June 9, 2018
UCR Research and Economic Development Newsletter
Michael Pazzani
Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development
Grant Opportunity Search: http://pivot.cos.com
In this Newsletter
  • Funding Opportunity: AFRI Foundational and Applied Science Program
  • Limited Submission: 2019 Searle Scholars Program
  • Limited Submission: NEH Summer Stipends
  • Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science
  • NIH Releases Strategic Plan for Data Science
  • Black-headed Grosbeak and Western Tanager
Funding Opportunity: AFRI Foundational and Applied Science Program
On May 30, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) announced a Request for Applications (RFA) for the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Foundational and Applied Science Program. AFRI is NIFA’s main competitive extramural research program. The fiscal year (FY) 2018 solicitation will distribute approximately $182 million to support research and extension proposals related to Plant Health and Production and Plant Products; Animal Health and Production and Animal Products; Food Safety, Nutrition, and Health; Bioenergy, Natural Resources, and Environment; Agriculture Systems and Technology; and Agriculture Economics and Rural Communities.
 
The RFA incorporates the Food and Agriculture Cyberinformatics and Tools (FACT) initiative, launched by NIFA in 2016 to support data science in agriculture. The solicitation seeks projects that "1) focus on fundamental or core big data analytics and tool development, and/or 2) apply big data concepts to specific science domains or across domains and sectors for any of the Animal health and production and animal products program area priorities.” In addition to FACT, an increased emphasis on microbiome research is seen throughout the RFA, including a new program area priority “Agricultural Microbiomes in Plant Systems and Natural Resources” under the Plant Health, Production and Plant Products and the Bioenergy, Natural Resources, and Environment (BNRE) program areas.
 
Details from the funding opportunity are below.
 
Letters of Intent:  Submission deadlines and requirements for Letters of Intent (LOI) will vary based on research area. Additional information on these requirements is provided below as well as in the full RFA.
 
Application Deadline: Application deadlines and submission requirements vary by topic area. Additional information on these requirements is provided below as well as in the full RFA.
 
Total Funding and Award Size:  USDA anticipates making approximately $182 million available for an undetermined number of awards. Individual award amounts, award distribution, and project period will vary based on research area. Additional information is provided below:

  • Program Area A – Plant Health and Production and Plant Products ($43.9 million)
  • A.1 – Foundational Knowledge of Agricultural Production Systems
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to five years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by August 9, 2018.
  • A.2 – Pests and Beneficial Species in Agricultural Production Systems
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to five years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by August 14, 2018.
  • A.3 – Physiology of Agricultural Plants
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to five years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by July 25, 2018.
  • A.4 – Plant Breeding for Agricultural Production
  •  $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to five years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by July 25, 2018.
  • A.5 – Pollinator Health: Research and Application
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years. Proposals that address the research coordination network priority outlined in the RFA may receive up to $750,000.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by September 6, 2018.
  • A.6 – Agricultural Microbiomes in Plant Systems and Natural Resources
  • $750,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • The submission deadline for LOIs is July 18, 2018. Applications are due by September 26, 2018.
  • A.7 – Agricultural Biosecurity Coordination Network
  • $1 million total per project with a project period of up to five years.
  • The submission deadline for LOIs is July 24, 2018. Applications are due by September 27, 2018.

  • Program Area B – Animal Health and Production and Animal Products ($36.8 million)
.
 
  • Program Area C – Food Safety, Nutrition, and Health ($26.2 million)
  • C.1 – Improving Food Safety
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to five years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by August 1, 2018.
  • C.2 – Improving Food Quality
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to five years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by July 31, 2018.
  • C.3 – Understanding Antimicrobial Resistance
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to five years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by July 25, 2018.
  • C.4 – Food Manufacturing Technologies
  • $1 million total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by July 25, 2018.
  • C.5 – Function and Efficacy of Nutrients
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to five years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by August 9, 2018.
 
  • Program Area D – Bioenergy, Natural Resources, and Environment (BNRE) ($21.7 million)
  • D.1 – Sustainable Agroecosystems: Functions, Processes and Management
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by August 1, 2018.
  • D.2 – Bioenergy and Biobased Product Feedstock Logistics
  • $1 million total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by August 1, 2018.
  • D.3 – Agricultural Microbiomes in Plant Systems and Natural Resources
  • $750,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • The submission deadline for LOIs is July 18, 2018. Applications are due by September 26, 2018.
  • D.4 – Networks for Synthesis, Data Sharing, and Management
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to five years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by August 8, 2018.
 
