 3: Scale performance/trust to global (heterogeneous multi-aircraft) behavior
  • Technical Area 4: Build full-scale air combat experimentation infrastructure 
Technical Area 1 (TA1) will be addressed under a separate BAA. Information regarding TA1 is provided in this BAA for informational and contextual purposes only. Under this BAA, DARPA is soliciting innovative proposals for Technical Areas 2-4 only. Performers may submit to any or all of the TAs 2-4 in response to this BAA. A proposal may only address a single TA; if a performer proposes to multiple TAs, each submission should be a separate proposal. While each of the TAs has independent goals and will be assessed independently, the success of the program requires that the TAs work together closely and collaboratively, as each TA is responsible for a critical element of the overall ACE technology demonstration.
 
The primary focus of Phase 1 is to develop and demonstrate key capabilities in Modeling & Simulation (M&S). Phases 2 and 3 will implement the same in sub-scale and full-scale environments, respectively. It is anticipated that a single performer may be used in both TA2 and TA4 and the government expects to carry multiple competing TA3 performers through Phase 2.
 
Multiple awards are possible. DARPA anticipates awarding up to $63.6 million for Phases 1, 2 and 3.
DoD_DARPApoly10
Sponsor Deadline for Abstracts (strongly encouraged): July 24, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: August 26, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: September 3, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $100,000 for 1 year.
 
The purpose of this Polyplexus Pilot Topic Opportunity Notice is to provide public notification of a research and development funding opportunity on the Polyplexus online platform. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) invites participation in Polyplexus, which is an online, professional, technical conversation between the research community and DARPA Program Managers that will lead to the opportunity to submit abstracts and full proposals for a research and development project. The shared task of this group is to rigorously explore the trends and possible applications of emerging science and technology in a specific technical area defined by a participating Program Manager. The technical area under consideration in this announcement is chemical theory. Further information on the topic can be found in the "Microgravity Chemical Theory (10)" incubator located on the polyplexus.com website.
 
The process, evaluation criteria, abstract submission instructions, and proposal submission instructions are described in the most recent amendment of BAA for Polyplexus Pilot 2 (HR001118S0058) .
 
At least one award is anticipated. In addition, the information gathered in the incubator may serve as the basis for a future program.
DoD_AROquantumalgo
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: July 25, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: August 1, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $750,000 over a three-year period. Exceptional proposals beyond this limit may be considered.
 
The U.S. Army Research Office (ARO) together with the National Security Agency (NSA) is soliciting proposals to develop new quantum computing algorithms for hard computational problems, develop insights into the power of quantum computation, and consider issues of quantum complexity and computability.
 
Investigators should presuppose the existence of a fully functional quantum computer and consider what algorithmic tasks are particularly well suited to such a machine. A necessary component of this research will be to compare the efficiency of the quantum algorithm to the best existing classical algorithm for the same problem. Although quantum algorithm proposals may consider general architectural constraints (e.g. nearest neighbor only gates) for implementing algorithms, they should otherwise concentrate on developing the algorithm. Quantum algorithm proposals may consider computational models other than the circuit model (e.g. the adiabatic model).
DoD_cdmrp
Sponsor Deadline for Pre-Applications (required): July 26, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: October 23, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): October 30, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $350,000 for up to 18 months
 
The Accelerating Innovation in Military Medicine (AIMM) initiative was created to accelerate transformational biomedical research for our Armed Forces and Nation. The mission of the AIMM initiative is to encourage, identify, and enable innovative research that leads to crosscutting solutions to military health threats. Due to this award mechanism's emphasis on innovation, presentation of preliminary data is not required, though not prohibited. Funding for this award mechanism supports applied research.
 
To meet the intent of the award mechanism, applications submitted to the FY19 AIMM must address at least one of the Focus Areas listed below. Applications that will accelerate research toward innovations applicable to multi-domain operations and multi-domain operations in dense urban environments are encouraged but not required. The FY19 AIMM Focus Areas are as follows:
  • Algorithms/tools for decision support in a deployed or operational environment to: diagnose military-relevant disease, illness, or injury; prescribe mitigation and treatment strategies; and/or determine risk of Warfighter return to duty.
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)/deep learning for integrating heterogeneous data streams and analyzing data from wearables to support making informed healthcare decisions.
  • AI/deep learning for analyzing and interrogating large medical data sets to: identify patterns/predictors of disease, illness, or injury; and/or identify treatment outcomes.
The FY19 appropriation for AIMM is $3M, to fund approximately six AIMM Research Award applications.

DoD_DARPApoly11
Sponsor Deadline for Abstracts (strongly encouraged): July 27, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: August 23, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: September 2, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $100,000 for 1 year.
 
The purpose of this Polyplexus Pilot Topic Opportunity Notice is to provide public notification of a research and development funding opportunity on the Polyplexus online platform. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) invites participation in Polyplexus, which is an online, professional, technical conversation between the research community and DARPA Program Managers that will lead to the opportunity to submit abstracts and full proposals for a research and development project. The shared task of this group is to rigorously explore the trends and possible applications of emerging science and technology in a specific technical area defined by a participating Program Manager. The technical areas under consideration in this announcement are those that emerge from the online Evidence and Conjecture micropublication feed within the Polyplexus platform. Further information on the topic can be found in the "Emergent Polyplexus Topics (11)" incubator located on the polyplexus.com website.
 
The process, evaluation criteria, abstract submission instructions, and proposal submission instructions are described in the most recent amendment of BAA for Polyplexus Pilot 2 (HR001118S0058) .
 
At least one award is anticipated. In addition, the information gathered in the incubator may serve as the basis for a future program.
  DOD_DARPApoly9
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: August 7, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: August 14, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $100,000 for 1 year.
 
The purpose of this Polyplexus Pilot Topic Opportunity Notice is to provide public notification of a research and development funding opportunity on the Polyplexus online platform. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) invites participation in Polyplexus, which is an online, professional, technical conversation between the research community and DARPA Program Managers that will lead to the opportunity to submit abstracts and full proposals for a research and development project. The shared task of this group is to rigorously explore the trends and possible applications of emerging science and technology in a specific technical area defined by a participating Program Manager. The technical areas under consideration in this announcement are those that emerge from the online Evidence and Conjecture micropublication feed within the Polyplexus platform. Further information on the topic can be found in the "Emergent Polyplexus Topics (09)" incubator located on the  polyplexus.com website.
 
