November 2020 
 

A Note from the Research Development Team

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our team will be working remotely. We are available to provide assistance via email, phone, or Zoom conferencing. Please also refer to our FAS RAS website and the OSP website for information about submitting proposals and managing your awards.

For assistance, please contact:
Erin Hale, Senior Research Development Officer

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

News, Announcements, and Special Features

The FAS Research Development team has compiled the following resources for those seeking funding for COVID-19 Research:
 
  • For an aggregated list of COVID-19 research funding opportunities, visit the SPIN website while on a Harvard network and click on Search in the menu bar and then click on COVID-19/Coronavirus Funding Opportunities in the drop down menu. This list is updated daily and can be exported to Excel.
  • Harvard Link: Alternatively, you may add the key word COVID to your Harvard Link account to receive updated COVID-19 funding recommendations.
  • Other Funding Search Databases Available to Harvard Affiliates: All Harvard affiliates have access to the funding databases PIVOT, SPIN and FDO here.
  • ­Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Funding List: Johns Hopkins University has compiled and continues to maintain a list of funding opportunities available for COVID-19 research.
 
We also encourage you to visit the division of science and SEAS Coronavirus FAQs website.

Feature: COVID-19 Funding Opportunities Spotlight 
This section of the newsletter will highlight opportunities relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic. 
Feature: New Investigator Opportunity Spotlight
Quick links to early career opportunities in this month's newsletter.
Indicates an UPDATED or NEW opportunity added this month

News: DARPA Expands Opportunities for Computer Science Researchers with New Post-doc Program
 
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is broadening the scope of its commitment to talented young scientists, engineers, and mathematicians through a new fellowship program focused specifically on postdoctoral researchers in the field of computer science with grants sized to support each fellow for up to two years. 

This new program is open to current U.S. citizens or permanent residents who have received a Ph.D. degree no earlier than June 2019 or who will have received a Ph.D. prior to the date of award, and who will be appointed to a postdoctoral position during the 2021-22 academic year. Read more about this new opportunity here.

News: DoD intends to establish a Defense Civilian Training Corps (DCTC) program

DoD intends to establish a Defense Civilian Training Corps (DCTC) program, organized into one or more units, at any accredited civilian educational institution authorized to grant baccalaureate degrees. The purpose of the program is to establish a civilian training corps to prepare selected students for public service in DoD occupations relating to acquisition, science, engineering, or other civilian occupations determined by the Secretary of Defense, and to target critical skill gaps. This RFI is seeking information from educational institutions to help assess the program's viability and use the data to improve the implementation plan in the following areas: 1) level of institutional interest in DCTC participation; 2) assessment of institutional selection criteria; and 3) coronavirus impact on higher education. 

Responses are due by November 23, 2020.

News: NASA Request for Information: Addressing space radiation quality, chronic low dose rates, and simulation of the space radiation environment

The Space Radiation Element (SRE) is forming an interdisciplinary team of researchers to evaluate the state of current space radiobiology research and address the major gaps that continue to contribute to uncertainties in radiation risk estimates and limit the understanding of the impact of space radiation on human health. This call for nominations will provide the Space Radiation Element Scientists the opportunity to invite nominees to take part in a virtual workshop later in the current calendar year to develop recommended studies and strategy that will be peer reviewed and funded to begin work in the first half of calendar year 2021. Responses to this RFI should be self-nominations and considered statements of intent to be included in the interdisciplinary team. 

Responses are due by December 11, 2020.



News: NSF Seeks Proposals from Mid-Career Researchers

Through the Mid-Career Advancement (MCA) program, the NSF is seeking proposals from mid-career scientists at the Associate Professor rank (or equivalent) who wish to substantively advance their research program and career trajectory. The MCA provides protected time and resources to enable advancements in creativity and productivity. Scientists at the Associate Professor rank (or equivalent) are freer than their more junior colleagues to pursue bold and innovative research ideas, but at the same time are often more constrained due to increased service and teaching responsibilities that can hamper scientific productivity. MCA support is expected to help lift these constraints and reduce workload inequities.
Funding Opportunities
Indicates an UPDATED or NEW opportunity added this month
Foundation Opportunities 
Internal Opportunities
Industry/Corporate Opportunities

U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

National Institutes of Health (NIH)


Foundation Opportunities
EREF
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 20, 2020
Sponsor Pre-Proposal Deadline: December 1, 2020
Award Amount: Previously awarded grants have ranged from $15,000 to over $500,000 with the average grant amount in recent years being $160,000. Typical project durations are about 2 years.
 
The EREF funds research on sustainable waste management practices. Pre-proposal topics must relate to sustainable solid waste management practices and pertain to the following topic areas:
  1. Waste minimization
  2. Recycling
  3. Waste conversion to energy, biofuels, chemicals or other useful products. This includes, but is not limited to waste-to-energy, anaerobic digestion, composting, and other thermal or biological conversion technologies.
  4. Strategies to promote diversion to higher and better uses (e.g. organics diversion, market analysis, optimized material management, logistics, etc.)
  5. Landfilling 
Desirable aspects of the above topics, in addition to or as part of hypothesis driven applied research, also include: economic or cost/benefit analyses, feasibility studies for untested technologies or management strategies, life cycle analysis or inventory, and analyses of policies that relate to the above.
WellcomeHope
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Abstract: November 20, 2020
Sponsor Abstract Deadline: December 1, 2020
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline (if invited): January 6, 2021
Sponsor Full Proposal Deadline (if invited): January 13, 2021
Award Amount: Award amounts will be dependent on specific proposals and work selected for funding. Abstracts and proposals are solicited for work over 3 years (with a potential additional one-year option) in one or more of the thrust areas listed below.
 
This program aims to leverage the power of bioengineering to advance stem cells, organoids, and whole organ systems and connections that recapitulate human physiology in vitro and restore vital functions in vivo. The program is soliciting abstracts and proposals for work in one or more of the following thrust areas:
  • Thrust Area 1: Human Cell Survival, Expansion and Identity
  • Thrust Area 2: Immune System: Structure & Function
  • Thrust Area 3: Tissue/Organ Maturation, Scalability & Standardization
  • Thrust Area 4: Tissue/Organ Vascularization and Resident Immunity
  • Thrust Area 5: System Demonstrations
All abstract submissions will receive technical and/or programmatic feedback as well as a recommendation to submit or not submit a full proposal. Please contact OTD if you have any questions regarding IP protection and/or whether specific information should be excluded from your abstract submission. 
USIsrael
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 2, 2020
Sponsor Deadline: December 9, 2020
Award Amount: up to $250,000 for up to 4 years

The U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) promotes scientific relations between the U.S. and Israel by supporting collaborative research projects in a 
wide area of basic and applied scientific fieldsfor peaceful and non-profit purposes. The BSF Research Grants program funds both U.S. and Israeli scientists who wish to work together. Applications must be submitted together by at least one scientist from each country. In 2020, the following areas of research are eligible for submission:
  • Exact and Physical Sciences: Atmospheric, Ocean & Earth Sciences; Chemistry; Computer Sciences; Energy research; Environmental research; Materials research; Mathematical Sciences; and Physics
  • Social Sciences: Economics; Psychology; and Sociology
McKnightFdn
Sponsor LOI Deadline: December 7, 2020
SEAS/FAS/OSP Deadline: April 19, 2021
Full Proposal Deadline: April 26, 2021
Award Amount: $100,000 per year for two years
 
This program seeks to advance and enlarge the range of technologies available to the neurosciences. The fund is especially interested in how technology may be used or adapted to monitor, manipulate, analyze, or model brain function at any level, from the molecular to the entire organism. Technology may take any form, from biochemical tools to instruments to software and mathematical approaches. Because the program seeks to advance and enlarge the range of technologies available to the neurosciences, research based primarily on existing techniques will not be considered. A goal of the Technological Innovations awards is to foster collaboration between the neurosciences and other disciplines; therefore, collaborative and cross-disciplinary applications are explicitly invited.
 
Recent recipients include Alexander Schier (MCB, 2017-2018).
nasem
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: not required for grants awarded directly to individuals
Sponsor Deadline: December 10, 2020
Award Amount: $50,000
 
Through its program of Fellowships, the Ford Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation's college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, to maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and to increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students. 

Postdoctoral fellowships will be awarded in a national competition administered by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) on behalf of the Ford Foundation. The awards will be made to individuals who, in the judgment of the review panels, have demonstrated superior academic achievement, are committed to a career in teaching and research at the college or university level, show promise of future achievement as scholars and teachers, and are well prepared to use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students. Awards will be made for study in research-based programs. Examples include the following major disciplines and related interdisciplinary fields: American studies, anthropology, archaeology, art and theater history, astronomy, chemistry, communications, computer science, cultural studies, earth sciences, economics, education, engineering, ethnic studies, ethnomusicology, geography, history, international relations, language, life sciences, linguistics, literature, mathematics, performance study, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, religious studies, sociology, urban planning, and women's studies. Also eligible are interdisciplinary ethnic studies programs, such as African American studies and Native American studies, and other interdisciplinary programs, such as area studies, peace studies, and social justice. 

Individuals who have completed all the requirements for a Ph.D. or Sc.D. degree, including successful defense of the dissertation, no earlier than December 10, 2013 and no later than December 10, 2020 are eligible to apply. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Each Fellow is expected to begin tenure on June 1 (for 12 months) or September 1 (for 9 or 12 months) of the year in which the award is received.
Odyssey
SEAS/FAS/OSP Deadline: December 15, 2020
Sponsor Initial Proposal Deadline: January 5, 2021
Award Amount: $300,000 over two years
New this year: There is no limit on the number of applicants from a given institution so applicants no longer need to be internally selected by their institutions.
 
The Smith Family Foundation Odyssey Award supports the pursuit of high impact ideas to generate breakthroughs and drive new directions in biomedical research. The awards will fund high-risk, high-reward pilot projects solicited from the brightest junior faculty in the region. Projects should be conceptualized as a novel research line and a distinct and novel off-shoot from the applicant's current research.
 
Applications will be accepted from full-time, independent faculty at academic research institutions who have not yet achieved tenure or its equivalent by the funding start date of October 1, 2021. Applicants must have received their first independent faculty appointment on or between October 1, 2012 and October 1, 2017. Applicants are ineligible if, at the time of application or in either of the first two years (10/1/21 - 9/30/22 or 10/1/22 - 9/30/23) of the two-year Smith Odyssey Award, they have combined federal and non-federal funding totaling $750,000 or more in direct costs. This figure refers to external funding only and not an applicant's start-up package, other intramural support, or the Smith Family Awards Program for Excellence in Biomedical Research. Applications from women and people of color are particularly encouraged.

Fdn_franklin
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: Review by Harvard OSP not required
Nomination Deadline: December 31, 2020 
Prize Amount: $250,000
 
The Franklin lnstitute seeks nominations for the 2021 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science of individuals who have made significant contributions to the scientific understanding of decision-making. The interdisciplinary field of decision-making integrates theory and methods from economics, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and related areas to understand the mechanisms through which individuals and groups choose among competing possibilities and how these mechanisms guide behavior.
 
Nominations from any individual or organization will be accepted, including self-nominations. Nominations are encouraged in, but not limited to, the following subtopics and their intersections:
  • Psychological insights: mechanisms, development, context-dependence, individual differences, cultural variation, evolution
  • Modeling of individual or group choice behavior: valuation, social preferences, impulsivity, strategy, network models
  • Neurobiological mechanisms: human neuroscience, model organisms, behavioral neuroscience, genetic approaches, comparative approaches
  • Clinical approaches: pharmacology, psychiatric disorders, neuropsychological conditions
  • Development of interventions to improve individual and/or group decision-making outcomes
  • Broad applications: artificial intelligence, courts/law, education, finance, health/medicine, government/public policy, intelligence, labor, technology
SimonsCollabMath
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 21, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: January 28, 2021
Award Amount: $8,400 per year for five years ($6,000 per year for collaboration, travel and research expenses; $1,000 per year in discretionary funds for the awardee's department; and $1,400 per year in indirect costs to the awardee's institution)
 
The goal of the program is to substantially increase collaborative contacts between accomplished, active mathematicians in the United States, who do not otherwise have access to funding that allows support for travel and visitors. To be eligible to apply, an individual must have a Ph.D. degree and hold a tenure-track or tenured position within a mathematics department with a Ph.D. degree granting program. The five-year grant will commence September 1, 2021. Collaboration grant awardees may not hold any other external PI or PI equivalent grants with an end date after September 1, 2021.
Packard
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: January 21, 2021
Award Amount: $875,000 over five years
Eligible Disciplines: physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, astronomy, computer science, earth science, ocean science, and all branches of engineering
 
The Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering program provides the nation's most promising early-career scientists and engineers with flexible funding and the freedom to take risks and explore new frontiers in their fields of study. Packard Fellows are encouraged to think big and look at complex issues with a fresh perspective. Fellows may use their funds in whatever way would best advance their research. The following disciplines are eligible for support: chemistry, mathematics, biology, astronomy, computer science, earth science, ocean science, and all branches of engineering. Initial faculty appointments should have begun no earlier than May 31, 2018 and no later than May 31, 2021. The Foundation allows exceptions to the eligibility window for time taken for family/medical leave. If a nominee is outside the eligibility window this should be briefly acknowledged in the nomination letter.
 
Recent recipients include Julia Mundy (Physics, 2020), Marine Denolle (EPS, 2017), Kang-Kuen Ni (CCB, 2016), Karin Oberg (Astronomy, 2014), Emily Balskus (CCB, 2013), Charlie Conroy (Astronomy, 2013), Karinne Gibbs (MCB, 2012), and John Johnson (Astronomy, 2012).
 
Please Note: This is a limited submission opportunity and Harvard University may put forward only two nominations. Applicants for the Harvard nomination must be nominated by a department chair or area chair and must submit a pre-proposal to an internal competition administered by the Office of the Vice Provost of Research (OVPR) at the link above.

Internal Opportunities
motsepe
Deadline: November 30, 2020
Award Amount: up to $100,000
 
The primary purpose of the Fund is to support faculty-led and student-driven research projects that focus on advancing key challenges and opportunities facing Africa - whether it be emerging technologies and the Fourth Industrial Revolution; climate change and its effect on health, agriculture, water, and/or sanitation; renewable energy and its benefit to infrastructure and/or society; health; aging; materials science; and the governance and policies needed for an entrepreneurial economy. Activities the Fund may support include but are not limited to research; associated travel costs; and the publication and dissemination of findings. Special consideration will also be given to projects that propose multidisciplinary collaboration between Harvard faculty across more than one school and Africa-based academics. More information is available in the Request for Applications and at the link above.
Lemann
Deadline: January 25, 2021
Award Amount: up to $150,000 payable over one or two years. It is anticipated that 5 - 10 grants will be awarded each year.
 
