This monthly newsletter has been created to assist FAS researchers across all domains who are looking for funding opportunities related to "Big Data". In response to the need for new conceptual and computational approaches for big data processing and storage, as well as the need for educational opportunities in this area for up and coming researchers, sponsors like NSF, DOD, DOE, NIH and private foundations are offering a growing number of funding opportunities for Big Data research and training programs.

This newsletter will be sent electronically each month. To receive this and other funding opportunity newsletters, please sign up here.  All opportunities will be archived and recipients may unsubscribe at any time.
Funding Opportunities for Big Data
Social Science
 (Computer) Science and Engineering
Biomedical Science
Education and Training

Indicates a funding announcement that was updated or added to the newsletter this month.

News and Resources

BD2K is a trans-NIH initiative established to enable biomedical research as a digital research enterprise. In its first phase (FY2014-FY2017), it invested $200 million in grant awards to address some major data science challenges and to stimulate data-driven discovery. These awards will continue through award end dates, and lessons from this initial investment will help inform the second phase of the program (FY2018-FY2021).  In its second phase, the program will continue to pursue approaches to making biomedical big data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable or "FAIR." This will include a pilot program to test the feasibility, cost, and best practices for making multiple NIH-funded datasets and associated computational tools FAIR in a shared space that multiple scientists can access remotely, such as the cloud.  This approach of managing data, referred to as a Data "Commons," will be piloted through BD2K, with the expectation that it will inform future data management strategies across the NIH.

Working jointly with the BD2K Centers-Coordination Center (BD2KCCC) and the NIH Office of Data Science, the BD2K Training Coordinating Center (TCC) is spearheading a new virtual lecture series on the data science underlying modern biomedical research. The seminar series consists of weekly webinar presentations on Friday afternoons from 12:00-1:00pm EST covering the basics of data management, representation, computation, statistical inference, data modeling, and other topics relevant to "big data" biomedicine. The seminar series provides essential training suitable for individuals at all levels of the biomedical community. All video presentations from the seminar series will be streamed for live viewing, recorded, and posted online for future viewing and reference. These videos will also be indexed as part of TCC's Educational Resource Discovery Index (ERuDIte), shared/mirrored with the BD2KCCC, and with other BD2K resources.

The Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology (DMICE) and Library are pleased to announce the release of open educational resources (OERs) in the area of Biomedical Big Data Science. Funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Program, OERs have been produced that can be downloaded, used, and repurposed for a variety of educational audiences by both learners and educators. Development of the OERs is an ongoing process, but they have reached the point where a critical mass of the content is being made available for use and to obtain feedback. The OERs are intended to be flexible and customizable and their use or repurpose is encouraged. They can be used as "out of the box" courses for students or as materials for educators to use in courses, training programs, and other learning activities. The goal is to create 32 module topics.  

The BD2K Training Coordinating Center has been creating and populating the Educational Resource Discovery Index (ERuDIte), a database of 10,000+ data science educational resources from collective BD2K activities and from around the web. To lear n more, visit  http://www.bigdatau.org/ and  find the ERuDite search box at the top of the page to access the database.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a leader in supporting Big Data research efforts. These efforts are part of a larger portfolio of Data Science activities. NSF initiatives in Big Data and Data Science encompass Research, Cyberinfrastructure, Education and Training, and Community Building.
Social Science
CiscoLegalImplications
Legal Implications for IoT, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Systems
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling 
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Budgets depend on the institution and geography

This RFP seeks research focused on two dramatic trends in Information Technology. First, the advances in computational capacity and technology leading to an eventual development of autonomous computer systems that take action based on a core set of logic that changes over time; evolving the systems' actions, based on learning, so that the action taken today may not have been the action taken yesterday. This will lead to computer systems that may be allowed to take autonomous, continuously evolving, actions derived from decisions established without human definition or intervention. Machines taking actions, and perhaps machines taking actions that cause other machines to take actions, require law practitioners, judges and policy makers to consider the impacts on the application of civil, criminal, and statutory law.  The second key trend is a dramatic increase in the ability to create, transmit, analyze and collect data through the Internet of Things (IoT). As this data is produced, transferred, collected, and analyzed it raises new issues about whether the quantity and quality of the data changes our historical application of the laws of security, privacy, and the relation between citizens, consumers, companies and government. These new robust data streams create new challenges in data ownership, control, and security. Additionally, in cloud environments where most big data applications are deployed, data is often distributed across multiple data centers, geographic locations, and sometimes owners of infrastructure who exert control over the compute and storage functions themselves. How does this effect the legal definition of expectation of privacy, control, sovereignty, fair use and intellectual property?
DARPAGroundTruth
U.S. Department of Defense
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Ground Truth (GT)
Sponsor Deadline: June 29, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  The level of funding for individual awards made under this solicitation will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds.  Ground Truth is a 30-month program comprising three phases with durations of 18 months, 6 months and 6 months, respectively. DARPA anticipates multiple awards under both Technical Areas (TAs).

The Defense Sciences Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of new simulation capabilities to test the accuracy and robustness of causal modeling methods for understanding human social systems and behaviors. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in social science modeling, simulation, and causal inference. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice. In particular, DARPA seeks to create artificial but socially plausible simulations that have known causal ground truth to validate the accuracy and robustness of social science modeling methods. Ground truth simulations should allow for a wide range of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed social science modeling methods, and should provide different kinds of complexity to test causal modeling methods across a range of simulated behaviors and systems.
 
Using a series of staged tests, DARPA anticipates that these simulations will help quantify the capabilities and theoretical limitations of different modeling methods for explaining and predicting causal processes in complex social systems. Additionally, these simulations will provide opportunities to evaluate new modeling methods, or combinations of methods, to advance the rigor of causal inference and modeling in the pursuit of "solution-oriented" social sciences. The GT program will be divided into two Technical Areas (TAs) with an independent Test and Evaluation (T&E) team providing oversight. The two TAs are: TA1: Simulations and TA2: Methods.
USDANIFAAFRIFY17
National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA)
Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Competitive Grants Program
Sponsor Deadline: June 8, 2017 for Agricultural Engineering proposals; July 6, 2017 for Economics, Markets and Trade proposals
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Up to $500,000 for up to 4 years for Agricultural Engineering proposals. Up to $500,000 for up to 5 years for Economics, Markets and Trade proposals. The anticipated amount available for all new grants under this FY 2017 Foundational Program RFA is approximately $150.2 million.

The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) is America's flagship competitive grants program that provides funding for fundamental and applied research, education, and extension projects in the food and agricultural sciences. In this RFA, NIFA requests applications for six AFRI priority areas through the Foundational Program for FY 2017: 1. Plant health, and production and plant products; 2. Animal health, and production and animal products; 3. Food safety, nutrition, and health; 4. Bioenergy, natural resources, and environment; 5. Agriculture systems and technology; and 6. Agriculture economics and rural communities.