The process, evaluation criteria, abstract submission instructions, and proposal submission instructions are described in the most recent amendment of BAA for  Polyplexus Pilot 2 (HR001118S0058) .
 
At least one award is anticipated. In addition, the information gathered in the incubator may serve as the basis for a future progra.

DoD_BAAIonSys
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: August 9, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: August 16, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $1.5M per year for three years for Goals 1 and 2; and up to $500,000 per year for one- to three-years for Goal 3.
 
The U.S. Army Research Office (ARO) in partnership with the National Security Agency (NSA) is soliciting proposals for research in Trapped Ion Qubits. This BAA has three research goals:
  1. substantially reduce noise levels detrimental to high fidelity gates in trapped ion systems and to improve the stability of these gates once achieved;
  2. explore novel quantum information encoding schemes and/or entanglement generation schemes with trapped ion systems; and
  3. development of critical supporting technology required for successful highly stable high fidelity trapped ion systems.
DoD_DARPApoly12
Sponsor Deadline for Abstracts (strongly encouraged): August 14, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: August 26, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: September 3, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $100,000 for 1 year.
 
The purpose of this Polyplexus Pilot Topic Opportunity Notice is to provide public notification of a research and development funding opportunity on the Polyplexus online platform. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) invites participation in Polyplexus, which is an online, professional, technical conversation between the research community and DARPA Program Managers that will lead to the opportunity to submit abstracts and full proposals for a research and development project. The shared task of this group is to rigorously explore the trends and possible applications of emerging science and technology in a specific technical area defined by a participating Program Manager. The technical area under consideration in this announcement is Theory of Complexity. Further information on the topic can be found in the "Theory of Complexity (12)" incubator located on the polyplexus.com website.
 
The process, evaluation criteria, abstract submission instructions, and proposal submission instructions are described in the most recent amendment of BAA for Polyplexus Pilot 2 (HR001118S0058) .
 
At least one award is anticipated. In addition, the information gathered in the incubator may serve as the basis for a future program.
DoD_fy202devstudy  
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: August 30, 2019. Full Proposals received after this date will be considered as time and availability of funding permit.
Award Amount: ONR plans to allocate approximately a total of $3M for multiple efforts related to the Technical Areas in this Special Notice. The Period of Performance for this effort is expected to be 6-12 months.  
 
This announcement describes a research thrust, entitled Advanced Targeting Concepts Development Study, to be launched under the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) entitled " Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology ". The research opportunity described in this announcement specifically falls under the Electronics, Sensors, and Networks Research Division (Code 312) within the Information, Cyber, and Spectrum Superiority Department (Code 31) at ONR. The submission of proposals, their evaluation and the placement of research contracts will be carried out as described in the ONR BAA.
 
The proposed topic seeks studies, recommendations, and an architectural framework for ONR and the U.S. Navy on which future Research and Development (R&D) investments are needed to conduct advanced Over-the Horizon (OTH) targeting of multiple adversary at-sea and airborne contacts. These studies will inform ONR and US Navy on how to best overcome technology limitations and provide recommendations to fuse together information from various military and national sensors to fashion a network of systems for long-range targeting. The aspiration of this network of systems is to hold adversary assets continually at risk, providing persistent, fire-control quality data on multiple, emitting and non-emitting, airborne, and at-sea surface targets within contested and GPS-denied environments, all at ranges well beyond current capabilities. It is envisioned that the system will continually present a prioritized list of targeting solutions to the Task Force Commander to conduct a variety of kinetic and non-kinetic actions.  
DoD_MURI  
Fiscal Year 2020 Department of Defense Multidisciplinary Research Program of the University Research Initiative (MURI)
(Separate links for submissions to ARO, ONR, AFOSR)
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: September 6, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: September 13, 2019
Award Amount: The awards will be made at funding levels commensurate with the proposed research and in response to agency missions (see the BAA for the recommended funding profile for each topic area). Typical annual funding per grant is in the $1.25M to $1.5M range. Each individual award will be for a three-year base period with one two-year option period to bring the total maximum term of the award to five years.
 
The Department of Defense (DoD) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI), one element of the University Research Initiative (URI), is sponsored by the DoD research offices: the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). DOD's MURI program addresses high risk basic research and attempts to understand or achieve something that has never been done before. The MURI program supports basic research in science and engineering at U.S. institutions of higher education that is of potential interest to DoD. The program is focused on multidisciplinary research efforts where more than one traditional discipline interacts to provide rapid advances in scientific areas of interest to the DoD. Key to the program's success is the close management of the MURI projects by Service program officers and their active role in providing research guidance.
 
The FY 2020 MURI competition is for the following topics:

ONR:
Topic 1: Stimuli-Responsive Materials based on Triggered Polymer Depolymerization
Topic 2: Quantum Benefits without Quantum Fragility: The Classical Entanglement of Light
Topic 3: Mathematical Methods for Deep Learning
Topic 4: Spin and Orbital Angular Momentum (SAM & OAM)
Topic 5: Photonic High-Order Topological Insulators (PHOTIs)
Topic 6: Active Topological Mechanical Metamaterials
Topic 7: Harvesting Oxygen from the Ocean
Topic 8: Exploring Oxidation and Surface Phenomena of Multi-Principal Element Alloys
Topic 9: The Physics of High-Speed Multiphase-flow / Material Interactions
Topic 10: Combining Disparate Environmental Data Into a Common Framework
 
ARO:
Topic 11: Adaptive and Adversarial Machine Learning
Topic 12: Axion Electrodynamics beyond Maxwell's Equations
Topic 13: Engineering Endosymbionts to Produce Novel Functional Materials
Topic 14: Information Exchange Network Dynamics
Topic 15: Mathematical Intelligence: Machines with More Fundamental Capabilities
Topic 16: Quantum State Engineering for Enhanced Metrology
Topic 17: Solution Electrochemistry without Electrodes
Topic 18: Stimuli-Responsive Mechanical Metamaterials
 