The Lemann Brazil Research Fund is intended to foster collaboration between scholars and to support research projects focused on current issues facing Brazil. Proposals are sought for research projects that address education management and administration; social science and its applications; public administration and policy; technological advances in education; and evidence-based research. Consideration will also be given to projects that propose collaboration between Harvard faculty and Brazilian academics in the life sciences, physical sciences and engineering, and basic and applied sciences. Given the challenges of this year, special consideration will be given to applicants in any field proposing work related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Applications are invited from individuals who hold a faculty appointment at a Harvard school and who have principal investigator rights at that school.
 
Proposals will be evaluated on the basis of academic merit, feasibility, and their anticipated advancement of the objectives of the Fund and must meet at least one of the following three criteria:
  1. Include collaboration with Brazilian academics
  2. Be undertaken in Brazil in whole or in part
  3. Focus on Brazil
HDSI_special
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.

HSGRP
Internal_SolarGeo
Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: Varies by award type 

In addition to supporting post-doctoral and pre-doctoral fellows directly through its Fellowship program, SGRP invites faculty and researchers throughout Harvard to apply for grants supporting their own research. 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
GoogleResScholar
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 23, 2020
Sponsor Deadline: December 2, 2020
Award Amount: Up to $60,000, depending on the cost of student tuition on a regional basis, for use during the academic year in which the award is provided.

 
The Research Scholar Program aims to support early-career professors who are pursuing research in fields relevant to Google. The award is open to professors (assistant, associate, etc) at a university or degree-granting research institution who received their PhD within seven years of submission (e.g. applicant in 2020 must have received PhD in 2013 or later). Exceptions will be made for applicants who have been teaching seven years or fewer and had delays, such as working in industry, leave of absence, etc. Research interests include: 
  • Algorithms and optimization
  • Augmented and virtual reality
  • Computational neuroscience
  • Cooling and power
  • Digital media processing
  • Geo/maps
  • Health research
  • Human-computer interaction
  • Information retrieval and real time content
  • Machine learning and data mining
  • Machine perception
  • Machine translation
  • Mobile
  • Natural language processing
  • Networking
  • Privacy
  • Quantum computing
  • Security
  • Software engineering and programming languages
  • Speech
  • Structured data, extraction, semantic graph, and database management
  • Systems (hardware and software)
MicrosoftAI
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: December 15, 2020; March 12, 2021; July 30, 2021
Award Information: Azure compute credits worth $10,000, $15,000, or $20,000 plus grant funds to cover costs related to collecting or labeling data, developing models, or other engineering-related work. These are one-year grants.
 
AI for Accessibility amplifies human capability through grants, investments of technology, and expertise. Microsoft is looking for individuals or teams who are not only passionate about making the world more inclusive, but also firmly rooted in the communities they intend to benefit. Microsoft wants to invest in ideas that are developed by or with people with disabilities. This program currently focuses on three main challenges: Employment; Daily Life; and Communication and Connection.
 
Applications are accepted in specific areas of interest for each deadline:
  • December 15, 2020 - Smart Cities and Transportation
  • March 12, 2021 - Education
  • July 30, 2021 - Open Call
AWScloud
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: December 31, 2020
Award Information: Awarded amounts will vary depending on the research proposal and usage requirements documented in the proposal, and will be in the form of promotional credits applicable to AWS services. The credits can be used for up to one year.
 
The AWS Cloud Credits for Research Program (formerly AWS Research Grants) supports researchers who seek to:
  1. Build cloud-hosted publicly available science-as-a-service applications, software, or tools to facilitate their future research and the research of their community. 
  2. Perform proof of concept or benchmark tests evaluating the efficacy of moving research workloads or open data sets to the cloud. 
  3. Train a broader community on the usage of cloud for research workloads via workshops or tutorials.
NetApp
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Award amounts vary, however they usually cover a significant amount of the cost for a graduate student to work on the project for a year. FAS and SEAS applicants must request an indirect cost rate of 69% on sponsored research applications to industry.  
 
The NetApp Faculty Fellowship (NFF) program was established to encourage leading-edge research in storage and data management and to foster relationships between academic researchers and NetApp's technical community. The NFF program accepts research proposals from full-time faculty and post-graduate researchers employed by an accredited university that has a PhD program in the field of the proposal's principal investigators.
 
The NFF program is interested in proposals that describe an innovative project that a researcher desires to pursue over the next one to three years. The proposed research must have some alignment with NetApp core technology and business interests (storage and data management). A sponsor from NetApp will be assigned to communicate and in some cases may collaborate with the project's PI(s) and team. 
 
Topics of particular interest include:
  • Data security in next generation data centers
  • Data management and security in hybrid clouds
  • Data center and enterprise networking
  • Novel data systems, including NoSQL databases, big data systems, and data streaming systems
  • IoT and real time analytics
DODDARPASENSARS
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 20, 2020
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: December 1, 2020
Award Amount: Up to $1M for a two-phase program, a Phase 1 Feasibility Study (base, 9 months up to $500k) and a Phase 2 Proof of Concept (option, 9 months up to $500k).
 
DARPA's Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is issuing a Disruption Opportunity (DO) inviting submissions of innovative basic or applied research concepts in the technical domain of environmental pathogen sensing. SenSARS aims to identify SARSCoV-2 signatures suitable for rapid indoor air monitoring and use these signatures to develop and demonstrate a technology readiness level (TRL) 4 prototype sensor. The ultimate goal of SenSARS is to develop a prototype sensor that can detect SARS-CoV-2 in the air with enough sensitivity, specificity, and speed to enable practical concepts of operation to be employed before infection can occur within an indoor environment.
 
This DO is issued under the Program Announcement for Disruptioneering, DARPA-PA-20-01.
 
DODDARPATWEED
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 23, 2020
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: December 2, 2020
Award Amount: Up to $1M for a two-phase program, a Phase 1 Feasibility Study (base, 7 months up to $275k) and a Phase 2 Proof of Concept (option, 11 months up to $725k).
 
DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) is issuing a Microsystems Exploration topic (μE) inviting submissions of innovative basic or applied research concepts in the technical domain of producing active gain in sub-THz/THz, acoustoelectric, or spin wave devices through coupled- or traveling-wave interactions. A key goal is the experimental demonstration of proof-of-concept devices that establish the viability of novel approaches that can lead to revolutionary advances in areas such as THz electronics, signal processing (e.g. filters and frequency selective limiters), and magnonics. To support potential transitions, there is an emphasis on device architectures and materials that are compatible with current commercial fabrication processes. 
 
The TWEED µE will be a two-phase program: the first phase will focus on theory, modeling, device design, and materials exploration while the second phase will be focused on the fabrication and demonstration of proof-of-concept devices with breakthrough performance. Proposers have the discretion to submit concepts in one of the following technical areas: sub-THz (>300 GHz) to THz devices; acoustoelectric devices; and spin wave devices.
 
This μE is issued under the Program Announcement for Microsystems Exploration, DARPA-PA-19-04.

DODARLstrong 
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 25, 2020
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: December 4, 2020
Award Amount: Funding for seedling project efforts will not exceed $100,000 per award for 12 months. Funding for a Multi-year Option beyond the seedling CA is expected to be larger in scope, with an estimated budget ranging between $350,000 and $500,000 per year, per award, for up to three years.
 
The future vision for the U.S. Army includes teams of humans and intelligent agents working together to accomplish missions. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has established a 10-year (FY19-FY29) collaborative program, Strengthening Teamwork for Robust Operations in Novel Groups (STRONG), structured under eight annual program cycles with the overall goal of developing the foundation for enhanced teamwork within heterogeneous human-intelligent agent teams. This collaborative venture will bring together diverse, multidisciplinary expertise to support scientific breakthroughs relevant to specific and critical scientific questions that must be addressed to enable this future vision. STRONG will be executed through a series of eight annual program cycles (i.e., Cycles 1-8; FY19-FY26) with the following format: (1) 12 month seedling awards structured as individual cooperative agreements to each awardee; (2) required awardee participation in the annual Innovation Summit Series to foster novel collaborations; and (3) potential 3-year extension of a seedling award executed as an Option under the original cooperative agreement. Proposals from junior investigators (e.g., students, research fellows, and early-career researchers with less than 5 years past reception of their PhD or less than 5 years' experience within the primary field of their organization) are appropriate under this opportunity.

The topic for this year's Cycle is: Advanced Preparation for Symbiotic Adaptation between Humans and Intelligent Agents. Cycle 3 will build on research conducted under Cycles 1 and 2, and is focused on advanced preparation (e.g. training, learning, understanding, and inference) to realize a future teaming environment with fluid, individualized, yet symbiotic, adaptation between humans and agents that leads to enhanced team performance over time and across tasks.
 
Award of approximately 10 seedling CAs is expected during this Cycle.
DOD_SFFP
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: review not required for awards made directly to individuals
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: November 30, 2020
Award Amount: Fellowships provide a weekly stipend, travel reimbursement and daily expense allowance. Fellowships last 8-12 weeks during the summer months.
 
The U.S. Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP) offers hands-on exposure to Air Force research challenges through 8- to 12-week research residencies at participating Air Force research facilities for full-time science, mathematics, and engineering faculty at U.S. colleges and universities. The objectives of the U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship Program are to: stimulate professional relationships among AFRL SFFP participants and the scientists and engineers at Air Force research facilities; enhance the research interests and capabilities of faculty (both new and experienced researchers) in the U.S. academic community; elevate the awareness in the U.S. academic community of Air Force research needs and foster continued research at Fellows' institutions; Fellows with opportunities to perform high-quality and meaningful research at AFRL Directorates, Air Force Test Center, the United States Air Force Academy, or the Air Force Institute of Technology; and provide nationally accredited mentoring of academic researchers at technical directorates of the AFRL, Air Force Test Center, the United States Air Force Academy, and the Air Force Institute of Technology. Each of the participating Air Force research facilities and individual research advisors has specific areas of interest. SFFP applicants need to find an individual research advisor at one of the Air Force research facilities to discuss and eventually evaluate their formal research proposal. The collaboration between the Air Force research advisor and research fellow is critical to program success. Click here to see a list of the participating Air Force research facilities.
 
Applicants to this program must be U.S. citizens. Research Fellows are highly encouraged to bring a graduate student with them for the research period. Graduate students must also be U.S. citizens to be eligible to participate. Graduate student applications must be completed and submitted to the faculty advisor to be uploaded as a part of their application proposal.
DOD_darpaquantum
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 1, 2020
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: December 8, 2020
Award Amount: The amount of resources made available under this BAA will
depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. The Quantum Apertures program will be a 48-month program, with four 12-month phases. This BAA (BAA1) only solicits proposals for the first two phases, over a total of 24 months. A second BAA (BAA2) is planned to be released during the middle of Phase 2 soliciting proposals for Phases 3 and 4. BAA2 will only be available to awardees of BAA1.
 
The Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) at DARPA seeks innovative proposals in the area of quantum-based "Rydberg" sensor-based RF receivers. The program will demonstrate the potential to receive modulated RF signals over a very large spectral range using a single receiving element with state-of-the-art sensitivity.
 
This BAA (BAA1) has two Technical Areas. Technical Area One (TA1) focuses on developing the quantum engineering of the sensor. TA1 will also demonstrate the reception of presently used waveforms. Technical Area Two (TA2) will focus on developing applications and novel waveforms. In BAA2, performers will develop arrays, as well as build the TA2 applications developed under BAA1. A single proposal to BAA1 may respond to either TA1 or TA2, but not both. A proposer wishing to propose to both TAs must submit separate proposals, one for TA1 and the other for TA2.
 
DARPA anticipates making $45M over four years available for this program. Multiple awards are expected.
DODDARPAracer
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 11, 2020
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: December 18, 2020
Award Amount: DARPA anticipates a 4-year, two-phase RACER developmental effort. This BAA solicits proposals for Phase 1. The anticipated total Phase 1 budget is approximately $19.5M. Phase 1 shall comprise: an 18-month Phase 1 base period and a 3-month Phase 1 option. Phase 2 performers will be limited to Phase 1 prime contractors.
 
DARPA's Tactical Technology Office (TTO) is soliciting innovative proposals to expand the knowledge base, development environments and operational capabilities for future autonomous ground vehicles. The goal of the Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program is to develop and demonstrate new autonomy technologies that enable unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) to maneuver in unstructured off-road terrain at the limit of the vehicle's mechanical systems and at, or beyond, human speeds and efficiencies. RACER will demonstrate game-changing autonomous ground vehicle mobility using a combination of simulation and advanced platforms. In Phase 1, performers will focus on developing, maturing, and demonstrating algorithms in platform-development environments on Lightweight Tactical All-Terrain Vehicles (LTATV). In Phase 2, performers will continue maturing technology, and increasing system speeds over longer off-road course distances, and more complex maneuver terrain with fewer interventions.
 
DARPA recognizes that this solicitation is focused on part of the broad off-road autonomy problem, which is maximizing speed and resiliency from on-board perception, planning, and control. To complement this solicitation, DARPA intends to solicit separately approaches to tactical global planning and simulation-environment solutions for off-road autonomy development.
 
Up to three awards are anticipated.
DODDARPAI20postdoc
Sponsor Deadline for Stage 1 Technical Volumes (required): December 14, 2020
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: March 11, 2021 
Sponsor Deadline for Stage 2 Full Proposals (if invited): March 18, 2021
Award Amount: Each award will not exceed a maximum value of $300,000 (to include necessary equipment and travel expenses) and will cover a 24-month period of performance.
 
DARPA invites submissions of innovative basic or applied research concepts in areas of interest to the Information Innovation Office (I2O) as listed below. This I2O Research Announcement (RA) is specifically focused on supporting research by computer science postdoctoral fellows to drive innovation in these following research topics (each submission must specify only one research topic):
  • Topic 1: Computational Theory of Insecurity
  • Topic 2: Cross-Disciplinary Knowledge Discovery
  • Topic 3: Ego-Centric Emotion Recognition
  • Topic 4: Multi-Scale Models of Social Dynamics
  • Topic 5: Identifying Insecurity in Software of Unknown Provenance
  • Topic 6: Calming Advisor to Reduce Conflict Online 
  • Topic 7: Rethinking Design through Imprecise Specifications
  • Topic 8: Software Source of Truth
  • Topic 9: Evaluating Generative Common Sense Question Answering
I2O provides this funding opportunity to address challenges to the career planning processes of PhD graduates and the faculty hiring process of U.S. institutions of higher education that are emerging due to the pandemic. Because the pandemic has disrupted research and teaching at institutions of higher education, the employment prospects of the current cohort of PhD graduates has been severely adversely impacted. If left unaddressed, these adverse impacts will result in a shortfall in research-qualified individuals in computer science fields such as cyber security, software engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, human-machine interaction, social network engineering, and others that are critical to U.S. national security and economic competitiveness. This RA is intended to mitigate these adverse impacts and enhance the health of the U.S. computer science research workforce moving forward. 
 