Two program areas specifically request applications related to big data.The Agricultural Engineering program area focuses on engineered devices, technologies, and tools to improve agriculturally relevant plant, animal, forestry, and natural resource systems. USDA is interested in receiving proposals that explore the use or development of advanced computational or engineering methods and technologies for navigation, mining, management, visualization, understanding, and communication of agricultural systems data that enable more effective use of big data. The Economics, Markets and Trade program area encourages the development of theories, methods and applications of economics, including  the social and economic implication of advances in science and technology, e.g., genomics, the microbiome, nanotechnology, and unmanned aerial vehicles; and opportunities and economic implications of big data.

In addition,  all program areas that accept conference applications in FY17 also welcome submission of Food and Agriculture Cyberinformatics and Tools (FACT) workshop applications. In many science areas covered by this RFA, large and diverse datasets are produced at a rapid pace. The availability of big data provides unprecedented opportunities for synthesizing new knowledge, for making predictive decisions, and fostering data-supported innovation in agriculture. NIFA has embarked on its new FACT initiative to catalyze activities in these areas. The FACT workshops supported will focus on identifying priorities and bottlenecks in generating, managing and integrating data in a specific domain of the food and agricultural system. NIFA expects that the FACT workshops will be held by October 1, 2017. 
OCLCALISEResearchGrants
OCLC/ALISE Library & Information Science Research Grant Program (LISRGP)
Sponsor Deadline: September 15, 2017
OSP Deadline: September 8, 2017
Award Information: Up to $25,000 for 1 year

The overall goal of the Library & Information Science Research Grant Program is to promote independent research, particularly work helping to integrate new technologies that offer innovative approaches, and research that contributes to a better understanding of the information environment and user expectations and behaviors. Submissions that integrate diversity, inclusion and equity aspects into these research areas will be prioritized.  Research related, but not limited, to the following areas is encouraged:
  • Impact of digital technology on libraries, museums, and archives;
  • Social media, learning, and information-seeking behavior; or
  • New developments in knowledge organization (metadata, social tagging, linked data, etc.).
Full-time academic faculty in schools of library and information science or related fields are eligible to apply. OCLC and ALISE encourage international proposals and collaborative projects under this program. To aid new researchers, priority will be given when possible to proposals from junior faculty and applicants who have not previously received LISRGP funds.
ODNIOUSDIChallenge
The ODNI-OUSD(I) Xpress Challenge: Machine Generation of Analytic Products
Sponsor Deadline: July 5, 2017
OSP Deadline: June 27, 2017
Award Information: Up to $100,000 per award

The Seekers, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI), are interested in determining just how far along we are toward achieving the goal of machine-generated finished intelligence. This Challenge will pose a representative question to be answered by respondents using a completely automated system to sift through text reports and generate a finished intelligence product. ODNI and OUSD(I) do NOT seek any rights in the systems used to generate the product and only wish to assess the state of the art in the area of machine-generated intelligence. Systems capable of winning this Challenge will be of use not just within the intelligence community, but across government agencies and the business world.  Please note that winners will have to submit an Academic Institution Acknowledgement Letter acknowledging the role of ODNI in this Challenge if you are: (i) a U.S. Academic Institution at the high school, college, or university level, (ii) an employee of such institution who is participating on behalf of that institution, or (iii) an employee of such institution who is participating in their personal capacity if they are using the resources of such institution to respond to this Challenge.

This is a Reduction-to-Practice Challenge that requires written documentation and delivery of output from the Solver's automated system. Solvers with the highest ranking submissions will be required to provide source code for the system to be run by the Seekers on a validation question for final validation of winners. Solvers will not be required to provide source code unless their submission is chosen for the validation stage of the Challenge. 
RWJFHD4A
Health Data for Action (HD4A)
Sponsor Deadline for Preliminary Proposals (required): May 24, 2017
Sponsor Deadline for invited Full Proposals: 
July 28, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Up to $150,000 for up to 1 year. Approximately 5 studies will be funded.

The HD4A program will fund innovative research that uses the available data to answer important research questions. Applicants under this Call for Proposals (CFP) will write a proposal for a research study using data from either the  Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) or  athenahealth. Successful applicants will be provided with access to these data. The HCCI and athenahealth data provide a wealth of private claims data and rich detail on care delivery and patient obesity-related measures, respectively. The proposed studies should enable relevant, innovative, and actionable research that uses the available data to answer important, policy-relevant questions. Projects may be generated from disciplines including health services research; economics; sociology; program evaluation; political science; public policy; public health; public administration; law; business administration; or other related fields. 
RSFCompSS
Computational Social Science
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Inquiry (required): August 21, 2017
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): November 15, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Up to $150,000 for up to 2 years

The Russell Sage Foundation's initiative on Computational Social Science (CSS) supports innovative social science research that brings new data and methods to bear on questions of interest in its core programs in Behavioral Economics, Future of Work, Race, Ethnicity and Immigration, and Social Inequality. Limited consideration will be given to questions that pertain to core methodologies, such as causal inference and innovations in data collection. Funding is available for secondary analysis of data or for original data collection. RSF is especially interested in novel uses of new or under-utilized data and new methods for analyzing these data. Smaller projects might consist of a pilot study to demonstrate proof-of-concept. RSF encourages methodological variety and inter-disciplinary collaboration. Proposed projects must have well-developed conceptual frameworks and research designs. Analytical models must be specified and research questions and hypotheses (where applicable) must be clearly stated.
(Computer) Science & Engineering
CiscoIoThings
Secure and Private Internet of Things
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling 
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Budgets depend on the institution and geography

Connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices provide many new opportunities and benefits for manufacturers and consumers. The ubiquitous nature of IoT connectivity enables new use cases in connected manufacturing, connected cars, connected spaces, smart cities and other market verticals.  However, the security of IoT has not kept pace with the fast innovation and deployment of solutions creating significant safety and economic risks. The growing number of IoT devices, systems, and services increases the attack surface making the solutions more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Recent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against Internet service providers and commercial entities were carried out by a diverse network of botnets made up of compromised set-top devices and other consumer products. Therefore, assuring the security of each component within an IoT solution is crucial in keeping malicious actors from using it in an unauthorized manner.  In addition, IoT devices enable massive data collection and analysis. The analysis of this data will allow previously unknown relationships between things to be discovered which causes a big concern for the privacy of individuals, businesses (including IP protection), groups, and governments. Since the analysis of data is essential for the value of IoT, strong consideration must be given to data privacy and data protection throughout its lifecycle.
DOCNIST
United States Department of Commerce (DOC)
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Measurement Science and Engineering (MSE) Research Grant Program for the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) 
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling 
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: $10,000-$500,000, with project periods of up to 5 years. In FY 2015, the ITL Grant Program funded 38 new awards totaling $6,980,364.
 
The ITL Grant Program provides financial assistance to support the conduct of research or a recipient's portion of collaborative research in the broad areas of Advanced Network Technologies, Big Data, Biometrics, Cloud Computing, Cyber-Physical Systems, Forensic Science, Information Access, Information Processing and Understanding, Cybersecurity, Health Information Technology, Human Factors and Usability, Applied and Computational Mathematics, Mathematical Foundations of Measurement Science for Information Systems, Metrology Infrastructure for Modeling and Simulation, Privacy Engineering, Software Testing, Statistics for Metrology and Statistical Methods in Forensic Science. See http://www.nist.gov/itl/ for more information about ITL. Proposals on product development and commercialization are not considered responsive to this funding opportunity. Financial support may be provided for conferences, workshops, or other technical research meetings that are relevant to the mission of ITL.
DODASFOR
United States Department of Defense (DOD)
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
Broad Agency Announcement: Research Interests of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research - Information and Networks (RTA2) - Research Grants and Conference & Workshop Support
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling (current BAAs are active until superseded)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission 
Award Information: Research proposals budgeting between $200,000 and $400,000 per year are encouraged. Most awards are 3 years in duration, and may not exceed 5 years. Conference and workshop grants up to $50,000 are also available. AFOSR commits the bulk of its funding by the fall of each year.