  • Program Area E – Agriculture Systems and Technology (AST) ($19.5 million)
  • E.1 – Agricultural Engineering
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by July 27, 2018.
  • E.2 – Bioprocessing and Bioengineering
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by July 27, 2018.
  • E.3 – Nanotechnology for Agricultural and Food Systems
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by August 9, 2018.
  • E.4 – Food and Agriculture Cyberinformatics Tools (FACT)
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to five years. Proposals addressing the coordinated innovation network priority outlined in the RFA may be eligible for awards up to $1 million.
  • The submission deadline for LOIs is July 25, 2018. Applications due by October 31, 2018.
  • LOI should address which program area is most relevant to the proposal, see RFA for more information.
 
  • Program Area F – Agriculture Economics and Rural Communities (AERC) ($22.9 million)
  • F.1 – Small and Medium-Sized Farm
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by August 23, 2018.
  • F.2 – Economics, Markets and Trade
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by August 30, 2018.
  • F.3 – Economic Implications and Applications of Big Data in Food and Agriculture
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by August 30, 2018.
  • F.4 – Social Implications of Food and Agricultural Technologies
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by September 27, 2018.
  • F.5 – Environmental and Natural Resource Economics
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by September 13, 2018.
  • F.6 – Center for Behavioral and Experimental Economics for Agri-Environmental and Risk Management Policy Research
  • $1 million total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by September 13, 2018.
  • F.7 – Valuing Environmental Benefits from Natural Resource Conservation Programs
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by September 13, 2018.
  • F.8 – Innovation for Rural Entrepreneurs and Communities
  • $500,000 total per project with a project period of up to four years.
  • No LOI required. Applications due by July 31, 2018.
 
  • Program Area G – Crosscutting Programs ($11 million)
  • G.1 – Critical Agricultural Research and Extension (CARE)
  • Total funding of $7 million. Up to $300 thousand per project with a project period of up to three years (nonrenewable).
  • The submission deadline for LOIs is July 25, 2018. Applications due by October 22, 2018.
  • LOI should address which program area is most relevant to the proposal, see RFA for more information.
  • G.2 – Exploratory Research
  • Total funding of $4 million. Up to $200 thousand per project with a project period of up to two years (nonrenewable).
  • LOIs will be accepted throughout the year. Application submission deadlines will vary based on whether an application is encouraged following the review of the letter of intent. Upon receiving encouragement, an applicant will have up to 60 days to submit a full application.
  • LOI should address which program area is most relevant to the proposal, see RFA for more information.
 
 
Note: UCR is eligible for Strengthening grants and equipment grants from this solicitation. Strengthening grants are useful for new investigators or for people starting a new topic without initial data or results. Equipment grants are useful for people who need equipment,.
 
Sources and Additional Background:
Limited Submission: 2019 Searle Scholars Program
Internal deadline: July 10, 2018
Agency Deadline: September 28, 2018
Limited Submission Instructions: https://research.ucr.edu/ord/limitedsubmissions.aspx

Searle Scholars Program

The Searle Scholars Program is a limited submission award program which makes grants to selected academic and research institutions to support the independent research of outstanding early-career scientists who have recently been appointed as assistant professors on a tenure-track appointment. Grants are $300,000 for a three-year term with $100,000 payable each year of the grant, subject to the receipt of acceptable progress reports. Generally, the program makes 15 new grants annually.

Nomination for the 2019 competition will be open to participating institutions on or after June 1, 2018. The application will be available online to selected individuals once nomination has been placed and the submission deadline will be September 28, 2018. Submissions are restricted to selected candidates from Participating Institutions only. Individuals who have not been nominated by a participating institution cannot apply. Access to the online application will only be shared with nominated applicants.

Selection:
Applications will be screened by a scientific advisory board comprised of experts in the fields of interest to the Program. All applicants will be advised of competition results by mid-March of the award year.

Eligibility Criteria:
The Searle Scholars Program Scientific Advisory Board is primarily interested in the potential of applicants to make innovative and high-impact contributions to research over an extended period of time.

Applicants for the 2019 competition (awards which will be activated on July 1, 2019) are expected to be pursuing independent research careers in biochemistry, cell biology, genetics, immunology, neuroscience, pharmacology, and related areas in chemistry, medicine, and the biological sciences.

Applicants should have begun their appointment as an independent investigator at the assistant professor level on or after July 1, 2017. The appointment must be their first tenure-track position (or its nearest equivalent) at an invited institution.