Each proposal should be sized to support one postdoctoral fellow for a period of up to two years. Participation is open to individuals who are U.S. Citizens or U.S. Permanent Residents who: 1) received a PhD degree no earlier than June 2019; or 2) will receive a PhD prior to the date of the RA award; and 3) will be appointed to a postdoctoral position at a U.S. institution of higher education during the 2021-22 academic year. The RA requires the submission of an Initial Technical Volume I from the postdoctoral fellow. The Technical Volume I will be evaluated and, if selected to proceed to Stage 2, a full proposal for grant award negotiation will be submitted by the postdoctoral student's U.S. university in coordination with the postdoctoral fellow's anticipated Principal Investigator.

DODDARPAINCAS
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 18, 2020
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 8, 2021
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. INCAS is divided into three phases, totaling 48 months. The first two phases will be 18 months each, and the third phase will be 12 months.
 
DARPA's Information Innovation Office (I2O) is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of computational techniques and tools that aid analysts in detection and sensemaking of geopolitical online influence campaigns. INCAS is an applied research and development effort and is thus expected to result in portable, modular tools and technologies that operational users can assess. Towards this end, program
performance will be rigorously evaluated on program-wide and technology-specific metrics for current and historical scenarios developed in consultation with operational stakeholders. Scenarios will be built around specific combinations of non-U.S. populations, topics of geopolitical interest, and online media platforms and sources.
 
INCAS has five technical areas (TAs):
  • TA1, Influence Indicator Detection, will develop techniques to identify influence indicators in online messaging.
  • TA2, Population Response Characterization, will develop techniques to segment the responding population to a set of influence messages, characterize each segment using psychographic and demographic attributes, and identify correlations among these attributes, influence indicators, and response.
  • TA3, Influence Campaign Modeling, will develop techniques for analyst-machine sensemaking of influence campaigns including aiding analysts in assessing confidence in campaign models.
  • TA4, Data and Testbed Development, will develop the infrastructure to provide social media messaging and other data feeds from online sources to all TAs. TA4 will collect and persist social media and other online data and implement low-level data analytics. TA4 will also develop application programming interfaces (APIs) so performers in other TAs can access data and post the output of their algorithms in TA4's infrastructure. In addition, TA4 will develop the testbed infrastructure for program use.
  • TA5, Program Evaluation, will design and conduct technology evaluations (including metrics and scenario definition), develop ground truth evaluation data for program scenarios, manage a Program Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) group, coordinate with an Operational Stakeholders Group, and coordinate PI meeting events. TA5 will not be competed as part of this BAA, but is included here for informational purposes as all TAs are expected to interact with and support TA5 for program evaluation. 
Each proposal may only address one TA. DARPA anticipates multiple awards for Technical Areas (TAs) 1 and 2 and a single award for TAs 3 and 4 (no award for TA5, which is listed for information purposes only).
DOD_darpayfa
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 23, 2020
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 8, 2021
Award Amount: Each award will include a 24-month base period (each 12-month interval of the base period shall not exceed $250,000 for a maximum of $500,000) and a 12-month option period (a maximum of $500,000 awarded as the "Director's Fellowship," reserved for a limited number of awardees who demonstrate exceptional YFA project performance over the 24-month base period).
 
DARPA's Young Faculty Award (YFA) program aims to identify and engage rising stars in junior faculty positions in academia and equivalent positions at non-profit research institutions and expose them to DoD and National Security challenges and needs. In particular, YFA will provide high-impact funding to elite researchers early in their careers to develop innovative new research directions in the context of enabling transformative DoD capabilities. Participation is open to individuals who are U.S. Citizens, U.S. Permanent Residents, and Foreign Nationals who are current Tenure-Track Assistant/Associate Professors; or current Tenured faculty within 3 years of their Tenure date. DARPA is particularly interested in identifying outstanding researchers who have previously not been performers on DARPA programs, but the program is open to all qualified applicants with innovative research ideas. Once awards are made, each YFA performer will be assigned a DARPA Program Manager with interests closely related to their research topic. The Program Manager will act as project manager and mentor to the YFA award recipients.
 
DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the areas of interest to DARPA's six technical offices: Biological Technologies Office (BTO), Defense Sciences Office (DSO), Information Innovation Office (I2O), Microsystems Technology Office (MTO), Strategic Technology Office (STO), and Tactical Technology Office (TTO). This RA solicits single PI proposals for research and development in the following specific Topic Areas (TAs) of interest:
  1. Cutting the Cold Chain (C3)
  2. Infectious Disease Detection of Individuals at Facility Ingress
  3. Musculoskeletal Injury-associated Microbiomes
  4. Spike Plus: Innovative Models of Neural Computation and Control
  5. Developing a Molecular Strategy to Control Invasive Plant Species that Impede Logistics
  6. Broadband, Efficient Upconversion with 2D Material Platforms
  7. Analogical Decision Planning
  8. Multifunctional Molecular Networks
  9. Extreme Photon Sensing
  10. Lessons in Asymmetric Adversarial Reasoning (LiAAR)
  11. Analysis of Corporate Access, Ownership, and Control
  12. A Unified Theoretical and Computational Framework for Narratives in Information Operations
  13. Analyzing Differential Privacy Misuse
  14. Effective Hardware Supported Monitoring of Software
  15. Robot Adaptation as Living Creatures
  16. Ferroelectric Material for FerroElectronic Devices
  17. Ultra-Wide Bandgap Material and RF Device Technology
  18. Electroluminescent-Based Coolers Approaching Carnot Limit
  19. Topologically-enhanced Reconfigurable Optoelectronics
  20. Materials and Interconnect Approaches for 3D Heterogeneous Integration for Millimeter Wave Arrays
  21. Acoustic Sensing with Electro-momentum Coupling
  22. Access to Networks with Machine Learning (ANML)
  23. Lithography-free Integrated Photonics
  24. Extension of Hypersonic Sonic Boom Theory to Include Lift Components
  25. Unique Robotics Using Flexible Films with Embedded Actuators
  26. Energy Web Dominance
  27. Novel Methods for High-Rate, Short-Duration Force Measurement
At the executive summary phase, proposing PIs are limited to one executive summary per TA; at the full proposal phase, proposing PIs are limited to submitting only one full proposal to only one topic under this RA. The YFA Proposers Day was held on September 25, 2020 via webcast. DARPA will post the presentation at: http://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/opportunities.
DODAROebrc
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (required): January 3, 2021
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): May 2, 2021
Award Amount: It is anticipated that $3M in annual funding will be available for a single Center award. The Center award will contain a base period of thirty-six months followed by a single option period of twenty-four months. It is anticipated that the Seedling awards will range from $60,000-$250,000 per year, with typical awards in the range of $120,000-$180,000 per year. Seedling awards will contain a base period of twelve months with up to two option periods, each for twelve months.
 
The Energetics Basic Research Center (EBRC) is a basic research program initiated by the Combat Capabilities Development Command/Army Research Laboratory/ARO. It focuses on areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security. It seeks to increase the Army's intellectual capital in energetic materials (EM) and improve its ability to address future challenges. EBRC brings together universities, research institutions, companies, and individual scholars and supports multidisciplinary and cross-institutional projects addressing specific topic areas determined by the Department of the Army. The EBRC aims to promote research in specific areas of EMs and to promote a candid and constructive relationship between DA and the energetics research community.
 
This year's Technical Thrust areas are:
  • Novel materials and synthesis methods
  • Microstructure and geometry influence on energetic release
  • Advanced diagnostics and modeling
There are two funding areas in this announcement which are referred as Center and Seedling. A Center award is a single award to a large, team-oriented center. Seedling awards will be made to multiple single investigators. The Center and Seedling awardees will collaborate and cooperate among themselves and with CCDC-ARL. Proposals submitted to the Center funding area must address all of the Technical Thrust areas. Proposals submitted to the Seedling funding area must address at least one of the Technical Thrust areas.
 
DODserdp
Sponsor Deadline for Pre-Proposals (required for the Core Solicitation): January 7, 2021
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: March 4, 2021 for the Core Solicitation (if invited) and SEED Solicitation
Award Amount: Unspecified for proposals to the Core Solicitation. A total of approximately $10M is available for Core awards. SEED projects will be funded up to $250,000 for one year. A total of approximately $4M is available for SEED awards.
 
The Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) is the Department of Defense's (DoD) environmental research and development program, planned and executed in partnership with the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency. SERDP's role is to fund research and development that addresses environmental issues relevant to the management and mission of DoD. SERDP-supported efforts lead to the development and application of innovative environmental technologies or methods that improve the environmental performance of DoD by improving outcomes, managing environmental risks, and/or reducing costs or time required to resolve environmental problems. The development and application of innovative environmental science and technology support the long-term sustainability of DoD's installations and ranges, and significantly reduce current and future environmental liabilities. Within its broad areas of interest, the Program focuses on Environmental Restoration, Munitions Response, Resource Conservation and Resiliency, and Weapons Systems and Platforms. SERDP funds research and development programs in basic and applied research and advanced technology development.
 
DoD will accept proposals in response to its Core Solicitation and a SEED Solicitation. The Core Solicitation, which invites proposals responding to its Statements of Need (SONs) for projects to be funded in fiscal year 2022, has a two-step application process. The initial pre-proposal review step allows interested organizations to submit research pre-proposals for Government consideration without incurring the expense of a full proposal. Based upon the pre-proposal evaluation by SERDP, each of the pre-proposal submitters will be notified as to whether SERDP requests or does not request the submission of a full proposal. The SERDP Exploratory Development (SEED) Solicitation is a means for researchers to test proof of concept during an effort of approximately one year. Successful SEED projects may lead to more extensive follow-on research or development efforts. This year's SEED Statements of Need are available on the SERDP website.
 
DODDARPAhabitus
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 12, 2021
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 20, 2021 for CE proposals
Award Amount: The level of funding for individual awards made under this BAA will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. The program will consist of three Phases and a total of 42 months for TA1/TA2: Phase 1 (Base period, 24 months), Phase 2 (Option 1, 12 months), Phase 3 (Option 2, 6 months). CE will begin roughly 12 months into Phase 1 and will run the duration of the rest of the program (30 months).
 
The Defense Sciences Office (DSO) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative research proposals to use traditional methods of accessing local knowledge to aid operational decision making to enable a comparative evaluation (CE) of efficacy and efficiency against experimental methods developed under TA1(Model Development)/TA2 (Engagement Mechanism) of the Habitus program. Work solicited under this announcement is expressly for the Comparative Evaluation (CE) portion of the Habitus Program. DARPA is not accepting proposals for the TA1/TA2 portion of the program at this time. All information about TA1 and TA2 included in this amended solicitation is for the purposes of informing CE proposers only. In order to evaluate the efficacy of the Habitus experimental TA1/TA2 approaches to predict outcomes, DARPA will compare the performance of the computational cognitive models developed under TA1/TA2 against more traditional methods such as market research and polling applied by the Comparative Evaluation (CE) team (the subject of this announcement). In contrast to TA1/TA2, the CE team will apply traditional methods in innovative ways to provide comparison data for each question posed by the TA1/TA2 teams; the accuracy of TA1/TA2 and CE methods will both be compared to verifiable, real-world outcomes to determine whether experimental methods provide tangible advantages over traditional methods applied in innovative ways.
DARPA anticipates a single award for the CE team.
DTRA_stri
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers: Rolling through March 2, 2025
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: Rolling through March 2, 2025
Award Amount: DTRA SI-STT estimates the total program budget divided among multiple awardees at approximately $1,950,000 per year. The preferred period of performance for studies is 6-9 months to maximize opportunities for operational relevance. Given the need for timely research, in most but not all cases, the period of performance shall not exceed 12 months from the effective date of award.
 
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Strategic Integration Directorate, Strategic Trends and Effects Department, Strategic Trends Division (SI-STT) is announcing to industry and academia the intent to solicit white papers and proposals for research studies, strategic dialogues, and tabletop exercises (TTXs) through this Broad Agency Announcement (BAA). This strategy provides an acquisition tool to support SI-STT's Strategic Trends Research Initiative (STRI) with the flexibility to solicit white papers and proposals from the external expert community and make awards for expert-driven research efforts that meet present, emerging, and future needs.
 
Per priorities identified by the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), SI-STT seeks proposals and white papers for research studies, strategic dialogues, and TTXs addressing the following five focus areas:
  • Identify the utility of deeper, more meaningful relationships with existing allies, partners, and establish new relationships with non-traditional partners as a mechanism to compete against key strategic competitors;
  • Understand the implications of key strategic competitors' emerging capabilities on the United States' ability to maintain operational advantage and project power;
  • Identify emerging WMD-related threats of concern for the future battlespace;
  • Consider the role and application of WMD risk reduction tools and approaches (e.g. arms control) in an era of Great Power competition; and/or
  • Explore the utility and applicability of applying a Counter Threat Network (CTN) approach to better characterize and address cross-domain threats posed by priority threat actors.
Within these five broad focus areas, DTRA SI-STT is specifically interested in credible, timely, operationally relevant and actionable research products (studies, strategic dialogues, and TTXs) that are aligned with seven thrust areas outlined below in Fiscal Year (FY) 2020:
  • Thrust Area 1: Competition with Revisionist Powers
  • Thrust Area 2: Emerging Threats
  • Thrust Area 3: Counter Threat Networks (CTN)
  • Thrust Area 4: Strategic Security and Risk Reduction
Track 1.5 and Track 2 Strategic Dialogues with:
  • Thrust Area 5: Allies, partners, and non-traditional partners
  • Thrust Area 6: Key strategic competitors
Tabletop Exercises (TTXs) that are focused on:
  • Thrust Area 7: Competition with Revisionist Powers (with a focus on WMD-related issues)
The funding will be provided for study projects, strategic dialogues (Track 1.5 and Track 2 meetings), and TTXs. Applicants are encouraged to propose projects in all categories, which are aligned with distinct thrust areas.