The Information and Networks Team within the Engineering and Information Science Branch is organized to support many U.S. Air Force priority areas including autonomy, space situational awareness, and cyber security. The research programs within this team lead the discovery and development of foundational issues in mathematical, information and network oriented sciences. They are organized along three themes: Information, Decision Making, and Networks.

The Information theme addresses the critical challenges faced by the U.S. Air Force which lie at the intersection of the ability to collect, mathematically analyze, and disseminate large quantities of information in a time critical fashion with assurances of operation and security. Closely aligned with the mathematical analysis of information is the need for autonomous Decision Making. Research in this theme focuses on the discovery of mathematical laws, foundational scientific principles, and new, reliable and robust algorithms, which underlie intelligent, mixed human-machine decision-making to achieve accurate real-time projection of expertise and knowledge into and out of the battle space. Information analysis and decision making rarely occur in the context of a single source. The Networks theme addresses critical issues involving how the organization and interaction among large collections of information providers and consumers contributes to an understanding of the dynamics of complex information systems.

In addition to research grants, AFOSR also provides partial support for conferences and workshops in areas of science that bring experts together to discuss recent research or educational findings, or to expose other researchers or advanced graduate students to new research and educational techniques in its areas of research interest. Proposals must be submitted at least 6 months prior to the conference or workshop start date to be considered.
DODDURIP2017
United State Department of Defense (DOD)                
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Army Research Office (ARO), and Office of Naval Research (ONR), in cooperation with The Office of the Director for Basic Research in the Office of the Secretary of Defense
Fiscal Year 2018 Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP)
Sponsor Deadline: July 7, 2017
OSP Deadline: June 29, 2017 
Award Information:  $50,000-$1,500,000 for 1 year.  A total of approximately $47 million will be awarded under this DURIP competition for fiscal year 2018, subject to availability of funds.

DURIP is designed to improve the capabilities of accredited U.S. institutions of higher education to conduct research and to educate scientists and engineers in areas important to national defense, by providing funds for the acquisition of research equipment or instrumentation. Applicants may submit a single DURIP proposal to more than one administering agency; however, only one administering agency will fund it, if selected. Information about each agency's research interests is available here:
  • Army Research Office: Select "Broad Agency Announcements" in the "For the Researcher" section to see the most recent ARL or ARO Core Broad Agency Announcement for Basic and Applied Scientific Research. An announcement for Army 2018 interests is expected by early spring 2017.
  • Office of Naval Research: Select "Contracts and Grants" and then "Funding Opportunities" to see the Long Range Broad Agency Announcement for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology, BAA N00014-17-S-B001.
  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research: Navigate to http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/searchgrants.html?keywords=BAA-AFRL-AFOSR-201* to view the "Research Interests of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research" BAA. The current funding opportunity number for our general research interests is BAA-AFRL-AFOSR-2016-0007. An announcement for Air Force 2018 interests is anticipated in late spring or early summer 2017. You do not have to wait for the update to prepare your proposal. 
DoDFY18MURI
United State Department of Defense (DOD)                 
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Army Research Office (ARO), and Office of Naval Research (ONR)
Fiscal Year 2018 Multidisciplinary Research Program of the University Research Initiative (MURI) 
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (encouraged): July 17, 2017
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: November 1, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission 
Award Information:  Typical annual funding per grant is in the $1.25M to $1.5M range for up to 5 years of support.  The total amount of funding for 5 years available for grants resulting from this MURI FOA is estimated to be approximately $170 million dollars pending out-year appropriations.

The Department of Defense (DoD) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI), one element of the University Research Initiative (URI), is sponsored by the DoD research offices. Those offices include the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). The MURI program supports basic research in science and engineering at U.S. institutions of higher education that is of potential interest to DoD. The program is focused on multidisciplinary research efforts where more than one traditional discipline interacts to provide rapid advances in fields of the physical, engineering, environmental, and life sciences related to long-term national security needs. DOD's MURI program addresses high risk basic research and attempts to understand or achieve something that has never been done before. Detailed descriptions of topics of interest to AFOSR, ARO and ONR are listed in the program solicitation.
DODAFRLArmamentTech
Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Munitions Directorate
Armament Technology Broad Agency Announcement
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling through March 12, 2022
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Award amounts will vary.  It is anticipated that the cumulative amount for awards issued under this BAA will not exceed $500,000,000.

AFRL/RW is the primary Air Force organization concerned with conventional munitions technology development. AFRL/RW plans and executes research, development, and test of conventional munitions, and supports conventional munitions Weapons Program Offices. There are three divisions within the Munitions Directorate that conduct research and development (R&D). They are the Ordnance Division, the Strategic Planning and Integration Division, and the Weapon Engagement Sciences Division.

The Ordnance Division's  Lethality, Vulnerability, and Survivability Branch (RWML) has several Research Areas, including Computational Mechanics.  Within this area, statistical and stochastic methods to generate special purpose fast running models from large-scale datasets produced with computational mechanics codes is an emerging need. 

This BAA is set up in two parts: (1) Basic Open BAA, in which white papers may be submitted at any time during the open period, and (2) CALL BAA, in which proposal CALL announcements may be issued. These subsequent CALLS will contain specific objectives and descriptions of the specific topic area to be addressed, anticipated period of performance, information peculiar to the specific topic area, and the expected dollar range for proposals received under a CALL.  This Basic Open BAA solicits white paper submissions. Those offerors whose white papers are found to be consistent with the intent of this BAA may later be invited to submit a technical and cost proposal.
DODAFRLUnivSmallGrants
Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Directed Energy Directorate
University Small Grants Broad Agency Announcement
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling through April 2, 2018
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Multiple awards of grants up to $100,000 are anticipated with a period of performance ranging from 1-2 years.

The AFRL Directed Energy Directorate is interested in receiving proposals under this announcement in order to establish a university grant vehicle that can provide small grants to students/professors in a timely manner for the purpose of engaging U.S./U.S. territories' colleges and universities in directed energy-related basic, applied, and advanced research projects that are of interest to the Department of Defense. The scope of the research will include the entire spectrum of directed energy technology that is applicable to the Air Force, including all tangentially-related directed energy research. The research shall include, but not be limited to: lasers; optics and beam control; high power microwaves, and directed energy effects, modeling and simulation. 