The Searle Scholars Program does not ordinarily support purely clinical research but has supported research programs that include both clinical and basic components. Potential applicants who are unsure if their research is appropriate for our Program are encouraged to examine the research interests of present and former Searle Scholars on the website.

Applicants who were nominated for awards in the previous competition year but were not awarded may still meet the eligibility criteria for the current competition. Institutions should consult with the scientific director of the Program regarding renomination of such individuals. 
Limited Submission: NEH Summer Stipends
Internal deadline: July 10, 2018
Agency Deadline: September 26, 2018 for Projects Beginning May 2019
Limited Submission Instructions: https://research.ucr.edu/ord/limitedsubmissions.aspx

NEH Summer Stipends

Summer Stipends support individuals pursuing advanced research that is of value to humanities scholars, general audiences, or both. Summer Stipends provide $6,000 for two consecutive months of full-time research and writing. Recipients must work full-time on their projects for these two months and may hold other research grants supporting the same project during this time. Summer Stipends normally support work carried out during the summer months, but arrangements can be made for other times of the year.

Summer Stipends support projects at any stage of development.  NEH funds may support recipients’ compensation, travel, and other costs related to the proposed scholarly research.

Eligible projects usually result in articles, monographs, books, digital materials and publications, archaeological site reports, translations, editions, or other scholarly resources.

In the last five competitions the Summer Stipends program received an average of 834 applications per year. The program made an average of 77 awards per year, for a funding ratio of 9 percent.

The number of applications to an NEH grant program can vary widely from year to year, as can the funding ratio. Information about the average number of applications and awards in recent competitions is meant only to provide historical context for the current competition. Information on the number of applications and awards in individual competitions is available from [email protected].

NEH encourages submission of Summer Stipends applications from  independent scholars and faculty at Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Tribal Colleges and Universities. 

Summer Stipends may not be used for projects that seek to promote a particular political, religious, or ideological point of view; projects that advocate a particular program of social action; specific policy studies; research for doctoral dissertations or theses by students enrolled in a degree program; the preparation or revision of textbooks; curriculum development;  the development of teaching methods or theories; educational or technical impact assessments; empirical social science research, unless part of a larger humanities project; inventories of collections; works in the creative and performing arts (for example, painting, writing fiction or poetry, dance performance, etc.); the writing of autobiographies, memoirs, or works of creative nonfiction; or the writing of guide books, how-to books, and self-help books.
Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science
On May 25, the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science released the fiscal year (FY) 2018 open funding call. The funding opportunity announcement is referred to as the Continuation of Solicitation for the Office of Science Financial Assistance Program. This is a yearly call, but the updated funding opportunity announcement has been released much later than prior years given the delay in Congress passing final FY 2018 appropriations and the additional review by DOE management under the Trump Administration. There are also new funding opportunities that reflect research priorities identified in new strategic plans and Basic Research Needs workshops.
 
The call will be open until the end of the fiscal year on September 30, 2018, and will likely be extended throughout a Continuing Resolution. The Office of Science plans to make $250 million in awards over the next four months, which includes new awards, renewals of existing awards, supplemental grants, and cooperative agreement awards. The awards cover all six Office of Science program areas—Basic Energy Sciences, Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Biological and Environmental Research, Fusion Energy Sciences, High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics—and all associated research areas, such as applied mathematics, materials chemistry, geosciences, biological systems science, and heavy ion nuclear physics. The awards on are on average $500,000 a year, but can range from $2,000 to $4 million in annual funding. While most of the funding will be for grant renewals or extensions, the Office of Science expects to make 200 to 350 new awards under this solicitation. Before submitting a proposal, we recommend contacting the relevant program manager to discuss the highest priority research directions and receive guidance to increase the likelihood of success.
 
Some notable differences in the new funding opportunity announcement are worth highlighting and reflect shifting priorities:
 