If 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_covid
 
DOE is soliciting ideas about how DOE and the National Labs might contribute resources to help address COVID-19 through science and technology efforts and collaborations. Through its user facilities, computational power, and enabling infrastructure, DOE has unique capabilities that the scientific community may leverage for the COVID-19 response and recovery. DOE does not provide medical and clinical work; instead, the Department's mission complements the efforts of the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and other Federal partners by helping to understand the scientific phenomena contributing to COVID-19, from the structure of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the disease, to models that can mimic its spread. DOE supports significant biologically focused facilities and resources, including the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC), Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory (EMSL), and DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase). These and other DOE resources may be used for many studies, such as:

  • Developing high-throughput multiplex technologies to characterize virus-host interactions, determine phage resistance mechanisms in nature, identify the degree of specificity for each bacterial resistance mechanism across diverse phage types, and understand the coevolution of hosts and their phages, which can ultimately be used to design better phage therapeutic treatments and tools for precision microbiome engineering;
  • Improved modeling for understanding natural viral populations and persistence in the environment, as well as predictive modeling for viral stability and evolution in changing environmental conditions;
  • Understanding virus-microbiome community composition, function, and evolution;
  • Synthetic biology of key target viral proteins to rapidly develop improved vaccines or therapeutics; and
  • Synthetic biology to construct viral genome variants and test viral stability, persistence, and resilience in the environment.
 
The Department encourages submission of scientific questions that underpin COVID-19 response and that the research community may answer using DOE user facilities, computational resources, and enabling infrastructure. Please send research questions that the scientific community may address with DOE resources by email to SC.DCL@science.doe.gov. The Department is acting rapidly to leverage, and when appropriate provide prioritized access to, the full range of DOE user facilities and other facilities available at national laboratories to support the national and international effort to address COVID-19. 
DOE_earlycareer
Early Career Research Program*
Sponsor Pre-application Deadline (required): November 20, 2020
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: February 8, 2021
Sponsor Full Proposal Deadline: February 16, 2021
Award Amount: Awards average $750,000 over five years
 
The DOE Office of Science (SC) invites applications for support under the Early Career Research Program in the following program areas: Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR); Basic Energy Sciences (BES); Biological and Environmental Research (BER); Fusion Energy Sciences (FES); High Energy Physics (HEP); Nuclear Physics (NP); Isotope R&D and Production (DOE IP); or Accelerator R&D and Production (ARDAP). The purpose of this program is to support the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and to stimulate research careers in the areas supported by SC.
 
The PI must be an untenured Assistant Professor or Associate Professor on the tenure track at a U.S. academic institution as of the deadline for the application. For the present competition, those who received doctorates no earlier than 2010 are eligible. If a PI has multiple doctorates, the discipline of the one they have earned within the 10-year eligibility window should be relevant to the proposed research. Extensions to eligibility will be considered for individuals who have had a major life event requiring an extended absence (3 months or longer) from the workplace.
 
DOE_CCS
Sponsor Deadline for Pre-Applications (required): December 2, 2020
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: February 1, 2021
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): February 8, 2021
Award Information: $500,000-$2M per year for 4 years. DOE anticipates that, subject to the availability of future year appropriations, a total of $32M in current and future fiscal year funds will be used to support awards under this FOA for grants and National Laboratory awards. 
 
The DOE SC program in Basic Energy Sciences (BES) hereby announces its interest in receiving new and renewal applications from small groups (2-3 principal investigators) and integrated multidisciplinary teams (typically from multiple institutions) in Computational Chemical Sciences (CCS). Single-investigator applications are not responsive to the objectives of this FOA. CCS will support basic research to develop validated, open-source codes for modeling and simulation of complex chemical processes and phenomena that allow full use of emerging exascale and future planned DOE leadership-class computing capabilities. The focus for CCS is on developing capabilities that allow modeling and simulation of new or previously inaccessible complex chemical systems and/or provide dramatic improvement in fidelity, scalability, and throughput. Teams should bring together expertise in domain areas (e.g., electronic structure, chemical dynamics, statistical mechanics, etc.) and other areas important to advance computational tools such as data science, algorithm development, and software architectures. Priority will be given to efforts that address reaction chemistry across multiple scales in complex environments important in geosciences, catalysis, biochemistry, or electrochemistry. CCS will continue to support the DOE Exascale Computing Initiative (ECI). The ECI aims to accelerate the research and development needed to overcome key exascale challenges and maximize benefits of high-performance computing. This funding opportunity continues the BES commitment to ECI by developing open-source codes that can take full advantage of emerging exascale and future planned DOE leadership-class computing facilities.
 
An individual is limited to be named as the Lead PI on no more than 1 submission. An individual may participate as a co-PI (this is not the Lead PI) on 2 pre-applications and 1 proposal submission.
 
Please Note: Organizations are limited to submitting two Pre-Applications and Applications in response to this FOA. If you are interested in submitting a Pre-Application, please contact Erin Hale in FAS Research Development at  erin_hale@fas.harvard.edu.
 
 DOE_ASR
Sponsor Deadline for Pre-Applications (required): December 2, 2020
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 20, 2021
Full Proposal Deadline: January 27, 2021
Award Amount: $200,000-$850,000 for up to 3 years
 
The DOE Office of Science program in Biological and Environmental Research (BER) announces its interest in receiving applications for Atmospheric System Research (ASR) within BER's Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD). ASR supports research on key cloud, aerosol, precipitation, and radiative transfer processes that affect the Earth's radiative balance and hydrological cycle, especially processes that limit the predictive ability of regional and global models. This FOA solicits research grant applications for observational, data analysis, and/or modeling studies that use observations supported by BER, including the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility, to improve understanding and model representation of: 1) aerosol-cloud interactions, 2) aerosol processes, 3) warm boundary layer processes, 4) Arctic atmospheric processes from ARM's Cold-Air Outbreaks in the Marine Boundary Layer Experiment (COMBLE) and Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) campaigns, and/or 5) convective cloud processes from ARM's Cloud, Aerosol, and Complex Terrain Interactions (CACTI) field campaign. All research supported from awards under this FOA is intended to benefit the public through increasing our understanding of the Earth system.
DOEother
Other DOE Opportunities

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
NASA_appendixG
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 8, 2020
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: December 15, 2020
Award Information: A maximum of $100,000 per year for up to 2 years.
 
This Appendix solicits ground-based research proposals to utilize NASA's Physical Sciences Informatics (PSI) system to develop new analyses and scientific insights. The PSI system is designed to be a resource for researchers to data mine information generated from completed reduced-gravity physical sciences experiments performed on the International Space Station (ISS), Space Shuttle flights, Free Flyers, commercial cargo flights to and from the ISS, or from related ground-based studies. Specifically, this call is for the utilization of data from investigations that are currently available in the PSI system (see solicitation for a complete list). The PSI system is designed to include experimental data from the following six research areas: 1) Biophysics, 2) Combustion Science, 3) Complex Fluids, 4) Fluid Physics, 5) Fundamental Physics, and 6) Materials Science. This Appendix solicits proposals in the six research areas listed above.
 
This Appendix is soliciting proposals from established researchers and graduate students. A total of approximately five awards are anticipated.
NASATRISHBRASH
Sponsor Deadline for Step-1 Proposals (required): December 21, 2020
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Step-2 Proposals (if invited): March 30, 2021
Award Information: The annual budget is capped at $500K per year for up to two years (direct plus indirect costs). TRISH awards require a cost-sharing arrangement with all non-government entities consisting of an augmentation of at least 10% of the total annual TRISH award. This requirement applies to each institution involved. The 10% cost-sharing minimum must be added on top of the maximum budget of $500K per year.
 
The Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine is seeking research proposals with emerging scientific and biomedical advances, disruptive technologies, and new therapies and engineering capabilities with the potential to protect health in deep space. As a partner to the NASA Human Research Program, TRISH helps solve the health challenges to human deep space exploration. The Institute is dedicated to connecting new researchers to collaborate with NASA. TRISH seeks and funds high-risk, high-reward and creative solutions that can be used to protect astronauts on long duration exploration missions. With this solicitation, TRISH is seeking novel research and multi-disciplinary approaches to reduce health risks through manipulation of human metabolism and homeostasis at the cellular or whole organism level.
 
All projects funded under this call for proposals will be composed of a single principal investigator and/or a team of co-investigators, collaborators, consultants, postdoctoral associates, other professionals, and graduate and/or undergraduate students.
 
Five to seven awards are anticipated.
 
NASAGRSTARII
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 18, 2020
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 8, 2021
Award Information: Approximately $99M over 5 years
 
Studies and investigations under the Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research II (GESTAR II) Cooperative Agreement (CA) will carry out observational, experimental and theoretical research in support of NASA's strategic Earth Science mission objectives. GESTAR II is expected to strengthen the cooperative relationship between the recipient and Government scientists in the Goddard Sciences and Exploration Directorate (SED), and will provide a vehicle to increase the involvement of the external science community in the pursuit of NASA goals. The GESTAR II recipient will conduct research collaboratively with organizational elements within the Goddard SED. Research may involve analysis of data from operating and past missions, and modeling and design of missions planned or under development. Future research activities will evolve as a function of priorities, budgets, funding opportunities, and success of proposal submissions. Work performed under this Cooperative Agreement will be primarily but not exclusively being performed in Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) facilities. Participation in this program is limited to U.S. organizations, specifically educational and not-for-profit institutions.
 
NASACREH
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 4, 2021
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 11, 2021
Award Information: Approximately $65M over 5 years
 
Through this CAN, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) will establish a Center for Research and Exploration in Physics (CREH), a science center of excellence for basic and applied research between NASA and higher education or not-for-profit science organizations in the area of heliophysics.
 
The primary goal under the resulting cooperative agreement is to establish a focused GSFC/research partnership that:
  1. Brings together scientists from the Center for Research and Exploration in Heliophysics and GSFC scientists to implement the NASA strategic goals in Heliophysics science;
  2. Enhances the capabilities and strengths of participating organizations in Heliophysics science;
  3. Provides organization and staffing flexibility to adapt to evolving research program needs;
  4. Attracts superior scientists necessary to carry out programs which would be outside the capabilities of either partner working alone;
  5. Promotes the involvement of minority and women scientists in space science research, for example, via focused programs recruiting undergraduate and graduate students;
  6. Facilitates access to student talent and provides opportunities for their participation in NASA programs;
  7. Facilitates interdisciplinary research with other Divisions, such as Astrophysics, Solar System Science, and Earth Science, using Heliophysics research results and models that have applicability to these other disciplines; and,
  8. Facilitate the public purpose of transferring results of federally funded research to the public.
NASATRISH
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 21, 2021
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 28, 2021
Award Information: Stipends will be $60,000 and an additional allocation for health insurance and some travel will be provided. The award is for two years of funding with an optional, competitively awarded third year of funding that may be available. Indirect costs will not be awarded to the funded institution. Additionally, TRISH welcomes, but does not require, cost sharing of 10% of the funded award from institutions who receive
awards for the training of TRISH postdoctoral fellows.
 
The Translational Research Institute for Space Health's (TRISH) mission is to provide funding for early as well as late stage cutting-edge research that can be translated into validated human health and performance solutions for deep space exploration missions. TRISH, led by Baylor College of Medicine's Center for Space Medicine, is a consortium that includes the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Membership in the consortium is NOT a prerequisite to apply for TRISH awards and investigators new to space life science research are particularly encouraged to apply to TRISH opportunities. This Request for Applications (RFA) is soliciting applications for the TRISH Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Postdoctoral fellowships will be competitively awarded in any laboratory in the United States conducting biomedical/biotechnological research aligned with TRISH's mission and goals. Potential applicants should review NASA's Human Research Roadmap (HRR) and explain how their proposed projects could impact specific risks and help close discrete knowledge or technology gaps, as defined in the HRR. The proposed work must address at least one risk to the health and performance of humans living and working in space. TRISH invites retrospective data, ground-based and analog definition applications for Postdoctoral Fellowships.
 
Applicants must first select a mentor, and an authorized organizational representative from the mentor's institution will submit the proposal. All researchers, regardless of support by NASA or TRISH, can serve as mentors for this opportunity. Fellowship applicants must be U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or persons with pre-existing visas obtained through their sponsoring academic institutions that permit postdoctoral training for the project's duration. To be eligible for this program, postdoctoral fellows may not have more than five years (cumulative) of previous postdoctoral training as of the deadline for this proposal submission. Those earning a terminal degree more than seven years before the deadline for this solicitation are ineligible for this opportunity. Selected postdoctoral fellows are required to commit 100% of their time to the fellowship, of which at least 90% must be research efforts towards the proposed project. The start date must be by August 2021.
NASAFY21CAN
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (required): Rolling through February 9, 2021
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): TBA
Award Information: MSFC resource contributions will range from $10,000-$250,000 (though the majority of awards will be $10,000-$100,000) and shall be matched or exceeded by Offeror resource contribution value to the awarded project. MSFC contributions to the Offeror can be direct cash assistance, in-kind (non-cash) resources, or a combination of each. Partner contributions to the project may be in-kind (non-cash) resource contributions. Project Duration may be up to 12 months from time of award.
 
This notice is seeking responses from potential U.S. industry, academic, and/or non-profit organization partners interested in entering into a cost-sharing or matching cooperative agreement with NASA for the joint development of technologies to meet partner needs as well as those of Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). Technology development projects that can be developed and applied relatively rapidly to advance or improve existing technologies at mid to high TRL are of particular interest.
 
MSFC has several technology development focus areas for this notice, including:
  • Innovative/Advanced Propulsion Systems
  • Advanced Manufacturing; Structures and Materials
  • Technologies Supporting On-orbit and Surface Habitation Systems, including Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS)
  • Technologies Supporting Spacecraft Systems
  • Technologies Enabling Science Research 
White Paper and Proposal submissions are not strictly limited to these topics. Test or demonstration of technology development projects under this CAN may be accomplished under any of a variety of test beds and platforms including: ground-based facilities, balloons, unmanned aerial systems, aircraft, sounding rockets, launch vehicles, or space-based platforms identified by the Offeror.
NASA_usrc
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: February 25, 2021 and June 24, 2021
Award Information: The Federal share of awards will not exceed $80,000 in total costs. Student teams are required to raise a minimum of $2,000 through crowdfunding or industry/organization support, though NASA reserves the right to fund a project even if cost sharing goals are not met. The NASA grants will have a one-year period of performance.
 
The University Student Research Challenge (USRC) seeks to challenge students to propose new aeronautics ideas/concepts that are relevant to NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD). The students also have the challenge of raising cost share funds through a crowdfunding platform. The process of creating and preparing a crowdfunding campaign acts as a teaching accelerator. Crowdfunding requires students to act like entrepreneurs, teaching skills such as how to understand the market, fundraise and execute a project. Crowdfunding also raises awareness in the general public about students' research and can excite and bring non-traditional communities into contact with ARMD.
 