AFRL's Weapons Modeling and Simulation Core Technology Competency includes efforts to improve the fundamental understanding of HPM, lasers, beam control, and space situational awareness (SSA) through effects research and development of multi-level modeling and simulation tools, and application of high performance computing and advanced numerical simulations to represent directed energy and SSA capabilities.  
DoDARLBAA2017to2022
Army Research Laboratory (ARL)
Broad Agency Announcement for Basic and Applied Scientific Research for Fiscal Years 2017 through 2022
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling (current BAA is active until March 31, 2022 or until superseded)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission 

The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) is the Department of the Army's corporate laboratory and sole fundamental research laboratory. The ARL BAA identifies topics of interest to the ARL Directorates (Computational and Information Sciences Directorate, Human Research and Engineering Directorate, Sensors and Electron Devices Directorate, Survivability/Lethality Analysis Directorate, Vehicle and Technology Directorate, and Weapons and Materials Research Directorate). The Directorates focus on executing in-house research programs, with a significant emphasis on collaborative research with other organizations in an Open Campus setting. The Directorates fund a modest amount of extramural research in certain specific areas, and those areas are described in this BAA.

The ARL BAA seeks proposals from institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations, state and local governments, foreign organizations, foreign public entities, and for-profit organizations (i.e. large and small businesses) for research based on the following S&T campaigns: Computational Sciences, Materials Research, Sciences for Maneuver, Information Sciences, Sciences for Lethality and Protection, Human Sciences, and Assessment and Analysis. Please see the BAA for a more detailed description of these topic areas. Proposals are sought for cutting-edge innovative research that could produce discoveries with a significant impact to enable new and improved Army technologies and related operational capabilities and related technologies. The specific research areas and topics of interest should be viewed as suggestive, rather than limiting. 
DoDAROBAA2017to2022
Army Research Office (ARO)
Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Basic and Applied Scientific Research for Fiscal Years 2017 through 2022
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling (current BAA is active until March 31, 2022 or until superseded)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission 

The purpose of this BAA is to solicit research proposals in the engineering, physical, life, and information sciences for submission to the Army Research Office (ARO) for consideration for possible funding. ARO is focused exclusively on extramural basic research, and is responsible for the vast majority of ARL's extramural research programs and funding.

Proposals are sought from institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations, state and local governments, foreign organizations, foreign public entities, and for-profit organizations (i.e. large and small businesses) for scientific research in mechanical sciences, mathematical sciences, electronics, computing science, physics, chemistry, life sciences, materials science, network science, and environmental sciences.

In addition to standard research grants, the following funding mechanisms are also available: 
  1. Short-Term Innovative Research (STIR) Program grants of $60k or less to support rapid, short-term investigations to assess the merit of innovative new concepts in basic research. 
  2. Young Investigator Program to attract outstanding young university faculty members to pursue fundamental research in areas relevant to the Army. This program is open to U.S. citizens, U.S. Nationals, and Permanent Resident Aliens holding tenure-track positions at U.S. institutions of higher education, who have held their graduate degrees (Ph.D. or equivalent) for fewer than five years at the time of application. Proposals may be submitted at any time. YIP awards will not exceed $120,000 per year for three years. 
  3. Research Instrumentation to improve the capabilities of U.S. institutions of higher education to conduct research and educate scientists and engineers in areas important to national defense. Of the funds available to support ARO mission research described in this BAA, funds may be provided to purchase instrumentation in support of this research or in the development of new research capabilities.
  4. Conference and Symposia Grants in areas of science that bring experts together to discuss recent research or educational findings or to expose other researchers or advanced graduate students to new research and educational techniques.
  5. High School Apprenticeship Program (HSAP)/Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program (URAP) - The HSAP funds the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) apprenticeship of promising high school juniors and seniors to work in a university structured research environment under the direction of ARO sponsored PIs serving as mentors. The URAP provides similar opportunities for undergraduate students.
DARPAI2O
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Information Innovation Office (I2O) Broad Agency Announcement  
Sponsor Deadline for Abstracts (strongly encouraged): June 30, 2017
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: August 25, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  A limited number of awards are anticipated. The level of funding for individual awards made available under this BAA has not been predetermined and will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds.
 
The Information Innovation Office (I2O) develops game-changing information science and technology to ensure information advantage for the U.S. and its allies. To accomplish this, I2O sponsors basic and applied research in three thrust areas: Cyber, Analytics and Symbiosis. I2O may also consider submissions outside these areas if the proposal involves the development of novel software-based capabilities having promise to provide decisive information advantage for the U.S. and its allies. I2O seeks unconventional approaches that are outside the mainstream, challenge accepted assumptions, and have the potential to radically change established practice. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of the art.

This BAA seeks revolutionary research ideas for topics not being addressed by ongoing I2O programs or other published solicitations. Potential proposers are highly encouraged to review the current I2O programs ( http://www.darpa.mil/about-us/offices/i2o) and solicitations ( http://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/opportunities) to avoid proposing efforts that duplicate existing activities or that are responsive to other published I2O solicitations.
DoDDARPAL2M
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Lifelong Learning Machines (L2M)
Sponsor Deadline: June 21, 2017
OSP Deadline: June 14, 2017
Award Information: 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 L2M program is a 4 year program. Multiple awards are anticipated.
 
The Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) at DARPA is soliciting highly innovative research proposals for the development of fundamentally new machine learning approaches that enable systems to learn continually as they operate and apply previous knowledge to novel situations. Current AI systems only compute with what they have been programmed or trained for in advance; they have no ability to learn from data input during execution time, and cannot adapt on-line to changes they encounter in real environments. The goal of Lifelong Learning Machines (L2M) is to develop substantially more capable systems that are continually improving and updating from experience.
 
Technical Area 1 (TA1) of the L2M program will focus on functional system development, and take inspiration from known biological properties. TA1's objective is to develop continual learning mechanisms operating in a unified system. TA1 performers will develop L2M machine learning software components,  incorporating necessary features for learning from the environment, and integrate these into a unified system. Technical Area 2 (TA2) will involve computational neuroscientists and computational biologists in identifying and exploring biological mechanisms that underlie real-time adaptation for translation into novel algorithms. TA2's objective is to explore new ideas for lifelong learning tied to mechanisms found in nature and translate those mechanisms into algorithms. This effort may include biological experiments, or leverage existing biological data. Methods of mathematical and computational biology are welcome in both TAs.
DoDDARPAMolecularInformatics
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Molecular Informatics
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: June 12, 2017
OSP Deadline: June 5, 2017
Award Information:  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. Molecular Informatics is a 36-month program divided into an 18-month base period (Phase 1) and one 18-month option period (Phase 2). DARPA anticipates multiple awards.  
 
The Defense Sciences Office (DSO) at DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals to explore new approaches to store and process information with molecules. Molecules offer a diverse palette of structures and properties that could be harnessed for highly versatile information encoding and computing concepts, potentially enabling advanced capabilities beyond our traditional digital, logic-based approach. Such an undertaking requires close collaboration among experts in fields such as chemistry, computer and information science, mathematics and chemical and electrical engineering to develop molecular approaches to relevant computational problems and ultimately discover the computational primitives of molecules that may enable advanced, or entirely different, information processing capabilities. Anticipated outcomes of the program include: (1) New approaches to represent information and execute computational operations in molecular form; (2) Scalable strategies to extract and process information from large molecular data stores; and (3) Molecular computing concepts that provide capabilities beyond our conventional computational architectures. Molecular Informatics performers will validate their information encoding and processing strategies during the first program phase and develop a method to integrate their capabilities and demonstrate processing directly on molecular data in the second program phase (option period). 
DODDARPASTO
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Strategic Technology Office (STO) Broad Agency Announcement  
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling (current BAA is active until March 21, 2018)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: The amount of resources made available under this BAA will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds.  Multiple awards are anticipated.
 