AFOSR:
Topic 19: Machine Learning and Physics-Based Modeling and Simulation
Topic 20: Fundamental Design Principles for Engineering Orthogonal Liquid-Liquid Phase Separations in Living Cells
Topic 21: Modeling, Prediction, and Mitigation of Rare and Extreme Events in Complex Physical Systems Topic 22: Fundamental Limits of Controllable Waveform Diversity at High Power
Topic 23: Full Quantum State Control at Single Molecule Levels
Topic 24: Constructive Mathematics and Its Synthetic Concepts from Type Theory
Topic 25: Weyl Fermion Optoelectronics
Topic 26: Mechanisms of Ice Nucleation and Anti-Icing Constructs
DoD_DarpaOFFSET
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: Proposals may be submitted through March 26, 2020; the likelihood of available funding is greatly reduced for proposals submitted after the initial deadline of May 1, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $450,000 for 6 months, with an additional three-month option period to facilitate integration activities.
 
The goal of OFFSET Swarm Sprints is to create focused breakthroughs in swarm technologies to be integrated into the OFFSET Swarm Systems Architecture. The specific topics of interest for this amendment are (1) the creation and implementation of potential future synthetic technologies in OFFSET virtual environments to enable exploration of novel swarm tactics; and (2) the application of artificial intelligence methods to accelerate and aid the design of advanced swarm tactics that are robust in realistic operational settings.
 
This BAA amendment solicits proposals for a Core Sprint in Virtual Environments, and also for an Ad Hoc Sprint in the topic area of Applications of Artificial Intelligence. Proposers may respond to more than one Swarm Sprint topic area; however, a separate, standalone proposal is required for each Swarm Sprint topic area.
 
DARPA intends to award up to fifteen Swarm Sprinter awards in this Swarm Sprint call.

DOD_ONRSab
FAS/SEAS/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.
  DoD_other
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. 
DOE_multitopicFOA
Sponsor Deadline for Concept Paper (Required): June 20, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: August 22, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposal: August 29, 2019
Award Amount: up to $500,000 for Tier 1 projects, and up to $4 million for Tier 2 projects, except for Tier 2 awards for Subtopic 1.2, which may be up to $12 million and Subtopic 2.2, which may be up to $10 million.
 
This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) supports federal investment in innovative, early-stage advanced manufacturing applied research and development (R&D) projects that focus on specific high-impact manufacturing technology, materials, and process challenges. The topics are aimed at foundational energy-related advanced manufacturing technologies that impact areas relevant to manufacturing processes (where energy costs are a determinant of competitive manufacturing) and broadly applicable platform technologies (the enabling base upon which other systems and applications can be developed). The competitively selected projects will focus on developing next-generation manufacturing material, information, and process technologies that improve energy efficiency in energy intensive and energy dependent processes. With this FOA, the Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) intends to fund high-impact, early to mid-stage research in the following topic areas:
 
Topic 1: Innovations for the Manufacture of Advanced Materials
  • Subtopic 1.1: Accelerate the Manufacturing Process Design and Development Cycle for Advanced Energy Conversion and Storage Materials
  • Subtopic 1.2: Innovative Manufacturing Processes for Battery Energy Storage
  • Subtopic 1.3: Materials and Manufacturing Process Development of Nanocrystalline Metal Alloys
  • Subtopic 1.4: Process-Informed Science, Design, and Engineering of Materials and Devices Operating in Harsh Service Conditions
Topic 2: Lower Thermal Budget (LTB) Processes for Industrial Efficiency & Productivity
  • Subtopic 2.1: Advances in Industrial and Process Drying
  • Subtopic 2.2: Thermal Process Intensification
Topic 3: Connected, Flexible and Efficient Manufacturing Facilities and Energy Systems
  • Subtopic 3.1: Medium-Voltage Power Conditioning Systems to Enable Grid-Dispatchable and Resilient Manufacturing Facilities
  • Subtopic 3.2: High Power to Heat Ratio, High Efficiency Combined Heat and Power (CHP)
  • Subtopic 3.3: Verification and Validation of CHP and District Energy
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: July 2, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: July 10, 2019
Award Amount: up to $1,250,000 (DOE share) plus 20% cost share requirement; applicants may propose cost share in excess of 20% which could result in higher total award values.
 
The objective of this Oil and Gas FOA is to accelerate the development of potential process modifications, combinations or enhancements, or altogether new alternative processes and technologies-- including techno-economic analyses--that could achieve significant reduction in the quantity of produced water going to deep, underground injection well facilities. Commercialization of treatment technologies that reduce waste water and create fit for purpose water supplies support the Produced Water Research and Development program is another objective of this work. DOE's objective is to publish these detailed process enhancement design analyses to encourage private funding of their development and to stimulate additional public and private research which includes a university or nonprofit performer / subperformer. In addition, DOE seeks to accelerate technology advancement of these technology solutions through funding continued laboratory scale research and development. This FOA solicits applications for the completion of such analytical products and continued technology development at the laboratory scale.
DOE_Other
Other DOE Opportunities

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
NASA_REDDI
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: June 19, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: June 26, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $550,000 for up to 3 years (and the amount in any one year may not exceed $200,000). 10-12 awards are anticipated.
 
NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) hereby solicits proposals from accredited U.S. universities for innovative, early-stage space technology research of high priority to NASA's Mission Directorates. This Appendix seeks proposals on specific space technologies that are currently at low  Technology Readiness Levels (TRL). This ESI Appendix challenges universities to examine the theoretical feasibility of new ideas and approaches that are critical to making science, space travel, and exploration more effective, affordable, and sustainable. This Appendix seeks proposals to develop unique, disruptive, or transformational space technologies that have the potential to lead to dramatic improvements at the system level - performance, weight, cost, reliability, operational simplicity, or other figures of merit associated with space flight hardware or missions. It is the intent of the Space Technology Research Grants program and this Appendix to foster interactions between NASA and the awarded university PIs/teams. Therefore, collaboration/interaction with NASA researchers should be expected while conducting space technology research under these awards. Please note that a PI or Co-I may participate in no more than two proposals in response to this Appendix.
 