The proposed project must be relevant to the ARMD Strategic Implementation Plan and address one of ARMD's six strategic thrusts as they affect aviation:
  1. Safe, Efficient Growth in Global Operations
  2. Innovation in Commercial Supersonic Aircraft
  3. Ultra-Efficient Subsonic Transports
  4. Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles
  5. In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance
  6. Assured Autonomy for Aviation Transformation 
NASA has no set expectations as to the team size. The number of students participating in the investigation is to be determined by the scope of the project and the student Team Leader. Faculty can serve as mentors and/or participants in the project team. A letter of support is required from a faculty mentor of the accredited U.S. University or College. NASA will make approximately 5 awards for all three cycles of this USRC solicitation.
NASA_unsolicited
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: Rolling through September 30, 2021 (proposals should be submitted at least 6 months in advance of the desired starting date)
Award Information: Proposed budget should be commensurate with the scope of the project.
 
NASA encourages the submission of unique and innovative proposals that will further the Agency's mission. While the vast majority of proposals are solicited, a small number of unsolicited proposals that cannot be submitted to those solicitations and yet are still relevant to NASA are reviewed and some are funded each year.
 
Before any effort is expended in preparing a proposal, potential proposers should:
  1. Review the current versions of the NASA Strategic Plan and documents from the specific directorate, office, or program for which the proposal is intended to determine if the work planned is sufficiently relevant to current goals to warrant a formal submission.
  2. Potential proposers must review current opportunities to determine if any solicitation already exists to which the potential project could be proposed. 
  3. Potential proposers should review current awards (e.g., by doing key word searches at 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.
NASAother
Other NASA Opportunities
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
NIH_covid
 
NIH has compiled Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Information for NIH Applicants and Recipients of NIH Funding at the link above. This includes guidance for proposal submission and award management, answers to frequently asked questions, and funding opportunities.
 
To get funding as quickly as possible to the research community, NIH is using Urgent and Emergency competing revisions and administrative supplements to existing grant awards. This approach allows NIH to leverage resident expertise, getting additional funding to those researchers who are already working with other organisms, models, or tools so that they can quickly shift focus to the novel coronavirus. These Urgent and Emergency competitive revision Funding Opportunity Announcements allow NIH to fund applications quickly, often in under three months, sometimes much quicker than that, because evaluation for scientific and technical merit is done by an internal review panel convened by staff of the NIH awarding institute or center rather than by its traditional peer review process. These opportunities require applications to be submitted in response to an Emergency or Urgent Notice of Special Interest (NOSI). In addition to the opportunities for revisions and supplements to existing awards, other notices of special interest seek full research project grant proposals to conduct research on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-2019 through an array of parent FOAs. NIH is maintaining a list of COVID-19 specific notices of special interest in the funding opportunities section at the link above. 
NIGMS_mira
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 11, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: January 19, 2021
Award Amount: Up to $750,000 direct costs per year for five years
 
An NIGMS MIRA is intended to provide support for the NIGMS-related research program in an investigator's laboratory. In addition to research designed to answer scientific questions and generate new ideas and hypotheses, the development of technology and computational approaches are supported. Within the scope of the MIRA, investigators will have the freedom to explore new avenues of inquiry that arise during the course of their research, as long as they remain within the mission of NIGMS.
 
In comparison to R01 funding of NIGMS investigators, MIRA benefits include:
  • A longer grant period - five-year awards rather than the current NIGMS median of 4 years;
  • More flexibility to pursue new ideas and opportunities as they arise during the course of research because the award is not tied to specific aims or predicated on completing specific, pre-defined projects;
  • Increased stability of funding through longer-term commitments of support, improved success rates, and more graduated, rather than all-or-none, funding decisions for R35 renewals;
  • A reduction in administrative burden associated with managing multiple grants;
  • A reduction in required application writing.
PIs with a previously funded ESI or EI NIGMS R35 or at least one NIGMS single-PD/PI R01-equivalent award (defined here as R01, R37, DP1, DP2, and SC1 awards) are eligible to apply. The PI is required to devote at least 51% of his/her total research effort to this award. Only single PI applications are allowed.
 
 NIH_katz
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 19, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: January 26, 2021
Award Amount: Application budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project. The maximum project period is 5 years.
 
The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement is to provide a new pathway for Early Stage Investigators (ESIs) who wish to propose research projects in a new direction for which preliminary data do not exist. Proposed projects must represent a change in research direction for the ESI and should be innovative and unique. A distinct feature for this FOA is that applications must not include preliminary data.
 
This FOA is appropriate for ESIs who wish to initiate a research project in an area different from their previous research focus and/or training experience, and therefore have not produced preliminary data. Proposed research projects can rely on the PD/PI's prior work and expertise as its foundation, but must not be an incremental advancement, expansion, or extension of a previous research effort. The change in research direction could involve, for example, a new approach, methodology, technique, discipline, therapeutic target, and/or new paradigm, different from the ESI's previous research efforts. Importantly, the proposed direction must represent a change in research direction for the PD/PI. Because a change in research direction is heavily dependent upon the area of investigation, potential applicants are strongly encouraged to contact a program director to discuss their proposed project. If the application proposes multiple Principal Investigators (MPIs), all PD/PIs must be ESIs and the research direction must be a change in research direction for all MPIs. 
 
Additional deadlines for this opportunity are May 26, 2021; September 28, 2021; January 26, 2022; May 26, 2022; September 27, 2022; January 26, 2023; May 26, 2023; and September 26, 2023.
NIH_nibib
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days in advance of sponsor deadline
Sponsor Deadline: February 16, June 16, and October 16, annually
Award Amount: $400,000 in direct costs over 3 years
 
This Trailblazer Award is an opportunity for NIH-defined New and Early Stage Investigators (https://grants.nih.gov/policy/early-investigators/index.htm) to pursue research programs of high interest to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) that integrate engineering and the physical sciences with the life and/or biomedical sciences. A Trailblazer project may be exploratory, developmental, proof of concept, or high risk-high impact, and may be technology design-directed, discovery-driven, or hypothesis-driven. Importantly, applicants must propose research approaches for which there are minimal or no preliminary data. A distinct feature for this FOA is that no preliminary data are required, expected, or encouraged. However, if available, minimal preliminary data are allowed. Preliminary data are defined as material which the applicant has independently produced and not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal.
 
A Trailblazer project may be exploratory, developmental, proof of concept or have high risk-high impact goals. Importantly, the proposed research for this FOA may be technology design-directed and may or may not be hypothesis-driven. In the context of this FOA, innovation encompasses approaches to address well-defined, unmet biomedical research needs through the development of new methods, ideas, or technologies; early steps along the path toward delivery of a new capability or method; and the integration of existing components in a previously unproven format. High-impact projects should transform our understanding or practice by applying an innovative approach to an important biomedical challenge. For projects supported by a Trailblazer Award, successful results should provide a solid foundation for further research under other funding mechanisms, such as the R01. Applicants will be considered ineligible for this funding opportunity if they have submitted an R01, R15 or any other R21 application, with NIBIB as the primary IC within the same review cycle.
OtherNIHOpps
Other NIH Opportunities
National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation: Dear Colleague Letters
NSFDCL_sai
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 19, 2020 (Conference Proposals); January 8, 2020 (EAGER Full Proposals, If Invited)
Sponsor Deadline: November 30, 2020 (Conference Proposals); December 11, 2020 (Concept Outlines: EAGER); January 15, 2021 (EAGER Full Proposals, If Invited)
Award Amount: up to $50,000 (Conference Proposals); up to $300,000 over two years (EAGER)
 
The National Science Foundation seeks to stimulate fundamental exploratory, potentially transformative research that strengthens America's infrastructure. This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) invites workshop and Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals that incorporate scientific insights about human behavior and social dynamics to better develop, design, build, rehabilitate, and maintain strong and effective American infrastructure. The DCL is intended to support exploratory work, in its early stages, on untested but potentially transformative research ideas or approaches that can identify and help build this new area of research. The activities NSF hopes to stimulate with this DCL may be considered especially "high risk - high reward" in the sense that the Foundation seeks radically different approaches, application of new expertise, or engagement of novel disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives. NSF is particularly interested in proposals that integrate a deep understanding of human cognition, perception, information processing, decision making, social and cultural behavior, legal frameworks, governmental structures, and related areas into the design, development, and sustainability of infrastructure. Infrastructure may be of any kind, including cyber, economic, educational, physical, and social. NSF is also interested in proposals that include development of new or improved performance metrics that can help stakeholders more effectively and efficiently assess infrastructure usability, cost-effectiveness, sustainability, resilience, and adaptability to changing circumstances.
  • Conference proposals submitted in response to this DCL must be submitted by November 30, 2020. Initial inquiries to NSF-SAI@nsf.gov are encouraged to determine fit. Awards funded in this category will provide support for a period of one year and may be requested at a level not to exceed $50,000 for the total budget (including indirect costs). Proposers should clearly outline how the conference activity will contribute to developing novel potentially transformative interdisciplinary research, the participant groups, anticipated target audience to be engaged and the plan to disseminate the findings after the conference(s). Convening events can take the form of conferences or other types of meetings and can include multiple sequential events. See PAPPG Chapter II.E.7 for specific instructions about preparing Conference proposals.
  • EAGER Proposals: Prior to submission, potential research teams are required to send a research concept outline, including project title, team members, institutions involved, and a summary of the project concept (up to two pages) by email to NSF-SAI@nsf.gov. To ensure proper processing, the subject line of the initial email inquiry should begin with: "EAGER: SAI-E". Concept outlines should be submitted by December 11, 2020 (earlier if possible). NSF Program Directors will review the research concept outlines and will authorize those that fall within the scope of this DCL for submission of a full EAGER proposal. Proposals submitted without written authorization from an NSF Program Director will be returned without review. Full proposal submissions are due January 15, 2021 and will only be accepted if accompanied by written (email) authorization to submit (obtained in response to the research concept outline).
NSFDCL_anr
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 20, 2020
Sponsor Deadline: December 1, 2020 (Registration/Dossier to ANR)
Award Amount: NSF funding decisions are subject to the availability of funds.
 
The US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) have signed an agreement on Research Cooperation. The agreement provides an overarching framework to encourage collaboration between US and French research communities and sets out the principles by which jointly supported activities might be developed. The agreement is a lead agency opportunity whereby collaborative proposals between US and French researchers are submitted to only the lead agency for review, and the partner agency agrees to accept the review. Based on the lead agency review of collaborative proposals, NSF and ANR will make joint funding decisions to support meritorious collaborative projects. The lead agency opportunity allows for reciprocal acceptance of merit review through unsolicited mechanisms with the goal to reduce some of the current barriers to working internationally.

This year, the program is seeking proposals which address the topic of Physics from Molecules to Cells. The emergence, evolution, dynamics and function of self-organized cellular systems stem from the interaction of biological components and the environment to yield robust, resilient and adaptive living systems. Through this DCL, NSF and ANR seek proposals that use multidisciplinary approaches that emphasize quantitative, predictive and theory driven science aimed at understanding. The program seeks proposals which integrate approaches from theoretical and experimental physics and biology to develop testable and quantitative understanding of biological questions. Projects providing innovative methodological or conceptual approaches to a biological question and with a strong theoretical physics component are strongly encouraged. Purely descriptive projects without predictive quantitative components are of low priority. Projects that leverage unique resources and capabilities of partners in the US and France will be given priority.
NSFDCL_newphysics
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: varies by program
Award Amount: varies/wide range
 
With this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), the NSF Division of Physics (PHY) encourages the community to explore the scientific opportunities at the intersection between Atomic, Molecular, and Optical (AMO) physics and Elementary Particle Physics (EPP). This DCL encourages interdisciplinary research across the domains of AMO and EPP physics aimed at developing new small-scale experiments and techniques that could complement large EPP facilities. Towards this end, the NSF Division of Physics encourages the submission of proposals that explore this overlap regime. Proposals can be submitted to one of the following programs for review and funding consideration, as described in Solicitation NSF 20-580:

  • Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics - Experiment
  • Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics - Theory
  • Elementary Particle Physics - Experiment
  • Elementary Particle Physics - Theory

Titles of proposals addressing the goals of this DCL should begin with "PM: . . . " Proposals for theoretical and/or experimental research, conceptual development, conferences, or development of new instruments are welcome. Plans for data analysis should include a detailed assessment of systematic errors and use appropriate statistical methods. Experimental designs that incorporate empirical exploration of unknown systematics are desirable. Potential proposers are encouraged to contact the cognizant program directors of the programs listed above.
NSFDCL_future
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: February 3, 2021 (CS for All)
Sponsor Deadline: February 10, 2021 (CS for All)
Award Amount: varies by program
 
The purpose of this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) is to encourage proposals to the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Computer Science for All (CSforAll: Research and RPPs) and Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) programs that specifically investigate promising educational approaches to motivate and prepare preK-12 learners for computationally-intensive industries of the future. The CSforAll program aims to provide all US preK-12 students with opportunities to participate in rigorous computer science and computational thinking education in their schools through funding both research and research-practitioner partnerships. The ITEST program is an applied research and development program designed to broaden participation in STEM and information and communication technology (ICT) careers and career pathways by providing preK-12 youth with technology-rich learning experiences in formal or informal settings. The ITEST program deadline has passed.
 
This DCL also encourages Conference proposals to convene stakeholders with a range of relevant expertise and experience. These conferences may respond to pressing questions that would advance knowledge or practice; identify leverage points for addressing core issues; or set an agenda for future research and practice. Proposers are encouraged to contact a program officer prior to submitting a Conference proposal, and to follow the preparation and content requirements specified in NSF's Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide Chapter II.E.7.
NSFDCL_aim
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: unspecified/wide range
 
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. For researchers seeking to utilize AIM Photonics capabilities, the first step in engaging with AIM Photonics should start with filling out an Information Request Form that can be found here. AIM Photonics offers access to multi project wafer (MPW) runs. AIM Photonics MPW details are available through AIM Photonics here. AIM Photonics process development kits (PDK's) are also available for download from their website. The request for PDK's can be found here. AIM Photonics plans to offer several MPW runs per year on three different silicon photonics processes: Full (active), Passive, and Active Interposer. Schedules for all 3 of these MPW types are available at the AIM Photonics website here. Academic researchers who plan on utilizing the capabilities of AIM Photonics may submit unsolicited proposals to the ECCS Electronics, Photonics, and Magnetic Devices (EPMD) core program via FastLane, Research.gov or Grants.gov at any time with no deadline. 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. All submitted proposals must adhere to the NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG). Requests for supplemental funding to existing ECCS awards should first be discussed with the cognizant NSF program director and may be submitted at any time.
 