DARPA is seeking innovative ideas and disruptive technologies that provide the U.S. military significant capability improvement to dominate across all scales of conflict intensity. These span highly contested force-on-force conflicts to ambiguous, complex "Gray Zone" conflicts. Technologies should support conflicts that may take place in a range of environments from austere, remote locations to dense megacities. The Strategic Technology Office (STO) focus areas within these broader objectives include: Situation Understanding, Multi-Domain Maneuver, Hybrid Effects, System of Systems (SoS), Maritime Systems, System of System Enhanced Small Units (SESU), and Foundational Strategic Technologies and Systems.

Topic areas of specific interest include: Planning and Control. Within this area, DARPA is seeking innovative technology to support Gray Zone operational planning. This may include technology that will let operators develop and evaluate multi-domain courses of action (COAs) that employ a wide range of physical, infrastructure, electro-magnetic, cyber, and cognitive domain effects. Of particular interest are novel concepts merging cognitive science and big data analytics to provide planners quantitative tests of their intuition.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to submit an Executive Summary and/or Abstract in advance of a full proposal.
DODDTRA
United States Department of Defense (DOD)
Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)
Fundamental Research to Counter Weapons of Mass Destruction
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling (current BAA is active until September 2024 or until superseded)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Grants may range from small dollar value (e.g., $25K) up to $1M in total costs annually. Efforts may be proposed for up to 5 years. 

DODERDC
U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC)
2017 Broad Agency Announcement
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling (current BAA is active until January 31, 2018 or until superseded)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission 
 
DODNGA
National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA)
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Academic Research Program
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (strongly encouraged): Rolling through August 31, 2017 
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: Rolling through September 30, 2017 
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: NGA University Research Initiatives (NURI) awards are expected to have a 24-month base period with a value of up to $300,000, with up to three one-year options valued at up to $150,000 per option year. NGA New Investigator Program (NIP) award grants are expected to have a 24-month base period valued up to $200,000, with up to one-year option valued at $100,000.

NGA welcomes all innovative ideas for path-breaking research that may advance the GEOINT mission. The NGA mission is to provide timely, relevant, and accurate geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in support of national security objectives. GEOINT is the exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information to describe, assess, and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth. The NGA Academic Research Program (NARP) is focused on innovative, far-reaching basic and applied research in science, technology, engineering and mathematics having the potential to advance the GEOINT mission. The objective of the NARP is to support innovative, highpayoff research that provides the basis for revolutionary progress in areas of science and technology affecting the needs and mission of NGA. This research also supports the National System for Geospatial Intelligence (NSG), which is the combination of technology, systems and organizations that gather, produce, distribute and consume geospatial data and information. This research is aimed at advancing GEOINT capabilities by improving analytical methods, enhancing and expanding systems capabilities, and leveraging resources for common NSG goals. NGA welcomes innovative research ideas in a number of areas, one of which is massive data.

NGA offers several award mechanisms, including NGA University Research Initiatives (NURI) awards and NGA New Investigator Program (NIP) Grants.
DODNRL
Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)
NRL Broad Agency Announcement
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers : Rolling (current BAA is active until superseded)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the Navy's corporate laboratory. NRL conducts basic and applied research for the Navy in a variety of scientific and technical disciplines. The basic research program is driven by perceptions about future requirements of the Navy. NRL is organized into three research directorates and one center: Systems Directorate; Materials Science and Component Technology Directorate; Ocean and Atmospheric Science and Technology Directorate; and Naval Center for Space Technology.

NRL invites proposals which range from theoretical studies to proof-of-concept to include fabrication and delivery of a prototype. NRL is interested in receiving proposals for the research efforts described under this BAA, including the following which relate to Big Data: 
  • Information Management and Decision Architectures
  • Mathematical Foundations of High Assurance Computing 
  • Federated, Distributed Computing/Network Infrastructure 
  • High Performance Computing on Massively Parallel Architectures 
  • Atmospheric Effects, Analysis, and Prediction
DODONR
United States Department of Defense (DOD)
Office of Naval Research (ONR)
Broad Agency Announcement for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology - Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling (current BAA is active until September 30, 2017 or until superseded)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission 

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is interested in receiving proposals for Long-Range Science and Technology (S&T) Projects which offer potential for advancement and improvement of Navy and Marine Corps operations. ONR's Division of Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance invests in areas of science and their applications such as data science, mathematical and computational science, computer and information sciences, quantum information sciences, cyber security, electronics, command and control and combat systems, communications, cyber operations, electronic warfare, sensing and surveillance, and precision timing and navigation. One of this Division's specific thrusts and focused research areas is: Mathematics, Computers and Information Sciences, which sponsors basic and applied research, and advanced technology development efforts in mathematics, computer and information sciences that address Navy and Department of Defense needs in computation, information processing, information operation, information assurance and cybersecurity, decision tools, and command and control with specific focus on enabling rapid, accurate decision making. Specific scientific and technical areas include: a) Applied and computational analysis; b) Command and control; c) Computational methods for decisionmaking; d) Cyber security and complex software systems; e) Machine learning, reasoning, and intelligence; f) Mathematical data science; g) Mathematical optimization and operations research; h) Quantum information sciences.
ArmyNightVision
United States Department of Defense (DOD)
U.S. Army Research, Development & Engineering Command (RDECOM)
Broad Agency Announcement for Night Vision Technologies
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling (current BAA is active through FY19 - see below for program-specific deadlines)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: There is no "a priori judgment" regarding the number or size of individual awards or the allocation of total research and development funds across the technology solutions. The desired period of performance for awards is 2 years. 

FY 2017 Continuation of Solicitation for the Office of Science Financial Assistance Program - Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR)
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling (current solicitation is active until September 30, 2017 or until superseded)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award information: Awards in FY15 ranged from $2,000/year to $4,000,000/year. It is anticipated that approximately $400 million will be available for DOE Office of Science new, renewal, continuing, and supplemental grant and cooperative agreement awards under this and other, more targeted FOAs in FY 2017. Approximately 200-350 new awards will be funded. Awards are expected to be made for a project period of 6 months to 5 years as befitting the project, with the most common project period being 3 years in duration. 

DOEINCITE2018
2018 Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) Program
Sponsor Deadline: June 23, 2017
OSP Deadline: June 16, 2017
Award information:  Average awards per project for CY 2018 are expected to be on the order of 75 million core-hours for Titan and 100 million core-hours for Mira, but could be as much as several hundred million core hours for individual awards. Proposals may be for up to three years.  Last year's call for proposals resulted in 55 projects (38 new, 17 renewals) awarded 5.8 billion core-hours for CY 2017. The acceptance rate for new proposals was 45 percent. 