This Appendix exclusively seeks proposals that are responsive to one of the following six topics:
  • Topic 1 - Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine Concept Development
  • Topic 2 - Chemical Heat Integrated Power Systems
  • Topic 3 - Rocket Plume-Surface Interaction Prediction Advancements
  • Topic 4 - Machine Learning/Deep Learning Tools for Protecting Astronauts from Solar Energetic Particle Hazards
  • Topic 5 - Next Generation Durability and Damage Tolerance Methodologies
  • Topic 6 - Integration of Cryogenic Fluid Two Phase Numerical Modeling Techniques
NASA_SWS
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: July 16, 2019
Award Amount: Varies by Subtopic Area. The System-Wide Safety Project anticipates investing a total of $1.5M per year in the solicited subtopics over the next three years. The maximum period of performance will be three years, with nominal budgets in the range of $250K-$500K per year. Approximately 6 new awards are anticipated. Please see the NASA Research Announcement (NRA) for further details.
 
The System-Wide Safety (SWS) Project uses new research tools, innovative technologies, and operational methods to safely enable the transformation of aviation to make flight more efficient and accessible, even as the global demand for air transportation services steadily increases. The primary research focus is to develop technologies to enable in-time, system-wide safety. The project also conducts research to create safety-related advances in methods used for the verification and validation of advanced, increasingly autonomous systems. The project has two primary goals. The first goal is to explore, discover and understand how safety could be affected by the growing complexity of advanced aviation systems designed to improve the efficiency of flight, and the increasing number and type of aircraft - piloted and otherwise - available to an ever-growing number and type of customers. The second goal is to develop and demonstrate the research tools, innovative technologies and operational methods that will proactively mitigate those potential risks in order to maintain the aviation industry's unparalleled safety record. SWS activities are directed toward building a system of expanded safety awareness that includes increased access to relevant data, integrated analysis capabilities, improved in-time detection and alerting of hazards, full decision support and automated safety mitigation strategies.
 
The primary research focus of this NRA call is to develop and demonstrate cost-efficient verification and validation methods that provide justifiable confidence in safety claims for designs of complex ATM/avionics systems, including increasingly autonomous, non-deterministic systems. This NRA is soliciting proposals in five subtopic areas:
  • Subtopic 1: Assuring Increasing Autonomous Systems with Non-Traditional Human-Machine Roles
  • Subtopic 2: Case Study Application of the Overarching Properties (OPs)
  • Subtopic 3: Evaluation of V&V Tools on Industrial Case
  • Subtopic 4: Interpretation of Structured Assurance Arguments
  • Subtopic 5: Assessing Partial Automation of Safety Argument Reconstruction and Analysis
NASA_ROSBio2018
Sponsor Deadline for Step-1 Proposals (required): July 5, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): September 26, 2019
Award Amount: Phase-A Awards will be made as cooperative agreements for up to $225,000 over a performance period of 18 months.
 
This Space Biology Appendix to ROSBio-2018 represents a collaboration between NASA's Space Life and Physical Science Research and Applications Division (SLPSRAD) and NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems (AES). The goal of this collaboration is to solicit research and development (R&D) projects that will lead to the development of a more reliable water and nutrient delivery approach/concept for growing edible pick-and-eat plants for multiple generations in microgravity, that will eventually lead to new hardware.
 
Through this solicitation, NASA seeks proposals for the integrated research and development of:
  1. Edible Plant Water and Nutrient Delivery Systems for Microgravity Spaceflight that will provide sufficiently uniform wetting of the roots, avoid the release of free water, and maintain sufficient aeration and oxygen.
  2. Edible Plant Spacing Systems that will optimize the use of plant-growing volume in space.

NASA anticipates accomplishing its goal of procuring the development of a reliable space-ready plant water and nutrient delivery system in three distinct phases. Phase-A involves key components and experiments, Phase-B includes prototype development and system investigations, and Phase-C involves demonstration on the ISS. This Appendix is requesting Phase-A proposals only for plant water and nutrient delivery systems, and/or plant spacing systems that can be used in a NASA furnished plant chamber, and may be scaled up to the size of a full rack on the ISS or future spacecraft. The remaining Phases (B and C) will be implemented for a subset of selected Phase-A proposals.

 
NASA anticipates making up to 5 Phase A awards.
NASA_CANTAP
Sponsor Deadline for Notices of Intent (First Round): July 19, 2019
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): TBA
Award Amount: Each award is not to exceed $30K, with a period of performance of 12 months. The participating partner will also contribute resources to complement the NASA funding for the project. Under the terms of a Cooperative Agreement, the partner is required to contribute at least 50% of the total resources required to accomplish the Cooperative Agreement. However, special situations may arise in which NASA will allow for the partner contribution to be less than 50 percent.
 
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is releasing this Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN) seeking responses that will enhance identified technology needs. This effort will seek a potential partner who will provide service in support of developing technology. The cooperative agreement award recipient is expected to cooperatively share in the development cost of the technology that meets the specified NASA interest, and interact with the appointed KSC contact on a regular basis. Focus areas of interest include: Ground Operations and Services; Plant Research and Production; In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU); and Materials: Polymer matrix composites processing to support KSC's center mission needs.
 
The number of awards granted under this solicitation is dependent on available funding and the alignment of project ideas to NASA Kennedy Space Center needs; NASA expects to award at least one cooperative agreement under this notice.
NASA_unsol
FAS/SEAS/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
FAS/SEAS/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. 
NASA_other
Other NASA Opportunities
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
NIH_earlyind
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: June 19, 2019 by 5:00 PM
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline (if nominated): September 6, 2019
Sponsor Deadline (if nominated): September 13, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $250,000/year for five years plus applicable indirect costs
Eligible Applicants: Date of terminal doctoral degree or completion of post-graduate clinical training of the PI must be between June 1, 2018 and September 30, 2020. At the sponsor application deadline, the PI must not have served as a post-doctoral fellow following a previous doctoral degree for more than twelve months and must not yet have research independence.
 