 NSFDCL_specialANR
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: As the Small project class within the CISE Core Programs has moved to a "no-deadline" format, the applicable deadlines from ANR will be honored.
Award Amount: up to $500,000 total budget with durations up to three years (NSF CISE Small Projects); full guidelines for French collaborators can be found here.
 
The National Science Foundation's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Research Cooperation. The MOU provides an overarching framework to encourage collaboration between U.S. and French research communities and sets out the principles by which jointly supported activities might be developed. The MOU provides for an international collaboration arrangement whereby U.S. researchers may receive funding from the NSF and French researchers may receive funding from ANR. Proposals are expected to adhere to the areas of science, funding limits, and grant durations for the Small project class of the CISE Core Programs and ANR programs from which funding is sought. As the Small project class within the CISE Core Programs has moved to a "no-deadline" format, the applicable deadlines from ANR (see the Generic Call for Proposals) will be honored. In general, proposal review is completed within six months of submission. A proposer may wish to consult a program director in the relevant program about the timing of their submission. In all cases, the same proposal must be provided to ANR within one week of the NSF submission.
NSFDCL_sentinels
Sentinel Cells for Surveillance and Response to Emergent Infectious Diseases (Sentinels)
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: Budgets should be appropriate to the scope of the project.
 
With this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), NSF highlights the interest of existing programs in the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) and the Directorate for Engineering (ENG) in interdisciplinary research for the development of novel biological platforms that are capable of sensing and responding to emerging infectious agents. The mechanism of sensing should be adaptable and or evolvable such that the sentinel cells, or other appropriate biotechnology solutions, are robust to a range of emergent threats, and/or can easily be reprogrammed and deployed once a new threat is identified. The platform's response should be one or more of the following: alert the user, destroy the threat, protect the host, initiate an immune response or other strategies that would ensure mitigation of the threat. Sentinel cells and organisms that detect and respond to infectious agents with expanding footprints in a host population or expanding host ranges are of particular interest, as the early detection of these infectious agents might have value in preventing future pandemics. In addition, fundamental science and technology that would lead to the development of the envisioned sentinel cells and organisms are also of interest. Investigators are encouraged not to be limited in their approach, but to think broadly about innovations leveraging biology and engineering to advance adaptable detection of emerging biological threats. Proposals responsive to this DCL should be submitted to the program most closely related to the research:
 
 
The proposal title should be prefaced with "Sentinels:" Neither Division puts a limit on proposal budgets and expects budgets to be appropriate for the scope of the proposed project. The relevant programs in BIO/MCB and ENG/CBET all accept proposals without deadline. Proposals are reviewed as they are received.  Investigators interested in submitting a proposal are strongly encouraged to contact one of the Program Directors listed in the full Dear Colleague Letter.
NSFDCL_vrs
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business day prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: This award is a supplement to existing NSF awards. Supplements under this DCL will be supported based on proposal quality, availability of funds, and the discretion of the managing Program Director for the award for which the supplemental funding is requested.
 
Through this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), the National Science Foundation (NSF) is supporting alternate pathways to encourage veterans' engagement in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) research and industry. NSF's commitment to broadening participation is embedded in its Strategic Plan and initiatives such as the Ten Big Ideas for Future NSF Investment which emphasize the need to pro-actively seek and effectively develop STEM talent from all sectors and groups in our society. NSF recognizes that veterans represent an underutilized workforce for U.S. STEM communities. Through this initiative, NSF hopes to provide additional support to some of the many veterans transitioning from active military service to civilian careers and exploring education options through the Post-9/11 GI Bill.

This Dear Colleague Letter continues the Veterans Research Supplement (VRS) program (NSF 14-124) to engage veterans in engineering research by providing supplements to active awards in the following Directorate for Engineering (ENG) Divisions/Offices:
 
 
The VRS affords veterans who are students, K-12 teachers, or community college faculty an opportunity to work with active ENG grantees to conduct basic and/or industrially relevant research to gain a deeper understanding of engineering. Veterans supported by VRS funding may participate in research activities with any active awardees or affiliated member companies supported by ENG programs. A request for a VRS may be submitted to one of the programs in the ENG Divisions listed above as a post-award supplement to an existing ENG award. Note: The grantee or PI may request VRS supplemental funds but cannot be the VRS participant.
DCL_iucrc
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: N/A
Sponsor Deadline: N/A
Award Amount: N/A
 
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Industry University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRC) Program fosters long-term partnerships among academia, industry, and government in various technology sectors through multi-university, industry-focused research centers. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a great deal of uncertainty in the US economy, and across nearly all industry sectors. In recognition of the high level of industry engagement (within both existing and proposed future IUCRCs), the COVID-19 pandemic could present new challenges related to industry membership commitments at the current time and into the near future. Therefore, industry membership requirements could be more difficult to meet. Potential impacts may be in relation to confirming commitments related to both the retention of existing members and the recruitment of new members. To mitigate possible adverse effects of the COVID-19 hardship with respect to meeting Center/Site membership requirements, this Dear Colleague Letter offers guidance for IUCRCs with active NSF grants, applicable through December 31, 2020.
NSFDCL_intern
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling; target deadline of April 15th for each fiscal year.
Award Amount: up to $55,000 per student per six-month period
 
NSF will consider supplemental funding requests for up to an additional six months of graduate student support on active NSF grants with the following goals:
  1. To provide graduate students with the opportunity to augment their research assistantships or NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) fellowships with non-academic research internship activities and training opportunities that will complement their academic research training;
  2. To allow graduate students to pursue new activities aimed at acquiring professional development experience that will enhance their preparation for multiple career pathways after graduation; and
  3. To encourage the participation of graduate students from underrepresented groups such as women, persons with disabilities, underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), veterans, and persons from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. 
The PI/co-PI of an active NSF award may request supplemental funding for one or more graduate students to gain knowledge, skills and experiences that will augment their preparation for a successful long-term career through an internship in a non-academic setting, including the following:
  • For-profit industry laboratories or industry research and development groups;
  • Start-up businesses, such as (but not limited to) those funded through the NSF's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program;
  • Government agencies (all levels) and National Laboratories;
  • Museums, science centers, and other informal learning settings;
  • Policy think-tanks; and
  • Non-profit organizations. 
PIs are encouraged to discuss with the cognizant NSF program director activities that are synergistic with the NSF project scope. It is expected that the graduate student and the PI on the NSF grant will work together to identify innovative experiences that add the most educational value for the graduate student through activities that are not already available at the student's academic institution. Further, it is expected that the internship will be research-focused in a STEM field or in STEM education research and will be on-site at the host organization unless a specific exception to this is granted due to extenuating circumstances by the cognizant program officer.

National Science Foundation: Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (NSF: CISE)
NSFCISE_advcomp
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: November 24, 2020
Sponsor Deadline: December 3, 2020
Award Amount: up to $5M over up to five years

The intent of this solicitation is to request proposals from organizations willing to serve as service providers (SPs) within the NSF Innovative High-Performance Computing (HPC) program to provide advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) capabilities and/or services in production operations to support the full range of computational- and data-intensive research across all of science and engineering (S&E). The Advanced Computing Systems & Services program is intended to complement previous NSF investments in advanced computational infrastructure by provisioning resources, broadly defined to include systems and/or services, in two categories:
  • Category I, Capacity Systems: production of computational resources maximizing the capacity provided to support the broad range of computation and data analytics needs in S&E research; and
  • Category II, Innovative Prototypes/Testbeds: innovative forward-looking capabilities deploying novel technologies, architectures, usage modes, etc., and exploring new target applications, methods, and paradigms for S&E discoveries.
This solicitation welcomes only Category II proposals. Resources supported through awards from this solicitation will be incorporated into and allocated as part of NSF's Innovative HPC program. This program complements investments in leadership-class computing and funds a federation of nationally-available HPC resources that are technically diverse and intended to enable discoveries at a computational scale beyond the research of individual or regional institutions of higher education. NSF anticipates that at least 90% of the provisioned system or services will be available to the S&E community through an open peer-reviewed national allocation process and be supported by community and other support services [such as those currently supported through eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) 2.0 project-managed allocations recommended by the XSEDE Resource Allocation Committee (XRAC), and other activities intended to foster efficient coordination across resources], or an NSF-approved alternative that may emerge. If this is not feasible for the proposed system/services, proposers must clearly explain in detail why this is the case and how they intend to make the proposed system/services available to the national S&E community.

Please Note: This is a limited submission opportunity, and Harvard may submit only one proposal to this competition. Please contact Erin Hale at erin_hale@fas.harvard.edu if you are interested in applying.
NSFcise_ccri
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Letter of Intent: December 8, 2020
Sponsor Deadline for Letter of Intent: December 15, 2020
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Full Proposal: January 21, 2021
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposal: January 28, 2021
Award Amount: $50,000 - $100,000 over 1 to 1.5 years (Planning); $1M-$2M over up to 3 years (Medium); $2M- $5M over up to 5 years (Grand)

The Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community Research Infrastructure (CCRI) program drives discovery and learning in the core CISE disciplines of the three participating divisions [(Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF), Computer and Network Systems (CNS), and Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS)] by funding the creation and enhancement of world-class research infrastructure. This research infrastructure will specifically support diverse communities of CISE researchers pursuing focused research agendas in computer and information science and engineering. This support involves developing the accompanying user services and engagement needed to attract, nurture, and grow a robust research community that is actively involved in determining directions for the infrastructure as well as management of the infrastructure. This should lead to infrastructure that can be sustained through community involvement and community leadership, and that will enable advances not possible with existing research infrastructure. Further, through the CCRI program, CISE seeks to ensure that researchers from a diverse range of institutions of higher education (IHEs), including minority-serving and predominantly undergraduate institutions, as well as researchers from non-profit, non-academic organizations, have access to such infrastructure. The CCRI program supports three classes of awards:
  • Planning Community Infrastructure (Planning) awards support planning efforts to engage research communities to develop new CISE community research infrastructures (Planning).
  • Medium Community Infrastructure (Medium) awards support the creation of new CISE community research infrastructure or the enhancement of existing CISE community research infrastructures with integrated tools, resources, user services, and research community outreach to enable innovative CISE research opportunities to advance the frontiers of the CISE core research areas. The Medium award class includes New (New) and Enhance/Sustain (ENS) awards.
  • Grand Community Infrastructure (Grand) awards support projects involving significant efforts to develop new CISE community research infrastructures or to enhance and sustain an existing CISE community research infrastructure to enable world-class CISE research opportunities for broad-based communities of CISE researchers that extend well beyond the awardee organization(s).
Each CCRI Medium or Grand award may include support for operation of the infrastructure, ensuring that the awardee organization(s) is (are) well positioned to provide a high quality of service to CISE community researchers expected to use the infrastructure to realize their research goals.
NSFCISE_pposs
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 15, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: January 25, 2021
Award Amount: up to $1M per year for up to 5 years (Large Grants); up to $250,000 over up to 1 year (Planning Grants)

A key focus of the design of modern computing systems is performance and scalability, particularly in light of the limits of Moore's Law and Dennard scaling. To this end, systems are increasingly being implemented by composing heterogeneous computing components and continually changing memory systems as novel, performant hardware surfaces. Applications fueled by rapid strides in machine learning, data analysis, and extreme-scale simulation are becoming more domain-specific and highly distributed. In this scenario, traditional boundaries between hardware-oriented and software-oriented disciplines increasingly are blurred. Achieving scalability of systems and applications will therefore require coordinated progress in multiple disciplines such as computer architecture, high-performance computing (HPC), programming languages and compilers, security and privacy, systems, theory, and algorithms. Cross-cutting concerns such as performance (including, but not limited to, time, space, and communication resource usage and energy efficiency), correctness and accuracy (including, but not limited to, emerging techniques for program analysis, testing, debugging, probabilistic reasoning and inference, and verification), security and privacy, robustness and reliability, domain-specific design, and heterogeneity must be taken into account from the outset in all aspects of systems and application design and implementation. 

The aim of the Principles and Practice of Scalable Systems (PPoSS) program is to support a community of researchers who will work symbiotically across the multiple disciplines above to perform basic research on scalability of modern applications, systems, and toolchains. The intent is that these efforts will foster the development of principles that lead to rigorous and reproducible artifacts for the design and implementation of large-scale systems and applications across the full hardware/software stack. These principles and methodologies should simultaneously provide guarantees on correctness and accuracy, robustness, and security and privacy of systems, applications, and toolchains. Importantly, as described below, PPoSS specifically seeks to fund projects that span the entire hardware/software stack and will lay the groundwork for sustainable approaches for engineering highly performant, scalable, and robust computing applications.
NSFCISE_FMitF
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: February 8, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: February 16, 2021
Award Amount: up to $750,000 over up to 4 years (Research Proposals); up to $100,000 over up to 18 months (Transition to Practice Proposals)

The Formal Methods in the Field (FMitF) program aims to bring together researchers in formal methods with researchers in other areas of computer and information science and engineering to jointly develop rigorous and reproducible methodologies for designing and implementing correct-by-construction systems and applications with provable guarantees. FMitF encourages close collaboration between two groups of researchers. The first group consists of researchers in the area of formal methods, which, for the purposes of this solicitation, is broadly defined as principled approaches based on mathematics and logic to system modeling, specification, design, analysis, verification, and synthesis. The second group consists of researchers in the "field," which, for the purposes of this solicitation, is defined as a subset of areas within computer and information science and engineering that currently do not benefit from having established communities already developing and applying formal methods in their research. This solicitation limits the field to the following areas that stand to directly benefit from a grounding in formal methods: computer networks, distributed/operating systems, embedded systems, human centered computing, and machine learning. A proposal pursuing a different field area must make a strong case for why the field area of interest is one that does not currently benefit from formal methods but would be a strong candidate for inclusion as a field area. The FMitF program solicits two classes of proposals:
  • Track I: Research proposals: Each proposal must have at least one Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI with expertise in formal methods and at least one with expertise in one or more of these fields: computer networks, distributed/operating systems, embedded systems, human centered computing, and machine learning. Proposals are expected to address fundamental contributions to both formal methods and the respective field(s) and should include a proof of concept in the field along with a detailed evaluation plan that discusses intended scope of applicability, trade-offs, and limitations. All proposals are expected to contain a detailed collaboration plan that clearly highlights and justifies the complementary expertise of the PIs/co-PIs in the designated areas and describes the mechanisms for continuous bi-directional interaction. Projects are limited to $750,000 in total budget, with durations of up to four years.
  • Track II: Transition to Practice (TTP) proposals: The objective of this track is to support the ongoing development of extensible and robust formal-methods research prototypes/tools to facilitate usability and accessibility to a larger and more diverse community of users. These proposals are expected to support the development, implementation, and deployment of later-stage successful formal methods research and tools into operational environments in order to bridge the gap between research and practice. A TTP proposal must include a project plan that addresses major tasks and system development milestones as well as an evaluation plan for the working system. Proposals are expected to identify a target user community or organization that will serve as an early adopter of the technology. Collaborations with industry are strongly encouraged. Projects are limited to $100,000 in total budget, with durations of up to 18 months.
NSFCISE_other
Other NSF: CISE Opportunities

National Science Foundation: Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences (NSF: MPS)
NSFMPS_hubs
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 8, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: January 15, 2021
Award Amount: $250,000 - $850,000 per year. The FRHTP will be funded for an initial duration of five years. Three awards are expected in FY 2021.
 