IARPABAA
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA)
IARPA-Wide Research BAA
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling (current solicitation is active until July 3, 2017 or until superseded)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission 
Award Information: Budgets should be commensurate with the scope of the project. Periods of performance generally will not exceed 12 months.

MicrosoftAzure
Microsoft Azure for Research
Sponsor Deadlines: June 15, 2017; August 15, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Microsoft provides the researcher a specified dollar amount of Azure credits that they can then expend for any of the available 
Azure services  (VMs, Storage, DB, Hadoop, Spark, Containers, etc.). The research grants do not include direct monetary or cash awards.
 
NASAStennisCAN2017
Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN) 2017 Dual Use Technology Development at NASA John C. Stennis Space Center
Sponsor Deadline: September 30, 2017
OSP Deadline: September 23, 2017 
Award Information: Award amount will be $25,000-$75,000 for 12 months. Partners must contribute an equal value of resources to match the NASA funding for the project. Partner contributions may be cash, non-cash or both.

NASACompModelAlgorithms
ROSES 2017: Computational Modeling Algorithms and Cyberinfrastructure
Sponsor Deadline for Notices of Intent (encouraged): May 25, 2017
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: July 27, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission 
Award Information:  Expected program budget for first year of new awards is ~$1.5M. Number of new awards pending adequate proposals of merit ~ 6-10 projects. Maximum duration of awards is 2 years.
 
The Earth Science Division (ESD) within NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) pioneers the scientific use of remotely sensed measurements to advance understanding of the Earth as an integrated system and to provide direct societal benefits. Numerical models represent key achievements in NASA's Earth science endeavors, as the models codify consistently our quantitative knowledge about selected portions of the Earth system. Coupled with data assimilation systems, models are used to synthesize diverse arrays of information from satellite and in situ measurements; high-fidelity models driven and constrained by sufficient data can yield accurate predictions and essential insights into a wide range of complex Earth system processes and interactions, spanning many space and time scales and involving many aspects of our environment. NASA considers the use of data-driven models to be central to our approach to Earth system science. Because the most advanced models are run on supercomputers available only at computing centers, the Computational Modeling Algorithms and Cyberinfrastructure (CMAC) program funds research and development activities to optimize the products and services at high-end computing (HEC) centers to increase the productivity of the users who use HEC to produce modeling products and the users who need to analyze the modeling results using the HEC resources. CMAC builds advanced modeling infrastructure used at NASA computing centers to support Earth system science investigations while fundamentally utilizing both models and data. In this funding cycle, the CMAC program is focusing on the following two challenges: (1) creating a high-performance, service-based cyberinfrastructure to support large-scale Earth science analytics, and (2) adapting an atmospheric model to a distributed heterogeneous multicore computing architecture.
NSFABI
Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO)
Advances in Biological Informatics (ABI)
Sponsor Deadline: September 8, 2017
OSP Deadline: August 31, 2017
Award Information Approximately $12-15 million is available for 20-30 new awards depending on prior commitments and availability of funds.
 
The Advances in Biological Informatics (ABI) program seeks to encourage new approaches to the analysis and dissemination of biological knowledge for the benefit of both the scientific community and the broader public. The ABI program is especially interested in the development of informatics tools and resources that have the potential to advance- or transform- research in biology supported by the Directorate for Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation. The ABI program accepts three major types of proposals: Innovation awards that seek to pioneer new approaches to the application of informatics to biological problems, Development awards that seek to provide robust cyberinfrastructure that will enable transformative biological research, and Sustaining awards that seek to support ongoing operations and maintenance of existing cyberinfrastructure that is critical for continued advancement of priority biological research. 
NSFAMPowerSystems
Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS)
Algorithms for Modern Power Systems (AMPS)
Sponsor Deadline: February 12, 2018
OSP Deadline: February 5, 2018
Award Information Estimated number of awards and funding amounts are subject to the availability of funds. A total of $1,200,000 is anticipated to support 4-10 awards. 
 
The Algorithms for Modern Power Systems (AMPS) program will support research projects to develop the next generation of mathematical and statistical algorithms for improvement of the security, reliability, and efficiency of the modern power grid. The program is a partnership between the Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability (OE) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The program encourages interdisciplinary efforts, with the involvement of experts in a variety of disciplines such as power system engineering, mathematics, statistics, and financial mathematics. Research topics could include, but are not limited to: new statistical and uncertainty-analysis-based methods that provide probabilistic or robust performance guarantees accounting for uncertainty and fluctuations in loads, generation, and other components of the system; methods for characterizing and controlling resiliency and reliability; probabilistic approaches to manage risk and uncertainty, uncertainty quantification; model reduction; model validation; anomaly detection; data analytics; risk hedging; network theory; and computational methods that are scalable without sacrificing performance.
NSFBDSpokes
Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs: Establishing Spokes to Advance Big Data Applications (BD SPOKES)
Harvard Letter of Intent Deadline: May 31, 2017
Sponsor Deadline (if selected): September 18, 2017
OSP Deadline: September 11, 2017
Award Information Each SMALL project will be funded at $100,000-$500,000 total for up to 3 years.  Each MEDIUM project will be funded at $500,001-$1,000,000 total for up to 3 years.  Approximately 10 to 20 total awards across both the SMALL and MEDIUM categories are anticipated through this solicitation.
   
NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) initiated the National Network of Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs (BD Hubs) program in FY 2015. Four BD Hubs - Midwest, Northeast, South, and West - were established to foster multi-sector collaborations among academia, industry, and government, both nationally and internationally.  These BD Hubs are serving a convening and coordinating role by bringing together a wide range of Big Data stakeholders in order to connect solution seekers with solution providers.  In FY 2016, the  Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs: Establishing Spokes to Advance Big Data Applications (BD Spokes)  solicitation began extending the BD Hubs network by establishing multi-institutional and multi-sector collaborations to focus on topics of specific interest to a given region. The first set of BD Spokes was funded in FY 2016. This solicitation calls for new BD Spoke proposals to be awarded in FY 2018. Collaborating with BD Hubs, each BD Spoke will focus on a particular topic that requires Big Data approaches and solutions. The set of activities managed by a BD Spoke will promote progress towards solutions in the chosen topic area. The regional BD Hub Steering Committee will provide general guidance to each BD Spoke and will assist the BD Spoke in coordinating with the national BD Hub network, with other BD Spokes, and with the broader innovation ecosystem.

There are two proposal categories covered by this solicitation: SMALL and MEDIUM BD Spokes. SMALL  awards are intended for collaborative projects, involving multiple institutions, for establishing BD Spokes on specific topics/themes related to Big Data innovation. SMALL proposals should focus on specific topics/themes related to Big Data innovation and be consistent with the regional and national priorities identified by the BD Hubs. MEDIUM proposals must deliver tangible outcomes, for example: (1) explicit results from data-enabled or data-facilitated inquiry in a scientific or engineering field or other domain area; (2) a prototype or proof of concept for a technology platform, data product, data standards, or other data infrastructure; or (3) an education or workforce development program with a plan for deployment and sustainment beyond the three-year award period.  All (SMALL or MEDIUM) BD Spoke proposals submitted in response to this solicitation must include a Letter of Collaboration from a regional BD Hub. 