The NIH Director's Early Independence Award Program supports exceptional investigators who wish to pursue independent research directly after completion of their terminal doctoral/research degree or end of post-graduate clinical training, thereby forgoing the traditional post-doctoral training period and accelerating their entry into an independent research career. Though most newly graduated doctoral-level researchers would benefit from post-doctoral training, a small number of outstanding junior investigators would benefit instead by launching directly into an independent research career. Applications in all topics relevant to the broad mission of NIH are welcome, including, but not limited to, topics in the behavioral, social, biomedical, applied, and formal sciences and topics that may involve basic, translational, or clinical research. The paramount features of the research proposed must be innovation and magnitude of potential impact.
 
To be eligible, at the time of application, candidates must have received their most recent doctoral degree or completed clinical training within the previous fifteen months or expect to do so within the following twelve months. By the end of the award period, the Early Independence Award investigator is expected to be competitive for continued funding of his/her research program through other NIH funding activities and for a permanent research-oriented position.
 
Please Note:  This is a limited submission opportunity and only two applications may be submitted by Harvard University from the University Area (Cambridge Campus). Potential applicants to be hosted by Harvard schools in the University Area must submit a pre-proposal to Jennifer Corby via email at  jcorby@fas.harvard.edu  no later than 5PM on June 19, 2019 in order to be considered for the Harvard nominations. The pre-proposal should include:
  • A two-page research proposal. Subsequent pages for references and/or graphics may be included and do not count toward the page limit.
  • A current CV
  • A letter of support from the department chair or program director of the candidate's proposed host department/program at Harvard. The letter should describe the position details, the institutional resources to be committed, and the commitment of the host to the career development of the applicant
NIH_newinnovator
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: August 19, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: August 26, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $1,500,000 over five years
 
The NIH Director's New Innovator Award supports exceptionally creative Early Stage Investigators who propose highly innovative research projects with the potential for unusually high impact. The award is designed specifically to support unusually creative investigators with highly innovative research ideas at an early stage of their career when they may lack the preliminary data required for an R01 grant application. The emphasis is on innovation and creativity; preliminary data are not required, but may be included. No detailed, annual budget is requested in the application. The review process emphasizes the individual's creativity, the innovativeness of the research approaches, and the potential of the project, if successful, to have a significant impact on an important biomedical or behavioral research problem.
 
Applicants must meet the definition of an Early Stage Investigator (ESI) at the time of application. An ESI is a new investigator (defined as a PD/PI who has not competed successfully for a significant NIH independent research award) who is within 10 years of completing his/her terminal research degree or end of post-graduate clinical training.

NIH_pioneer
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: August 30, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: September 6, 2019
Award Amount: $700,000/year for 5 years
 
The NIH Director's Pioneer Award supports individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose highly innovative approaches to addressing major challenges in the biomedical or behavioral sciences towards the goal of enhancing human health. Applications proposing research on any topic within the broad mission of NIH are welcome. Emphases are on the qualities of the investigator and the innovativeness and potential impact of the proposed research. Preliminary data and detailed experimental plans are not requested. 
 
To be considered pioneering, the proposed research must reflect substantially different ideas from those being pursued in the investigator's current research program or elsewhere. The Pioneer Award is not intended to expand a current research program into the area of the proposed project. While the research direction may rely on the applicant's prior work and expertise as its foundation, it cannot be an obvious extension or scale-up of a current research enterprise which may be competitive as a new or renewal R01 application. Rather, the proposed project must reflect a fundamental new insight into the potential solution of a problem, which may develop from exceptionally innovative approaches and/or radically unconventional hypotheses.
NIH_dtra
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: September 13, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: September 20, 2019
Award Amount: Application budgets are not limited but should reflect the needs of the proposed project.
 
The NIH Director's Transformative Research Award supports individual scientists or groups of scientists proposing groundbreaking, exceptionally innovative, original, and/or unconventional research with the potential to create new scientific paradigms, establish entirely new and improved clinical approaches, or develop transformative technologies. Applications from individuals with diverse backgrounds and in any topic relevant to the broad mission of NIH are welcome. Little or no preliminary data are expected. Projects must clearly demonstrate the potential to produce a major impact in a broad area of biomedical or behavioral research.
OtherNIHOpps
Other NIH Opportunities
National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation: Dear Colleague Letters
NSFDCL_effectiveprac 
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: N/A
Sponsor Deadline: N/A
Award Amount: N/A
 
Open science principles are increasingly being adopted by industry, government, and academia. Open science gives rise to public benefits by offering broader access to publication, data, and other research materials; broader access enables broader circulation of scientific knowledge, greater return on investments in research data, and more opportunities for replicating and building upon scientific findings. NSF's open science policy is articulated in the Foundation's Public Access Plan ( NSF 15-052 ) and formally implemented in the NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide and in the Award Terms and Conditions that accompany each award that NSF makes. Implications of this policy are further clarified in an actively-maintained set of Frequently Asked Questions ( NSF 18-041 ). The purpose of this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) is to describe - and encourage - effective practices for managing research data, including the use of persistent identifiers (IDs) for data and machine-readable data management plans (DMPs). Through this DCL, NSF encourages researchers to learn about the practices described in the letter and to implement them in the proposals that they prepare for submission to NSF.
NSFDCL_accel
Sponsor Deadline: June 24, 2019
Award Amount: N/A

This Request for Information (RFI) is issued in conjunction with  NSF's 10 Big Ideas. NSF 19-050 invited proposals for the NSF Convergence Accelerator Pilot. Track A1 of this pilot,  Open Knowledge Network , relates to the  Harnessing the Data Revolution   (HDR) Big Idea. Track B1,  AI and Future Jobs , and track B2,  National Talent Ecosystem , relate to the  Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier  (FW-HTF) Big Idea. The purpose of this RFI is to seek input from industry, institutions of higher education (IHEs), non-profits, government entities, and other interested parties on future NSF Convergence Accelerator tracks within these two Big Ideas, within other Big Ideas, or on other topics that may not relate directly to a Big Idea but that may have national impact. Ideas suggested in response to this RFI should be similar in breadth to tracks A1, B1, and B2, which are broad enough to each support a set of related research teams working together as a cohort. This RFI does not invite research proposals, however this process may suggest topics for future funding opportunities. Proposers may separately submit conference proposals to refine these ideas.
NSFDCL_jointeffort
OSP Deadline: varies by program
Sponsor Deadline: varies by program
Award Amount: varies by program
 