  • Machine learning: There is more emphasis on machine learning and in particular machine learning applications for high performance computing to accelerate scientific discovery, a new topic under theoretical condense matter physics for research in predictive theory and modeling on novel materials to advance machine learning, a new topic under computational theoretical chemistry to support machine learning applications for open source computational chemical software.
  • Quantum: The Office of Science plans increased investments in quantum information science and in particular increases in experimental and theoretical condensed matter physics for new and emergent quantum materials with targeted functionality for quantum computing and other quantum information science applications, the development of advance in situ analysis and study of quantum materials, and new technologies and methods for quantum computing and quantum information science that benefit high energy physics. 
  • Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences: A new emphasis on research that addresses one or more of the five new strategic priorities—ultrafast chemistry, chemistry at complex interfaces, charge transport and reactivity, reaction pathways in diverse environments, and chemistry in aqueous environments. These new priorities significantly impact catalysis science, with a new focus on chemistry in aqueous environments, chemistry at complex interfaces, design of catalysts for efficient interconversion of electrical and chemical energy, and novel spectroscopic techniques and structural probes to observe ultrafast bond formation.
  • Biological Systems Science: The major new thrust is predictive understanding, manipulation, and design of biological systems “as they respond to biotic and abiotic stressors (such as nutrient water availability or radiation exposure).”  

Source: FY 2018 Continuation of Solicitation for the Office of Science Financial Assistance Program, DE-FOA-0001820, is available at https://science.energy.gov/~/media/grants/pdf/foas/2018/SC_FOA_0001820.pdf.
NIH Releases Strategic Plan for Data Science
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Science Policy released its new Strategic Plan for Data Science, following its March 5 release of an earlier draft for public comment. To account for the rapidly increasing supply of data spread across a broad number of researchers in a variety of formats, NIH seeks to mobilize advancements in storage, communications, and processing using tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and deep learning that can revolutionize the way data is stored and maintained. Furthermore, NIH recognizes the importance of developing robust information security approaches to preserve public trust and patient protection. This strategic plan gives the external community further insight into NIH’s future priorities and needs in data creation and maintenance.
 
The Strategic Plan for Data Science was created in response to five specific challenges identified by NIH:
 
  • The growing costs of managing data could diminish NIH’s ability to enable scientists to generate data for understanding biology and improving health.
  • The current data-resource ecosystem tends to be “siloed” and is not optimally integrated or interconnected.
  • Important datasets exist in many different formats and are often not easily shared, findable, or interoperable.
  • Historically, NIH has often supported data resources using funding approaches designed for research projects, which has led to a misalignment of objectives and review expectations.
  • Funding for tool development and data resources has become entangled, making it difficult to assess the utility of each independently and to optimize value and efficiency.
  • There is currently no general system to transform innovative algorithms and tools created by academic scientists into enterprise-ready resources that meet industry standards of ease of use and efficiency of operation.
 
With the overarching principle that data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable or “FAIR,” NIH has outlined five specific goals for its strategic plan, with objectives under each goal as well as a method for evaluating progress:
 
1.Support a Highly Efficient and Effective Biomedical Research Data Infrastructure
1-1 Optimize Data Storage and Security
1-2 Connect NIH Data Systems
 
2. Promote Modernization of the Data-Resources Ecosystem
2-1 Modernize the Data Repository Ecosystem
2-2 Support the Storage and Sharing of Individual Datasets
2-3 Leverage Ongoing Initiatives to Better Integrate Clinical and Observational Data into Biomedical Data Science
 
3. Support the Development and Dissemination of Advanced Data Management, Analytics, and Visualization Tools
3-1 Support Useful, Generalizable, and Accessible Tools and Workflows
3-2 Broaden Utility, Usability, and Accessibility of Specialized Tools
3-3 Improve Discovery and Cataloging Resources
 
4.Enhance Workforce Development for Biomedical Data Science
4-1 Enhance the NIH Data-Science Workforce
4-2 Expand the National Research Workforce
4-3 Engage a Broader Community
 
5.Enact Appropriate Policies to Promote Stewardship and Sustainability
5-1 Develop Policies for a FAIR Data Ecosystem
5-2 Enhance Stewardship
 
NIH lists its implementation tactics under each objective in further detail. 
 
  • NIH states that the National Science Foundation (NSF) is at the “forefront of supporting disciplines that contribute to data science” and that NIH intends to work with NSF on joint initiatives related to training and educating researchers at different stages of their careers. 
  • To train its internal workforce, NIH will recruit data scientists and others from industry and academia for one-to-three year “NIH Data Fellows” sabbaticals who will be embedded in a range of high-profile, transformative projects such as the Cancer Moonshot, “All of Us,” and the BRAIN Initiative to provide expertise not available internally.
 
Sources and Additional Information:
 
 
Black-headed Grosbeak and Western Tanager
This week's guest photographer is my wife, Christine. She caught a western tanager (yellow bird with red head) and a black-headed grosbeak having an argument in our bubbler. Both birds are migratory and can be found in the Riverside area in May.