Focused Research Hubs in Theoretical Physics (FRHTP) are designed to enhance significant breakthroughs at an intellectual frontier of physics by providing resources beyond those available to individual investigators, so as to promote a collaborative approach to a focused topic while promoting the preparation of scientists at the beginning of their independent scientific careers. Although interdisciplinary aspects may be included, the bulk of the effort must fall within the purview of the Division of Physics. The successful hub will demonstrate: (1) the potential to advance science; (2) the enhancement of the development of early career scientists; (3) creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, diversity, and public outreach; (4) potential for broader impacts, e.g., impacts on other field(s) and benefits to society; (5) a synergy or value-added rationale that justifies a group approach. The proposal must present a compelling case that the FRHTP can achieve its scientific goals within a five-year time frame. The FRHTP is intended to support postdoctoral researchers and enable collaborative interactions via support for travel, collaboration meetings and workshops. The FRHTP are not intended to provide additional support for senior personnel (individual PIs), graduate or undergraduate students. Proposals may only be submitted in the specific topics listed in this solicitation, which define particular areas in theoretical physics in which the Division of Physics sees a need for a focused research hub. Future versions of this solicitation will allow response on different theoretical physics topics. It is expected that one award will be funded in each hub topic. The specific hub topics for this solicitation are:
  1. The Theoretical Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (TAMOP) focused research hub will support theoretical work to advance theoretical AMO physics and lead in motivating and explaining new experimental work in AMO and other areas of science within the purview of the Division of Physics.
  2. The Quantum Information Science (QIS) focused research hub will support theoretical work to explore quantum applications that will push the frontiers of quantum-based information, transmission, and manipulation within the purview of the Division of Physics. This activity will advance the goals of the "Quantum Leap", one of the NSF 10 Big Ideas for Future NSF Investment.
  3. The Theoretical Nuclear Physics (TNP) focused research hub will support theoretical work in the area of Models and Simulations for Nuclear Astrophysics relevant to research within the purview of the Division of Physics. This activity will advance the goals of the "Windows on the Universe", one of the NSF 10 Big Ideas for Future NSF Investment.
Any one individual may be the PI or co-PI for only one proposal. It is strongly recommended that prospective PIs contact the FRHTP Program Officer(s) to ascertain that the focus and budget of their proposed FRHTP are appropriate for this solicitation.
 NSFMPS_phy
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: varies by program
Award Amount: varies/wide range

The Division of Physics (PHY) supports physics research and the preparation of future scientists in the nation's colleges and universities across a broad range of physics disciplines that span scales of space and time from the largest to the smallest and the oldest to the youngest. The Division is comprised of disciplinary programs covering experimental and theoretical research in the following major subfields of physics: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics; Elementary Particle Physics; Gravitational Physics; Integrative Activities in Physics; Nuclear Physics; Particle Astrophysics; Physics at the Information Frontier; Physics of Living Systems; Plasma Physics; and Quantum Information Science.

The Division of Physics strongly encourages single proposal submission for possible co-review rather than submission of multiple related proposals to several programs. PIs considering submitting more than one proposal to this solicitation, or who already have an active PHY award, are encouraged to first consult with the relevant program officer(s) before preparing a new proposal. This does not apply to awards from or submissions to the MRI, REU, and/or center programs, or in cases of renewal proposals.
NSF:MPS
Other NSF: MPS Opportunities
National Science Foundation: Directorate for Engineering (NSF: ENG)
NSFenf_PFI
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 6, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: January 13, 2021; The pre-proposal deadline for Research Partnerships Track has passed.
Award Amount: Up to $250,000 for 18-24 months for the Technology Translation Track; up to $550,000 for 36 months for the Research Partnership Track
 
The Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) Program within the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP) offers researchers from all disciplines of science and engineering funded by NSF the opportunity to perform translational research and technology development, catalyze partnerships and accelerate the transition of discoveries from the laboratory to the marketplace for societal benefit. This solicitation offers two broad tracks:
  • The Technology Translation (PFI-TT) track offers the opportunity to translate prior NSF-funded research results in any field of science or engineering into technological innovations with promising commercial potential and societal impact. Concurrently, students and postdoctoral researchers who participate in PFI-TT projects receive education and leadership training in innovation and entrepreneurship. Successful PFI-TT projects generate technology-driven commercialization outcomes that address societal needs.
  • The Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) track seeks to achieve the same goals as the PFI-TT track by supporting instead complex, multi-faceted technology development projects that are typically beyond the scope of a single researcher or institution and require a multi-organizational, interdisciplinary, synergistic collaboration. Harvard is limited to submitting only one application to the Research Partnerships Track. The pre-proposal deadline for Research Partnerships Track has passed.
The intended outcomes of both PFI-TT and PFI-RP tracks are: a) the commercialization of new intellectual property derived from NSF-funded research outputs; b) the creation of new or broader collaborations with industry (including increased corporate sponsored research); c) the licensing of NSF-funded research outputs to third party corporations or to start-up companies funded by a PFI team; and d) the training of future innovation and entrepreneurship leaders.
 
Eligibility: All proposals submitted to the PFI program must meet a lineage requirement under one of the following two paths:
 
  1. NSF-supported research results: The PI or a co-PI must have had an NSF award that ended no more than seven (7) years prior to the full proposal deadline date or be a current NSF award recipient. The proposed technology development project must be derived from the research results and/or discoveries from this underlying NSF award.
OR
  1. NSF-supported customer discovery results through the NSF I-Corps Teams Program: The PI or a co-PI must have been a member of an award under the NSF I-Corps Teams Program. The PI or co-PI must have fully completed the training provided under the I-Corps Team award within the past four (4) years. The customer discovery activities performed under the NSF-funded I-Corps award must be based on the technology that is proposed to be translated within the PFI proposal.
NSFENF_ascent
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Preliminary Proposal: January 15, 2021
Sponsor Deadline for Preliminary Proposal: January 25, 2021
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Full Proposal (if invited): April 26, 2021
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposal (if invited): May 3, 2021
Award Amount: $1M - $1.5M over 4 years

The Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (ECCS) Division supports enabling and transformative research that fuels progress in engineering applications with high societal impacts. ECCS programs encompass novel electronic, photonic, and magnetic devices; communication systems, novel integrated circuits, antennas, sensors; machine learning, control, and networks, to name a few. The fundamental research supported by ECCS impacts a wide range of applications such as communications, energy and power, healthcare, environment, transportation, manufacturing, and other areas. ECCS strongly emphasizes the integration of education into its research programs to support the preparation of a diverse and professionally skilled workforce. ECCS also strengthens its programs through links to other areas of engineering, science, industry, government, and international collaborations.

The Addressing Systems Challenges through Engineering Teams (ASCENT) program is a strategic investment of ECCS that emphasizes new collaboration modalities among the various ECCS supported sub-disciplines. ASCENT encourages robust collaborations between the devices, circuits, algorithmic, and network research communities to develop innovative projects. ASCENT seeks proposals that are bold and ground-breaking transcending the perspectives and approaches typical of disciplinary research efforts. ASCENT projects are expected to lead to disruptive technologies or nucleate entirely new research fields motivated by the most pressing societal challenges the global community faces.
NSFENG_iss
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: February 22, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: March 1, 2021
Award Amount: up to $400,000 total, inclusive of direct and indirect costs, over up to 3 years

The purpose of this solicitation is to attract proposals that make use of the ISS National Lab for flight research projects in the field of biomedical engineering. Responsive proposals will describe how they will utilize the ISS National Lab to develop novel ideas into discovery-level and transformative projects that integrate engineering and life sciences. CASIS goals are to advance science research and technology development, expand human knowledge, inspire and educate the next generation, foster the commercial development of space, and demonstrate scientific capabilities in space for the benefit of life on Earth. Research at the interface of engineering and biomedical sciences in microgravity that advances both engineering and biomedical sciences for terrestrial benefit is solicited. The projects should focus on high impact transformative methods and technologies. Projects should include methods, models and enabling tools of understanding and controlling living systems; fundamental improvements in deriving information from cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems; or new approaches to the design of systems that include both living and non-living components. The long-term impact of the projects can be related to fundamental understanding of cell and tissue function in normal and pathological conditions, effective disease diagnosis and/or treatment, or improved health care delivery. Of particular interest to the NSF Engineering of Biomedical Systems (EBMS) program is fundamental and transformative research in the following areas of biomedical engineering:
  • Development of validated models (living or computational) of normal and pathological tissues and organ systems that can support development and testing of medical interventions;
  • Design of systems that integrate living and non-living components for improved diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of disease or injury; and
  • Advanced biomanufacturing of three-dimensional tissues and organs.
Of particular interest to the NSF Biomechanics and Mechanobiology (BMMB) program is fundamental research in biomechanics and mechanobiology, including:
  • Multiscale mechanics approaches that integrate across molecular, cell, tissue, and organ domains; and
  • The influence of in vivo mechanical forces on cell and matrix biology in histomorphogenesis, maintenance, regeneration, repair, and aging of tissues and organs.
Innovative proposals outside of these specific interest areas may be considered. However, prior to submission, it is strongly recommended that the PI contact the Program Directors to avoid the possibility of the proposal being returned without review.

NSFeng_UKRI

FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of a full proposal
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling; a Research Concept Outline (RCO) must be submitted to ENGUKRI@nsf.gov at least 60 days prior to the submission of a full proposal.
Award Amount: The overall funding for the program is established independently by each participating division. Budgets are not set aside separately but are, instead, parts of existing program budgets.

The Directorate for Engineering (ENG), Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET), the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI), and the Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (ECCS) of the National Science Foundation and the Engineering, ICT and Manufacturing the Future Themes of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) are pleased to announce the ENG-EPSRC Lead Agency Opportunity. The goal of this opportunity is to reduce some of the barriers that researchers currently encounter when working internationally. The ENG-EPSRC Lead Agency Opportunity will allow US and UK researchers to submit a single collaborative proposal that will undergo a single review process.

Proposals will be accepted for collaborative research in areas at the intersection of CBET, CMMI, and/or ECCS with the EPSRC Engineering, ICT and/or Manufacturing the Future Themes. Proposers choose either NSF or EPSRC to serve as the "lead" agency to review their proposal. The non-lead agency will honor the rigor of the review process and the decision of the lead agency. For research teams that would like EPSRC to act as lead agency, please see the instructions here. Proposers should review the CBET, CMMI, and ECCS Program Descriptions for research supported through these divisions and the EPSRC website for further information on what areas of research are eligible for support through this activity. Proposals are expected to adhere to typical proposal budgets and durations for the relevant NSF programs and EPSRC Themes from which funding is sought.

Please Note: A Research Concept Outline (RCO) must be submitted to ENGUKRI@nsf.gov at least 60 days prior to the submission of a full proposal. A proposal that is submitted without a previously approved RCO will be returned without review (RWR).
NSF:ENG
Other NSF: ENG Opportunities
National Science Foundation: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary
NSFCross_erc
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: November 30, 2020
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline (if nominated): February 12, 2021
Sponsor Deadline (if nominated): February 22, 2021
Award Amount: $600,000 maximum for 5-year awards; $400,000 maximum for 3-year awards
 
The Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) program funds research projects that identify (1) factors that are effective in the formation of ethical STEM researchers and (2) approaches to developing those factors in all STEM fields that NSF supports.
  • Standard Research Grants and Institutional Transformation Research Grants will use basic research to produce knowledge about what constitutes or promotes responsible or irresponsible conduct of research, and how to best instill this knowledge into researchers and educators at all career stages. Proposals can be collaborative.
  • Conference Proposals support thematic conferences designed to bring together researchers and students to foster new ER2 research, synthesize results across previously funded ER2 projects, and develop new ethical standards for STEM research. ER2 conference support is typically around $30,000 in direct costs.
  • Project Incubation Proposals provide funds for STEM researchers and administrators from multiple organizations to collaborate to develop and submit a full ER2 Standard Grant. Proposers must span at least two organizations. Those who intend to submit a proposal must consult with a cognizant NSF Program Officer before submitting to ascertain the suitability of the envisioned activity. Project Incubation proposals provide only one year of support, typically around $60,000 in direct costs.
The ER2 program will not consider proposals focused on ethics for medical students or in medical education. Proposals that address medical informatics, biomedical engineering, systems engineering and social scientific studies in health and medicine will be considered.
 