Building on NSF's history of investments in data and computational sciences and USDA/NIFA's history of investments in agricultural science, NSF and USDA/NIFA wish to notify the community of their intention to jointly fund convergent research that combines methods in agricultural, biological, and computer and information science and engineering to address pressing challenges and opportunities in digital agriculture. This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) is aligned with NSF's Harnessing the Data Revolution Big Idea, and aims to build capacity across disciplinary boundaries, in preparation for larger scale investments at the intersection of computational, agricultural, and biological sciences. Motivated by the increasing volumes of data, faster computation, and algorithmic advances, there is an opportunity to apply transformative, data-driven research methods to the agriculture sector that are responsive to and will yield meaningful insights for farmers, other stakeholders, and society at large. Of interest for this DCL are applications focused on economically important plants, animals, and their environments---in particular food, fuel, feed, and health---and where research outcomes in a particular application area may be transferable to, or informative for, other agricultural application areas. Relevant stakeholders can be integrated into the proposed research activities, including as partners in the project, if appropriate for the project.
 
Proposals pursuant to this DCL may be submitted to one of the three programs listed below:
NSFDCL_BIGDATA
Sponsor Deadline: varies/see details below
Award Amount: varies/see details below
 
With data science now established as a discipline in its own right, NSF is transitioning investments in the BIGDATA program into (i) a new phase of larger and more targeted programs as part of the NSF-wide   Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR) Big Idea , and (ii) increased investments in core programs related to BIGDATA. While NSF plans no further competitions under the BIGDATA program, NSF anticipates supporting many new and continuing programs that fund innovative, interdisciplinary research in data science. Principal investigators (PIs) who would have applied to BIGDATA are especially encouraged to consider the  Harnessing the Data Revolution: Institutes for Data-Intensive Research in Science and Engineering - Frameworks (HDR: DIRSE-FW)   program. This program is one of two conceptualization paths aimed at developing institutes to accelerate discovery and innovation in data-intensive science and engineering. The DIRSE-FW program encourages applications from teams of researchers proposing frameworks for integrated sets of science and engineering problems and data science solutions. PIs may also be interested in the other conceptualization path aimed at developing institutes, the  Harnessing the Data Revolution: Institutes for Data-Intensive Research in Science and Engineering - Ideas Labs   program, which aims to bring together scientists and engineers working on important data-intensive problems with data scientists and systems/ cyberinfrastructure specialists. Activities under the HDR Big Idea complement ongoing opportunities for advancing research and education in data-intensive science and engineering. PIs are encouraged to consider applying to the following core and crosscutting programs as well:

 
Finally, NSF anticipates additional relevant programs to be announced later in 2019 or in 2020.

NSF_fairness
FAS/SEAS/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
FAS/SEAS/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_REUsupplemental
FAS/SEAS/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.
NSFDCL_stemworkforce
FAS/SEAS/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:
 

NSFDCLPhotonics
FAS/SEAS/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. 
NSFDCL_MODULUS
Models for Uncovering Rules and Unexpected Phenomena in Biological Systems (MODULUS)
OSP/FAS/SEAS Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of full proposal
Sponsor Deadline: April 1, 2020 (for FY20 funding)
Award Amount: no specified limit; budgets to be appropriate for the scope of the project proposed

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS), in collaboration with the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB), seeks to promote interdisciplinary research that enables novel mathematical and computational approaches that capture and explore the full range of mechanisms and biological variability needed to better understand biological systems behavior across multiple scales. Funding opportunities are available in fiscal years FY2019 and FY2020 to provide support for proposals from interdisciplinary teams comprised of mathematical, computational, and biological scientists to develop  MOD els for  U ncovering Ru l es and  U nexpected Phenomena in Biological  S ystems ( MODULUS ). This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) is to encourage researchers involved in the biosciences and the mathematical sciences to collaborate formatively in biological investigations using novel mechanistic mathematical models to guide biological exploration and discovery of new rules in living systems.
 
Proposals funded through this DCL are anticipated to cultivate innovative modes of collaboration among researchers working at the interface of mathematics and molecular and cellular biology, with an emphasis on systems-scale integration. Each proposal submitted in response to this DCL should address a current state-of-the-research challenge and describe a strategy for formative integration of mathematical and biological understanding to address the challenge. In addition, the proposal should describe the unique interdisciplinary training opportunity for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers working on the project. Proposals in response to this DCL should be submitted to either DMS via the  Mathematical Biology Program Description   or the MCB solicitation,  NSF 18-585 , directed to the Systems and Synthetic Biology program (8011). The proposal title should be prefaced with "MODULUS:". The MCB solicitation accepts proposals to core programs or to a Rules of Life (RoL) track. Submission to either track is permissible given that the guidance as detailed in the solicitation ( NSF 18-585 ) for each is followed. For proposals submitted to MCB and targeted for the RoL track, a second program in another BIO Division must  also be identified.

National Science Foundation: Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (NSF: CISE)
NFScise_CRII
OSP Deadline: August 7, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: August 14, 2019
Award Amount:
up to $175,000 for a period of 24 months

NSF CISE seeks to award grants intended to support research independence among early-career academicians who specifically lack access to adequate organizational or other resources. It is expected that funds obtained through this program will be used to support untenured faculty or research scientists (or equivalent) in their first three years in a primary academic position after the PhD, but not more than five years after completion of their PhD. Applicants for this program may not yet have received any other grants or contracts in the PI role from any department, agency, or institution of the federal government, including from the CAREER program or any other program, post-PhD, regardless of the size of the grant or contract, with certain exceptions. Serving as co-PI, Senior Personnel, Postdoctoral Fellow, or other Fellow does not count against this eligibility rule.

