Vice President for Research & Economic Development
Proposal Services & Faculty Support
August Funding Focus Newsletter #2
What is a Limited Submission?
A limited submission solicitation (RFA, RFP, etc.) places a cap on the number of submissions that Auburn may submit to a sponsor. Auburn handles limited submissions by sending out a notification via this newsletter and creating competitions in the Auburn University Competition Space (also known as InfoReady ).To apply to any limited submission posted below, click on the above link and search for your competition reflected on the page. Please refer to the Limited Submission Procedures page for a list of requirements.
Limited Submission Announcements

The Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program serves to increase access to multi-user scientific and engineering instrumentation for research and research training in our Nation's institutions of higher education and not-for-profit scientific/engineering research organizations. An MRI award supports the acquisition or development of a multi-user research instrument that is, in general, too costly and/or not appropriate for support through other NSF programs.
MRI provides support to acquire critical research instrumentation without which advances in fundamental science and engineering research may not otherwise occur. MRI also provides support to develop next-generation research instruments that open new opportunities to advance the frontiers in science and engineering research. Additionally, an MRI award is expected to enhance research training of students who will become the next generation of instrument users, designers and builders.
An MRI proposal may request up to $4 million for either acquisition or development of a research instrument. Beginning with the FY 2018 competition, each performing organization may submit in revised “Tracks” as defined below, with no more than two submissions in Track 1 and no more than one submission in Track 2.
  • Track 1: Track 1 MRI proposals are those that request funds from NSF greater than or equal to $100,0001 and less than $1,000,000.
  • Track 2: Track 2 MRI proposals are those that request funds from NSF greater than or equal to $1,000,000 up to and including $4,000,000.

Consistent with the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (Public Law 110-69), cost sharing of precisely 30% of the total project cost is required for Ph.D.-granting institutions of higher education and for non-degree-granting organizations. Non-Ph.D.-granting institutions of higher education are exempt from the cost-sharing requirement and cannot include it. National Science Board policy prohibits voluntary committed cost sharing.

Institutional Limit: 3 Proposals (2 in Track 1, 1 in Track 2)
Internal Deadline: September 20, 2019, 4:45pm

P&G focuses its social responsibility efforts where we can uniquely add value so we can generate the most positive impact. Specifically, we will provide everyday essentials that help create the experience of home for families who can't afford them or who have been displaced, and we support hygiene education and everyday healthy behaviors that help prevent illness and improve confidence for people in need around the world. This focus enables us to take advantage of our strengths and help work toward the United Nations Millennium Development Goals focused on housing and sanitation as well as child and maternal health. 

Each grant request is carefully evaluated to determine alignment with 
  • Providing the comforts of home, the everyday essentials that help create the experience of home for families who can't afford them or who have been displaced.
  • Supporting hygiene education and everyday healthy behaviors that help prevent illness and improve confidence 

Institutional Limit: 2 Proposals per College
Internal Deadline: September 6, 2019, 4:45pm
FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

The overarching purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to promote the discovery of strong candidate biomarkers and endpoints for pain that can be used to facilitate the development of non-opioid pain therapeutics from discovery through Phase II clinical trials. Specifically, the focus of this FOA is on the identification and initial biological, analytical and clinical validation of pain biomarkers, biomarker signatures, and/or endpoints. Although research supported by this FOA can include animal studies, it must also include preliminary human validation using carefully standardized human samples or human clinical studies. The goal of this initiative is to deliver candidate biomarkers, biomarker signatures, and/or endpoints that are ready for advanced clinical and analytical validation research.

Optional Letter of Intent Due – October 26, 2019
Full Proposal Due – November 25, 2019 (5pm Central)

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation seeks to support fundamental research that addresses issues of rules, norms and governance of the internet and digital platforms. Recent research, policy debates and public controversies have highlighted the absence of uniform consensus on the norms, rights and responsibilities that should govern digital services, in particular social media. 
We wish to fund scholarly inquiry and novel approaches that will strengthen our democracy as the digital age progresses. This opportunity is open to a range of research institutions, including universities and policy centers.

We seek to support efforts that advance research – both theoretical and empirical – on topics related to governance and the rights and responsibilities of individuals, commercial interests, non-governmental organizations and government in the digital era. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
  • Content: the rights and responsibilities of users of services, as well as the rights and responsibilities of social media companies and digital service providers, with regard to content. This includes issues of content moderation, content liability, algorithmic content generation and optimization, as well as actual or potential harms and benefits associated with digital/platform services.
  • Market: how to understand the digital services and social media marketplaces, including theories of competition, empirical work on the nature of these markets, and issues of market concentration and power.
  • Regulation: regulatory response – in terms of self-regulation, consumer behavior and government regulation – including new regulatory theories and specific regulatory proposals. Our interest comprises laws and rules, jurisdictional questions, regulatory infrastructures—within government, specific commercial concerns and civil society (consumers and non-governmental actors), and regulatory enforcement.

This call will remain open until otherwise indicated.
The multi-agency Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases program supports research on the ecological, evolutionary, and social drivers that influence the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases. The central theme of submitted projects must be the quantitative or computational understanding of pathogen transmission dynamics. The intent is discovery of principles of infectious disease transmission and testing mathematical or computational models that elucidate infectious disease systems. Projects should be broad, interdisciplinary efforts that go beyond the scope of typical studies. Ten grants of roughly $2.4 million each will be awarded.

Full Proposal Due – November 20, 2019 (5pm Eastern)
This program seeks to accelerate fundamental, broad-based research on wireless-specific machine learning techniques, towards a new wireless system and architecture design, which can dynamically access shared spectrum, efficiently operate with limited radio and network resources, and scale to address the diverse and stringent quality-of-service requirements of future wireless applications. In parallel, this program also targets research on reliable distributed ML by addressing the challenge of computation over wireless edge networks to enable ML for wireless and future applications. Model-based approaches for designing the wireless network stack have proven quite efficient in delivering the networks in wide use today; research enabled by this program is expected to identify realistic problems that can be best solved by ML and to address fundamental questions about expected improvements from using ML over model-based methods.

It is anticipated that 10 to 15 awards will be made, with an award size of $300,000-$1,500,000, for periods of up to 3 years. The budget should be commensurate with the complexity of the proposed research. Projects will be funded across this range.

Smaller-scale projects are well-suited to one or two investigators (PI and one co-PI or other Senior Personnel) and a small number of students and/or postdocs. Larger-scale projects are well-suited to a small number of investigators (PI, co-PI and/or other Senior Personnel) and several students and/or postdocs. Larger-scale projects are encouraged to be inclusive of a prototyping effort for the researched solutions.

Full Proposal Due – October 29, 2019 (5pm Eastern)
Reserve the Corner today for collaborative meetings, proposal development or to learn more about AU research resources.
The monthly flights on the AU shuttle connect faculty to other researchers or agencies to further their research goals.
AU PI Handbook, agency guides & more to help you write a successful proposal.

Auburn University subscription based funding service that provides faculty with funding opportunities pertinent to their research areas. 
Proposal Services & Faculty Support
844-5929 / c ls0071@auburn.edu