Please Note: Harvard University, as a single institution, is limited to submitting one proposal as the lead organization. To be considered for the Harvard nomination, potential applicants must submit an internal pre-proposal via the link above.
NSFCross_crcns
Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS): Innovative Approaches to Science and Engineering Research on Brain Function
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 3, 2020
Sponsor Deadline: December 10, 2020
Award Amount: $100,000 to $250,000 per year in combined direct costs over 3-5 years (on average)

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

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

 Two classes of proposals will be considered in response to this solicitation:
  • Research Proposals describing collaborative research projects, and
  • Data Sharing Proposals to enable sharing of data and other resources.
NSFCross_NCS
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Letter of Intent (Frontiers Proposals): December 8, 2020
Sponsor Deadline for Letter of Intent (Frontiers Proposals): December 15, 2020
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline for Full Proposals: February 5, 2021
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: February 15, 2021
Award Amount: up to $1M over 2-4 years (Foundations); up to $1M per integrative research thread including direct and indirect costs, for a project with a duration of up to 5 years (Frontiers)

The complexities of brain and behavior pose fundamental questions in many areas of science and engineering, drawing intense interest across a broad spectrum of disciplinary perspectives while eluding explanation by any one of them. Rapid advances within and across disciplines are leading to an increasingly interwoven fabric of theories, models, empirical methods and findings, and educational approaches, opening new opportunities to understand complex aspects of neural and cognitive systems through integrative multidisciplinary approaches. This program calls for innovative, convergent, boundary-crossing proposals that can best capture those opportunities and map out new research frontiers. NSF seeks proposals that pursue high-value scientific and technical risks by transcending the perspectives and approaches typical of disciplinary research efforts. This cross-directorate program is one element of NSF's participation in the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. NSF envisions a connected portfolio of transformative, integrative projects that create synergistic links across investigators and communities, yielding novel ways of tackling the challenges of understanding the brain in action and in context. The program focuses on four aspects of neural and cognitive systems that are current targets of converging interdisciplinary interests. NCS projects must advance the foundations of one or more of these focus areas:
  1. Neuroengineering and Brain-Inspired Concepts and Designs
  2. Individuality and Variation
  3. Cognitive and Neural Processes in Realistic, Complex Environments
  4. Data-Intensive Neuroscience and Cognitive Science
Proposals must address both risk and reward: high-risk, high-payoff approaches are expected. Proposals must also go beyond the scope of any NSF core program, or they will not be considered responsive to this solicitation. NCS will consider two classes of proposals. Foundations awards will support high-risk, high-payoff projects that advance the foundations of one or more NCS focus areas. Frontiers awards will support ambitious, highly integrative, interdisciplinary projects that advance and connect multiple integrative research threads to tackle challenges that would be intractable without a high level of collaboration and coordination. Community-driven efforts such as workshops or synthesis papers are also encouraged, to map out new frontiers at the interface of neuroscience and other disciplines that could reshape brain research and its applications.
NSFCross_AccelNet
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: December 14, 2020 (Updated Deadline)
Sponsor Deadline: January 4, 2021
Award Amount: up to $250,000 over up to 2 years (Design); up to $2M over 3-5 years (Implementation)

The goals of the Accelerating Research through International Network-to-Network Collaborations (AccelNet) program are to accelerate the process of scientific discovery and prepare the next generation of U.S. researchers for multiteam international collaborations. The AccelNet program supports strategic linkages among U.S. research networks and complementary networks abroad that will leverage research and educational resources to tackle grand research challenges that require significant coordinated international efforts. The program seeks to foster high-impact science and engineering by providing opportunities to cooperatively identify and coordinate efforts to address knowledge gaps and research needs. This solicitation invites proposals for the creation of international networks of networks in research areas aligned with a grand challenge identified as a priority by the research community or NSF, such as the NSF Big Ideas or in an active program solicitation. AccelNet awards support the connections among research networks, rather than supporting fundamental research as the primary activity. Each network of networks is expected to engage in innovative collaborative activities that promote synergy of efforts across networks and provide professional development for U.S. students, postdoctoral scholars, and early-career researchers. Two proposal categories covered by this solicitation include: Design and Implementation.

It is strongly recommended that prospective PIs contact the AccelNet Program Officer(s) to ascertain that the focus and budget of their proposed activities are appropriate for this solicitation.
NSFCross_MRI1
FAS/SEAS/OSP Preliminary Proposal Deadline: December 17, 2020 (Updated Deadline)
Sponsor Preliminary Proposal Deadline: January 7, 2021
FAS/SEAS/OSP Full Proposal Deadline (if invited): April 16, 2021
Sponsor Full Proposal Deadline (if invited): April 23, 2021
Award Amount: "Implementation" projects may have a total project cost ranging from $6 million up to but not including $20 million. Only "Design" projects may request less than $6 million, with a minimum request of $600,000 and a maximum request up to but not including $20 million.

The Mid-scale Research Infrastructure Big Idea is intended to provide NSF with an agile, Foundation-wide process to fund experimental research capabilities in the mid-scale range between the MRI and Major Facilities thresholds. NSF defines Research Infrastructure (RI) as any combination of facilities, equipment, instrumentation, or computational hardware or software, and the necessary human capital in support of the same. Mid-scale RI-1 implementation projects may include any combination of equipment, instrumentation, cyberinfrastructure, broadly used large-scale datasets, and the commissioning and/or personnel needed to successfully complete the project, or the design efforts intended to lead to eventual implementation of a mid-scale class project. Mid-scale RI-1 projects should fill a research community-defined scientific need or enable a national research priority to be met. Within Mid-scale RI-1, proposers may submit two types of projects, "Implementation" (e.g., acquisition/construction) and "Design". The "Design" track is intended to facilitate progress toward readiness for a mid-scale range implementation project. Both Implementation and Design projects may involve new or upgraded research infrastructure.
NSFCross_SRSRN
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 4, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: January 11, 2021
Award Amount: up to $15M over 5 years (Full Scale Awards); up to $150,000 over 1 year (Planning Grants)
 
Sustainable regional systems (SRS) are connected urban and rural systems that are transforming their structures and processes collaboratively with the goal of measurably and equitably advancing the well-being of people and the planet. The purpose of the SRS RNs competition is to develop and support interdisciplinary, multi-organizational teams of investigators and stakeholders working collaboratively to produce cutting-edge convergent research, education, and outreach that addresses grand challenges in sustainable regional systems. SRS RNs will study multiscale regional systems to further SRS science, engineering, and education. Key elements will include new data, methods, and models to understand interactions between natural, human-built, and social systems; improved understanding of interdependencies, mutual benefits, and trade-offs of different wellbeing outcomes for humans and the environment; new and generalizable theories of change relevant to SRS; the co-production of knowledge; and exploration of concepts of social equity in sustainable regional systems across spatial and temporal scales. SRS RN outcomes will have the potential to inform societal actions for sustainability across urban systems and the connected rural communities that make up regional systems. Subject to availability of funds and quality of proposals, this SRS RN solicitation will support projects in the following categories:
 
  • SRS RNs Full Scale Awards (Track 1): These awards will support fundamental convergent research, education, and outreach that addresses engineering, environmental (biology, chemistry - including sensing, chemical analytics, and recyclable plastics, atmospheric sciences, hydrology, geology), computer and data sciences, and social and behavioral sciences of sustainable regional systems in partnerships that may embrace universities, colleges, practitioners, non-profit organizations, local governments, industry, and community groups. The award size is up to $15 million total with a duration of 5 years.
  • SRS RNs Planning Grants (Track 2): These awards are for capacity building to prepare project teams to propose future well-developed SRS RN Full Scale (Track 1) proposals. Each of these Track 2 awards will provide support for a period of one year and may be requested at a level not to exceed $150,000 for the total budget.
NSFCross_HDR
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 13, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: January 21, 2021
Award Amount:
Award size is contingent upon the scope, scale, and complexity of the proposed project, with a minimum total budget of $10 million over 4-7 years

NSF's Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR) Big Idea is a national-scale activity to enable new modes of data-driven discovery that will allow fundamental questions to be asked and answered at the frontiers of science and engineering. This solicitation will establish a group of HDR Institutes for data-intensive research in science and engineering that can accelerate discovery and innovation in a broad array of research domains. The HDR Institutes will lead innovation by harnessing diverse data sources and developing and applying new methodologies, technologies, and infrastructure for data management and analysis. The HDR Institutes will support convergence between science and engineering research communities as well as expertise in data science foundations, systems, applications, and cyberinfrastructure. In addition, the HDR Institutes will enable breakthroughs in science and engineering through collaborative, co-designed programs to formulate innovative data-intensive approaches to address critical national challenges.
NSFCross_emerging
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 15, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: January 25, 2021
Award Amount: up to $850,000 over 3 years
 
The purpose of the Research on Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning (RETTL) program is to fund exploratory and synergistic research in emerging technologies (to include, but not limited to, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and immersive or augmenting technologies) for teaching and learning in the future. The program accepts proposals that focus on learning, teaching, or a combination of both. The scope of the program is broad, with special interest in diverse learner/educator populations, contexts, and content, including teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and in foundational areas that enable STEM (e.g., self-regulation, literacy, communication, collaboration, creativity, and socio-emotional skills). Research in this program should be informed by the convergence (synthesis) of multiple disciplines: e.g., learning sciences; discipline-based education research; computer and information science and engineering; design; and cognitive, behavioral, and social sciences. Within this broad scope, the program also encourages projects that investigate teaching and learning related to futuristic and highly technological work environments.
NSFCross_DMREF
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Full Proposal Window: January 11, 2021 - January 25, 2021
Award Amount: $1.2M - $1.8M for a duration of four years

DMREF is the primary program by which NSF participates in the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) for Global Competitiveness. MGI recognizes the importance of materials science and engineering to the well-being and advancement of society and aims to "deploy advanced materials at least twice as fast as possible today, at a fraction of the cost." MGI integrates materials discovery, development, property optimization, and systems design with a shared computational framework. This framework facilitates collaboration and coordination of research activities, analytical tools, experimental results, and critical evaluation in pursuit of the MGI goals. Consistent with the MGI Strategic Plan, DMREF highlights four sets of goals:
  • leading a culture shift in materials science and engineering research to encourage and facilitate an integrated team approach;
  • integrating experimentation, computation, data-intensive/-driven approaches, and theory, and equipping the materials science and engineering communities with advanced tools and techniques;
  • making digital data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, and useful to the community; and
  • creating a world-class materials science and engineering workforce that is trained for careers in academia or industry.
DMREF will accordingly support activities that significantly accelerate materials discovery and development by building the fundamental knowledge base needed to advance the design and development of materials with desirable properties or functionality. This will be accomplished through forming interdisciplinary teams of researchers working synergistically in a "closed loop" fashion, building a vibrant research community, leveraging data science, providing ready access to materials data, and educating the future MGI workforce. Achieving this goal could involve some combination of:
  • strategies to advance materials design through testing methodology;
  • theory, modeling, and simulation to predict behavior or assist in analysis of multidimensional input data; and
  • validation through synthesis, growth, processing, characterization, and/or device demonstration.
NSFCross_MCA
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 25, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: February 1, 2021
Award Amount: varies by discipline/wide range; full guidelines are described in the solicitation

An academic career often does not provide the uninterrupted stretches of time necessary for acquiring and building new skills to enhance and advance one's research program. Mid-career scientists in particular are at a critical career stage where they need to advance their research programs to ensure long-term productivity and creativity but are often constrained by service, teaching, or other activities that limit the amount of time devoted to research. The MCA offers an opportunity for scientists and engineers at the Associate Professor rank (or equivalent) to substantively enhance and advance their research program through synergistic and mutually beneficial partnerships, typically at an institution other than their home institution. Projects that envision new insights on existing problems or identify new but related problems previously inaccessible without new methodology or expertise from other fields are encouraged. Partners from outside the PI's own sub-discipline or discipline are encouraged, but not required, to enhance interdisciplinary networking and convergence across science and engineering fields.

NSFCross_HDRdsc
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: January 26, 2021 - February 12, 2021
Award Amount: $1.2M - $1.5M over 3 years

NSF's Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR) Big Idea is a national-scale activity to enable new modes of data-driven discovery that will allow fundamental questions to be asked and answered at the frontiers of science and engineering. In 2019, the HDR Big Idea launched three parallel efforts in pursuit of these aims: Institutes for Data-Intensive Research in Science and Engineering (I-DIRSE), HDR: Transdisciplinary Research In Principles Of Data Science Phase I (HDR TRIPODS Phase I), and Data Science Corps (DSC).

The Data Science Corps is one of the components of the HDR ecosystem enabling education and workforce development by focusing on building capacity for harnessing the data revolution at the local, state, and national levels to help unleash the power of data in the service of science and society. The Data Science Corps will provide practical experiences, teach new skills, and offer learning opportunities in different settings. This solicitation prompts the community to envision creative educational pathways that will transform data science education and expand the data science talent pool by enabling the participation of undergraduate and Master's degree students with diverse backgrounds, experiences, skills, and technical maturity in the Data Science Corps. These activities are envisioned to be inherently collaborative, with a lead organization and one or more collaborating organizations.
NSFCross_EarthCube
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: February 23, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: March 2, 2021
Award Amount: Projects are expected to be a maximum of 36 months with budgets that are commensurate with the size and scope of the project and anticipated scientific impact.
 
EarthCube is a community-driven activity sponsored through a partnership between the NSF Directorate for Geosciences (GEO) and the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) within the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) to transform research in the academic geosciences community. EarthCube aims to create a well-connected and facile environment to share data and knowledge in an open, transparent, and inclusive manner, thus accelerating our ability to understand and predict the Earth system. Achieving EarthCube will require a long-term dialog between NSF and the interested scientific communities to develop cyberinfrastructure that is thoughtfully and systematically built to meet the current and future requirements of geoscientists. New avenues will be supported to gather community requirements and priorities for the elements of EarthCube, and to capture the best technologies to meet these current and future needs. The EarthCube portfolio will consist of interconnected projects and activities that engage the geosciences, cyberinfrastructure, computer science, and associated communities. The portfolio of activities and funding opportunities will evolve over time depending on the status of the EarthCube effort and the scientific and cultural needs of the geosciences community.
 
NSFCross_NNA
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: February 26, 2021
Sponsor Deadline: March 5, 2021
Award Amount: up to $300,000 over up to 24 months (Planning Grants); up to $3M over up to 5 years (Research Grants); Collaboratory Grants have no budget restrictions/can be funded for up to 5 years

Arctic temperatures are warming faster than nearly everywhere else on Earth, with some models projecting that continued warming could produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean in a few decades. The rapid and wide-scale changes occurring in response to this warming portend new opportunities and unprecedented risks to natural environments; social and cultural systems; economic, political and legal systems; and built environments of the Arctic and across the globe. Gaps in scientific observations and the prevalence of interdependent social, natural, and built systems in the Arctic make it challenging to predict the region's future. Understanding and adapting to a changing Arctic requires creative new directions for Arctic-related research, education, workforce development, and leveraging of science, engineering, and technology advances from outside the Arctic. Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) embodies an important forward-looking response by the Foundation to these profound challenges. NNA seeks innovations in fundamental convergence research across the social, natural, environmental, computing and information sciences, and engineering that address the interactions or connections among natural and built environments and social systems, and how these connections inform our understanding of Arctic change and its local and global effects.

This solicitation requests proposals that fall within one of three tracks: NNA Planning Grants, dedicated to developing convergence research questions and teams to tackle projects of larger scope in the future; NNA Research Grants, aimed to support creative projects on fundamental research that address convergent scientific and engineering challenges related to the rapidly changing Arctic; and NNA Collaboratory Grants, designed to support collaborative teams undertaking research and training initiatives on critical themes of a broad scope related to the New Arctic. This solicitation is the third of what is envisioned to be at least a five-year agency-wide program to support the research and dissemination of new knowledge needed to inform the economy, security, and resilience of the Nation, the larger Arctic region, and the globe with respect to Arctic change.
OtherCross
Other NSF: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary Opportunities
 

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