Importantly, the CRII program seeks to provide essential resources to enable early-career PIs to launch their research careers. For the purposes of this program, CISE defines "essential resources" as those that (a) the PI does not otherwise have, including through organizational or other funding and (b) are critical for the PI to conduct early-career research that will enable research independence. In particular, this program is not appropriate for PIs who already have access to resources to conduct any early-career research. It is expected that these funds will allow the new CRII PI to support one or more graduate students for up to two years.
NSFcise_other 
Other NSF: CISE Opportunities 

National Science Foundation: Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences (NSF: MPS)
NSFMPS_CCI
Centers for Chemical Innovation (CCI)
Sponsor Deadline for Phase I Preliminary Proposals: August 13, 2019
OSP/FAS/SEAS Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of full proposal
Sponsor Deadline: October 16, 2019 (Phase II Full Proposals, New and Renewal); February 19, 2020 (Phase I Full Proposals, By Invitation Only)
Award Amount:
In FY 2020, NSF anticipates making three new Phase I awards (each up to $1,800,000 for 3 years) as standard or continuing grants. NSF also anticipates up to three new/renewal Phase II awards (up to $4,000,000 per year for 5 years) as a cooperative agreement.

The Centers for Chemical Innovation (CCI) Program supports research centers focused on major, long-term fundamental chemical research challenges. CCIs that address these challenges will produce transformative research, lead to innovation, and attract broad scientific and public interest. CCIs are agile structures that can respond rapidly to emerging opportunities through enhanced collaborations. CCIs integrate research, innovation, education, broadening participation, and informal science communication.

The CCI Program is a two-phase program. Both phases are described in this solicitation. Phase I CCIs receive significant resources to develop the science, management and broader impacts of a major research center before requesting Phase II funding. Satisfactory progress in Phase I is required for Phase II applications; Phase I proposals funded in FY 2020 will seek Phase II funding in FY 2023. The FY 2020 Phase I CCI competition is open to projects in all fields supported by the Division of Chemistry, and must have scientific focus and the potential for transformative impact in chemistry. NSF Chemistry particularly encourages fundamental chemistry projects related to one or more of NSF's  10 Big Ideas . The FY 2020 Phase II CCI competition is open to projects funded as Phase I awards in FY 2017 and the renewal of the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology.
  OtherNSFMPS 
Other NSF: MPS Opportunities 
National Science Foundation: Directorate for Engineering (NSF: ENG)
NSF:ENG
NSF: ENG Opportunities
National Science Foundation: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary
NSFCross_SaTC
Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Frontiers (SaTC Frontiers)
OSP/FAS/SEAS Deadline for Letter of Intent: June 27, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Letter of Intent: July 5, 2019
OSP/FAS/SEAS Deadline for Full Proposals: September 23, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: September 30, 2019
Award Amount:
$5,000,000 to $10,000,000 in total budget for up to five years
 
The Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program welcomes proposals that address cybersecurity and privacy, and draw on expertise in one or more of these areas: computing, communication and information sciences; engineering; economics; education; mathematics; statistics; and social and behavioral sciences. Proposals that advance the field of cybersecurity and privacy within a single discipline or interdisciplinary efforts that span multiple disciplines are both encouraged.
 
Through this solicitation-under the SaTC umbrella-NSF specifically seeks ambitious and potentially transformative center-scale projects in the area of security and privacy that (1) catalyze far-reaching research explorations motivated by deep scientific questions or hard problems and/or by compelling applications and novel technologies that promise significant scientific and/or societal benefits, and (2) stimulate significant research and education outcomes that, through effective knowledge transfer mechanisms, promise scientific, economic and/or other societal benefits. The goal of the SaTC Frontiers program is to advance the frontiers of cybersecurity and privacy, and the areas listed in the SaTC program solicitation are meant to be illustrative but not exhaustive.
NSFCross_smart
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Letter of Intent: July 30, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Letter of Intent: August 6, 2019 
OSP Deadline for Full Proposal: August 29, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposal: September 6, 2019
Award Amount: up to $150,000 for one year (Planning Grants); up to $1.5M (Integrative Research Grants - Track 2); $1.5M+ (Integrative Research Grants - Track 1)

The S&CC program encourages researchers to work with communities and residents to identify and define challenges they are facing, enabling those challenges to motivate use-inspired research questions. The S&CC program supports integrative research that addresses fundamental technological and social science dimensions of smart and connected communities  and pilots solutions together with communities. Importantly, the program is interested in projects that consider the sustainability of the research outcomes beyond the life of the project, including the scalability and transferability of the proposed solutions.
T his S&CC solicitation will support research projects in the following categories:
  • S&CC Integrative Research Grants (SCC-IRGs) Tracks 1 and 2. Awards in this category will support fundamental integrative research that addresses technological and social science dimensions of smart and connected communities and pilots solutions together with communities.
  • S&CC Planning Grants (SCC-PGs). Awards in this category are for capacity building to prepare project teams to propose future well-developed SCC-IRG proposals.


Please Note:  Letter of Inquiry submission is required for  S&CC Integrative Research Grants (SCC-IRGs) Tracks 1 and 2.
NSFCross_QLCI
Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes (QLCI)
Letter of Intent Deadline (Required): August 3, 2020 (Round II QLCI Proposals); The LOI deadline for Round I QLCI Proposals has passed. 
Preliminary Proposal Deadline: August 1, 2019 (Round I QLCI Proposals); September 1, 2020 (Round II QLCI Proposals)
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: January 2, 2020 (Round I QLCI Proposals); February 1, 2021 (Round II QCLI Proposals)
Award Amount: Up to $5M per year for 5 years (Challenge Institute Awards)
 
Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes are large-scale interdisciplinary research projects that aim to advance the frontiers of quantum information science and engineering. Research at these Institutes will span the focus areas of quantum computation, quantum communication, quantum simulation and/or quantum sensing. The institutes are expected to foster multidisciplinary approaches to specific scientific, technological, educational workforce development goals in these fields.  Two types of awards will be supported under this program: 
  • 5-year Challenge Institute (CI) awards to establish and operate Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes. This activity is part of the Quantum Leap, one of the research Big Ideas promoted by the National Science Foundation (NSF). 
  • 12-month Conceptualization Grants (CGs) to support teams envisioning subsequent Institute proposals. Please note the deadline to submit CG proposals has passed. 
NSFCross_IGE
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: August 5, 2019 by 11:30 PM
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline (if nominated): September 20, 2019
Sponsor Deadline (if nominated): September 27, 2019
Award Amount: Up to three years in duration with a total budget between $300,000-$500,000

The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, and potentially transformative approaches to STEM graduate education training. The program seeks proposals that explore ways for graduate students in research-based master's and doctoral degree programs to develop the skills, knowledge, and competencies needed to pursue a range of STEM careers.

IGE focuses on projects aimed at piloting, testing, and validating innovative and potentially transformative approaches to graduate education. IGE projects are intended to generate the knowledge required for their customization, implementation, and broader adoption. The program supports testing of novel models or activities with high potential to enrich and extend the knowledge base on effective graduate education approaches.

The program addresses both workforce development, emphasizing broad participation, and institutional capacity building needs in graduate education. Strategic collaborations with the private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government agencies, national laboratories, field stations, teaching and learning centers, informal science centers, and academic partners are encouraged.

Please Note: Harvard University, as a single institution, is limited to submitting two proposals to this opportunity. This includes serving as a lead organization, non-lead organization, or sub awardee on a collaborative proposal, or as a lead organization on a non-collaborative proposal. Organizations participating solely as evaluators on projects are excluded from this limitation. An individual may serve as Lead PI or Co-PI on only one proposal submitted to the IGE program per annual competition. 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.
NSFCross_reu
OSP/FAS/SEAS Deadline: August 21, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: August 28, 2019
Award Amount: For summer REU projects, the total budget request--including all direct costs and indirect costs--is generally expected not to exceed $1,200 per student per week. (The budget request for an academic-year REU project should be comparable on a pro rata basis.) However, projects that involve international activities, field work in remote locations, a Research Experience for Teachers (RET) component, or other exceptional circumstances may exceed this limit.
 
The Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program supports active research participation by undergraduate students in any of the areas of research funded by the National Science Foundation. REU projects involve students in meaningful ways in ongoing research programs or in research projects specifically designed for the REU program. This solicitation features two mechanisms for support of student research:
  1. REU Sites are based on independent proposals to initiate and conduct projects that engage a number of students in research. REU Sites may be based in a single discipline or academic department or may offer interdisciplinary or multi-department research opportunities with a coherent intellectual theme. Proposals with an international dimension are welcome.
  2. REU Supplements may be included as a component of proposals for new or renewal NSF grants or cooperative agreements or may be requested for ongoing NSF-funded research projects.
Undergraduate student participants in either REU Sites or REU Supplements must be U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, or permanent residents of the United States. Students do not apply to NSF to participate in REU activities. Students apply directly to REU Sites or to NSF-funded investigators who receive REU Supplements. To identify appropriate REU Sites, students should consult the directory of active REU Sites here .
NSFCross_ires
International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) *
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days before sponsor deadline
Sponsor Deadline: September 10, 2019 (Track-I: IRES Sites); September 17, 2019 (Track-II: Advanced Studies Institutes); September 24, 2019 (Track-III: New Concepts in International Graduate Experience)
Award Amount: Up to $300,000 over 3 years (Track-I: IRES Sites); Up to $400,000 over up to 3 years (Track-II: Advanced Studies Institutes); Up to $1M over 3 years (Track-III: New Concepts in International Graduate Experience)
 
The International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) program supports international research and research-related activities for U.S. science and engineering students. The IRES program contributes to development of a diverse, globally-engaged workforce with world-class skills. IRES focuses on active research participation by undergraduate or graduate students in high quality international research, education and professional development experiences in NSF-funded research areas.
  1. IRES - Track I: IRES Sites (IS) projects engage a group of undergraduate and/or graduate students in active high-quality collaborative research at an international site with mentorship from researchers at a host lab. IRES Sites must be organized around a coherent intellectual theme that may involve a single discipline or multiple disciplines funded by NSF.
  2. IRES - Track II: Advanced Studies Institutes (ASI) are intensive short courses with related activities that engage advanced graduate students in active learning and research at the frontiers of knowledge. ASIs typically range in length from ten to twenty-one days and must be held outside the United States. ASIs must have a compelling rationale for their international location and should involve distinguished active researchers in the target field from the U.S. and abroad. ASIs should enable students to develop skills and broaden professional networks, leveraging international participation and complementary resources (expertise, facilities, data, field site, etc.) for mutual benefit.
  3. IRES - Track III: New Concepts in International Graduate Experience (IGE) The IGE IRES track invites teams of PIs to propose, implement, evaluate and disseminate innovative large-scale programs (models) for providing high-quality international research and research-related professional development experiences to U.S. graduate students. The PIs should explain how their innovative program (model) could potentially be adaptable beyond the immediate disciplinary fields involved in their proposal. The proposals should be designed from the viewpoint of graduate-level STEM research/training, and globally engaged STEM workforce development. The proposals should be grounded in relevant literature on graduate STEM research/training, education, and graduate level international experiences.
NSFCross_CyberPhysical
Cyber-Physical Systems
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 days prior to submission of a full proposal
Sponsor Submission Window: September 12, 2019 - September 26, 2019 (Frontier); The deadline for Small and Medium grants has passed.  
Award Amount: $1.2M - $7M (Frontier)

The Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) program aims to develop the core research needed to engineer complex CPS, some of which may also require dependable, high-confidence, or provable behaviors. Core research areas of the program include control, data analytics, autonomy, design, information management, internet of things (IoT), mixed initiatives including human-in- or on-the-loop, networking, privacy, real-time systems, safety, security, and verification. By abstracting from the particulars of specific systems and application domains, the CPS program seeks to reveal cross-cutting, fundamental scientific and engineering principles that underpin the integration of cyber and physical elements across all application domains. The program additionally supports the development of methods, tools, and hardware and software components based upon these cross-cutting principles, along with validation of the principles via prototypes and testbeds. This program also fosters a research community that is committed to advancing education and outreach in CPS and accelerating the transition of CPS research into the real world.
OtherNSFCross2 
Other NSF: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary Opportunities
_________________________________________

For assistance, please contact:

Jennifer Corby
Research Development Officer
jcorby@fas.harvard.edu | 617-495-1590


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