This is a limited submission opportunity and only one proposal may be submitted with Harvard University as the lead institution.   Those interested in submitting an application should first submit an internal letter of intent online here  by May 31, 2017 to determine if any further internal coordination is necessary. If multiple submissions from Harvard are proposed the Office of the Vice Provost for Research will administer an internal selection process and those who submitted letters of intent will be informed of next steps.
NSFCDSEEMSS
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS)
Computational and Data-Enabled Science and Engineering in Mathematical and Statistical Sciences  (CDS&E-MSS)
Sponsor Submission Window: November 25-December 11, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information : Award size and duration will be commensurate with the scope of the proposed project.
 
The CDS&E-MSS program accepts proposals that confront and embrace the host of mathematical and statistical challenges presented to the scientific and engineering communities by the ever-expanding role of computational modeling and simulation on the one hand, and the explosion in production of digital and observational data on the other. The goal of the program is to promote the creation and development of the next generation of mathematical and statistical theories and tools that will be essential for addressing such issues. To this end, the program will
support fundamental research in mathematics and statistics whose primary emphasis will be on meeting the aforementioned computational and data-related challenges. This program is part of the wider Computational and Data-enabled Science and Engineering (CDS&E) enterprise in NSF that seeks to address this emerging discipline.  The research supported by the CDS&E-MSS program will aim to advance  mathematics or statistics in a significant way and will address  computational or big-data challenges.  Proposals of interest to the  program will include a Principal Investigator or co-Principal  Investigator who is a researcher in the mathematical or statistical  sciences in an area supported by the Division of Mathematical Sciences.  The program encourages submission of proposals that include  multidisciplinary collaborations or the training of mathematicians and  statisticians in CDS&E.
NSFCISECRII
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)
Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Initiation Initiative  (CRII)
Sponsor Deadline: August 9, 2017
OSP Deadline: August 2, 2017
Award Information : U p to $175,000 for up to 2 years. CISE expects to make 55 to 60 awards each year.
 
With the goal of encouraging research independence immediately upon obtaining one's first academic position after receipt of the PhD, the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) will award grants to initiate the course of one's independent research. Understanding the critical role of establishing that independence early in one's career, it is expected that funds will be used to support untenured faculty or research scientists (or equivalent) in their first three years in a primary academic position after the PhD, but not more than a total of five years after completion of their PhD. One may not yet have received any other grants or contracts in the Principal Investigator (PI) role from any department, agency, or institution of the federal government, including from the CAREER program or any other program, post-PhD, regardless of the size of the grant or contract, with certain exceptions. Serving as co-PI, Senior Personnel, Postdoctoral Fellow, or other Fellow does not count against this eligibility rule. Grants, contracts, or gifts from private companies or foundations; state, local, or tribal governments; or universities do not count against this eligibility rule.  

It is expected that these funds will allow the new CISE Research Initiation Initiative PI to support one or more graduate students for up to two years. In addition, submissions from all institutions may use funds for postdoctoral scholars, travel, and/or research equipment.  A PI may submit one proposal per annual competition. In addition, a Principal Investigator may not participate in more than two CRII competitions.
NSFCESER
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE)
Cyberinfrastructure for Emerging Science and Engineering Research (CESER)
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information : Varies by award mechanism
 
The overall goal of the Cyberinfrastructure for Emerging Science and Engineering Research (CESER) program is to foster the development of innovative cyberinfrastructure (CI) technologies and new means of leveraging existing CI resources to catalyze emerging areas of potentially transformative science and engineering research, including NSF priority areas, national strategic initiatives, and international collaborative research.  A key programmatic objective of CESER is to support early-stage efforts by collaborative teams of domain scientists and cyberinfrastructure developers/implementers to identify and address cyberinfrastructure needs in new research areas through the development and deployment of pilot, experimental, and innovative hardware or software systems or other unique cyberinfrastructure activities that enable new pathways to discovery.  Another program objective is to encourage holistic, systematic, and multidisciplinary CI approaches to address new opportunities to enable science and engineering research. Projects that integrate multiple cyberinfrastructure disciplines - such as computing, data infrastructure, software, workflow systems, and networking - to address an emerging scientific challenge are particularly welcomed. CESER will also support projects that aim to expand the spectrum of research disciplines that, and users who, engage and contribute to a dynamic and enduring national research cyberinfrastructure ecosystem.

Eligible projects and unique activities should address a clearly identified and described scientific rationale, explain and support the potential for transformative impacts on science or engineering research, research training, education or broader impacts, and provide a convincing explanation of why the project is not suitable for other NSF programs or solicitations.

CESER variously employs existing NSF funding mechanisms to accomplish the program's goals such as support for EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER), Conferences (workshops), Research Coordination Networks (RCNs), and targeted solicitations. Before developing a proposal intended for this program, investigators are strongly encouraged to discuss their ideas with the cognizant program officer associated with the CESER program to ensure that CESER is the appropriate venue for the proposal. 
NSFConvergence
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Dear Colleague Letter: Growing Convergence Research at NSF
Sponsor Deadline: June 1, 2017 
OSP Deadline: May 24, 2017
Award Information: Varies by program, see below for details  
 
This Dear Colleague Letter describes an initial set of opportunities to explore Convergence approaches within four of the research-focused NSF Big Ideas:
  • Navigating the New Arctic - NSF challenges the research community to join together the diverse perspectives of physical, biological, and social and behavioral sciences with computer science, engineering, and education to define the key challenges and research imperatives facing humans and the environment in the Arctic region. NSF is seeking to encourage proposals for Research Coordination Networks (RCNs) to identify Convergence research topics relevant to social, environmental, economic, or security issues of the Arctic while advancing understanding of our planet. In addition, NSF seeks activities to advance observational capabilities directly linked to broad research questions, including improved capabilities in robust sensing and data collection technology, data analysis, and computational science. NNA proposals submitted in response to this DCL must be submitted to the Arctic System Science Program. NNA RCN awards will provide four to five years of support for projects with total budgets that do not exceed $500,000. For full consideration, NNA RCN proposals should be received by June 1, 2017.
  • The Quantum Leap: Leading the Next Quantum Revolution - Quantum Leap focuses on advancing quantum communications, quantum computing, quantum sensors, and quantum simulators. NSF encourages proposals for Summer Schools that seek to identify, train, and develop a new transdisciplinary workforce for QL. NSF also seeks proposals for QL Cross-Sector activities to encourage the convergence of science and engineering across different sectors, including but not limited to academia, industry, national laboratories, and private foundations by fostering collaboration between mentors, students, and non-academic partners. Proposals for workshops focused on advancing Convergence research within the QL are also welcomed. QL proposals submitted in response to this DCL must be submitted to the Condensed Matter Physics Program in the Division of Materials Science. For full consideration, all types of QL proposals should be received by June 1, 2017. QL Summer School awards will provide four or five years of support for projects with total budgets that do not exceed $700,000. QL Cross-Sector awards will provide up to three years of support. QL Workshop awards will provide up to one year of support for projects that do not exceed $100,000 in total.
  • Work at the Human-Technology Frontier: Shaping the Future - HTF prioritizes: (1) research to understand the social and economic consequences of today's emerging technologies, and the associated educational needs; and (2) research to develop tools that shape human-technology partnerships, improve worker performance, increase career longevity and job satisfaction, and facilitate the life-long learning of new skills. NSF encourages proposals for Research Coordination Networks (RCNs) to facilitate the convergence of computer science, education, engineering, and the physical, biological, and social and behavioral sciences to define the key challenges and research imperatives of the nexus of humans, technology, and work. HTF proposals submitted in response to this DCL must be submitted to the Cyber-Human Systems (CHS) program. HTF RCN awards will provide four to five years of support for projects with total budgets that do not exceed $500,000. For full consideration, HTF RCN proposals should be received by June 1, 2017.
NSFJSTCollabResearch
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)
Dear Colleague Letter: National Science Foundation (NSF)-Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) Collaborative Research
Sponsor Deadline for Initial Inquiries: August 25, 2017
Sponsor Deadline for invited Supplemental Requests: October 15, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Supplemental funding requests of  up to $15,000 each, covering travel, lodging and subsistence;  CISE anticipates awarding up to 10 such requests in FY 2018
 
NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and the Japan Science and Technology Agency's (JST) Big Data Priority Program seek to expand their cross-agency research efforts in the areas of big data and cyber-physical systems (CPS). With this Dear Colleague Letter, NSF/CISE is encouraging the submission of supplemental funding requests to strengthen and expand collaborations between NSF- and JST-funded PIs in shared priority areas. Supplemental funding to active NSF awards is intended to enable US-based researchers (i.e., PIs and co-PIs, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students) to collaborate with Japan-based researchers currently funded by JST. NSF is encouraging new collaborations or the participation of new researchers in existing collaborations with strong topical linkages between one or more of a select group of NSF programs and the corresponding JST Priority Programs (see DCL for a complete list of these programs).
NSFSSDIM
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Directorate for Engineering (ENG) and the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)
Dear Colleague Letter: Simulated and Synthetic Data for Infrastructure Modeling (SSDIM)
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling through June 1, 2017 
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  For EAGER proposals, the anticipated award size will be up to $300,000.  For supplements to existing awards, the maximum award size will be limited to 20% of the original award or $300,000, whichever is smaller. 
 
With this Dear Colleague letter, NSF, in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announces its intention to fund EArly-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals as well as supplements to existing relevant NSF awards from the Directorate for Engineering and the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering in support of research to develop and make available simulated and synthetic data on interdependent critical infrastructures (ICIs), and thus to improve understanding and performance of these systems. Here, "simulated data" refers to data that are derived (via downsampling, aggregation, or other techniques) from actual data on infrastructure design and/or operations. Simulated data are typically intended to represent ICIs in an actual community. On the other hand, "synthetic data" refers to data that are produced (via simulation or other approaches) from first principles, without access to real data. Synthetic data may or may not represent ICIs in an actual community, but are intended to be plausible representations of actual or possible ICI designs or processes.
NSFExpeditions
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)
Expeditions in Computing
Sponsor Deadline for Preliminary Proposals (required): April 25, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for invited Full Proposals: January 16, 2019
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Up to $2M per year for 5 years. 2-4 awards will be made in each competition.
 
The Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) has created the Expeditions in Computing (Expeditions) program to provide the CISE research and education community with the opportunity to pursue ambitious, fundamental research agendas that promise to define the future of computing and information.  In planning  Expeditions  projects, investigators are encouraged to come together within or across departments or institutions to combine their creative talents in the identification of compelling, transformative research agendas that promise disruptive innovations in computing and information for many years to come.

Expeditions represent some of the largest single investments currently made by the directorate. Together with the Science and Technology Centers CISE supports, Expeditions form the centerpiece of the directorate's center-scale award portfolio. With awards funded at levels that promote the formation of research teams, CISE recognizes that concurrent research advances in multiple fields or sub-fields are often necessary to stimulate deep and enduring outcomes.The awards made in this program will complement research areas supported by other CISE programs, which target particular computing or information disciplines or fields.
Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER)
Sponsor Deadline: July 19, 2017 for BIO, CISE, EHR; July 20, 2017 for ENG; July 21, 2017 for GEO, MPS, SBE
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  The CAREER award, including indirect costs, is expected to total a minimum of $400,000 for the 5-year duration, with the following exceptions: Awards for proposals to the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO), the Directorate for Engineering (ENG), or the Office of Polar Programs (OPP) are expected to total a minimum of $500,000 for the 5-year duration.
 
The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Activities pursued by early-career faculty should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. NSF encourages submission of CAREER proposals from early-career faculty at all CAREER-eligible organizations and especially encourages women, members of underrepresented minority groups, and persons with disabilities to apply.  A Principal Investigator (PI) may submit only one CAREER proposal per annual competition. In addition, a Principal Investigator may not participate in more than three CAREER competitions. PIs must be employed in a tenure-track position as an assistant professor as of October 1 after the proposal submission and be untenured as of October 1 following the proposal submission. Associate Professors are not eligible for the CAREER Award program.
NSFGeoinformatics Directorate for Geosciences (GEO)
Geoinformatics

Sponsor Deadline: July 3, 2017
OSP Deadline: June 26, 2017
Award Information:   It is anticipated that proposals over a wide spectrum of amounts will be entertained, from low-cost, single-investigator proposals to large, multi-investigator/institutional proposals. NSF expects to fund 5-8 awards, totaling approximately  $4,800,000.
 
The Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) will consider proposals for the development of cyberinfrastructure for the geosciences (Geoinformatics). EAR seeks the development and implementation of enabling information technology with impacts that extend beyond an individual investigator or small group of investigators and that facilitates the next generation of geosciences research. Proposals to this solicitation may seek support for community-driven development and implementation of databases; tools for data integration, interoperability, and visualization; software development and code hardening; and data-intensive/new computing methodologies that support the enhancement of geosciences research and education activities. Collaboration with computational scientists and the development of public/private partnerships are strongly encouraged.

The efforts supported by this solicitation do not overlap with, but are complementary to, EarthCube, a partnership between the Geosciences Directorate (GEO) and the Office of Cyberinfrasrtructure (OCI) to build an integrated geosciences-wide cyberinfrastructure. The goal of EarthCube is to transform the conduct of research in the geosciences by supporting community-created cyberinfrastructure that integrates knowledge management across the geosciences. The Geoinformatics solicitation will support efforts to create the underlying knowledge base and utilities that will be integrated, over time, through EarthCube. Projects submitted to the Geoinformatics solicitation should be proposed using modern software techniques and standards that facilitate eventual integration into a geoscience-wide knowledge system.
Ideas Lab: Practical Fully-Connected Quantum Computer Challenge (PFCQC)
Sponsor Deadline for Preliminary Proposals (required): June 19, 2017
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): November 30, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Ideas Lab Dates: August 28-September 1, 2017
Award Information: Select teams formed at the Ideas Lab will be invited to submit proposals for awards worth  $1M-$3M per year for up to 5 years. 1-2 awards are anticipated.
 
This solicitation describes an Ideas Lab focused on the Practical Fully-Connected Quantum Computer (PFCQC) challenge. Ideas Labs are intensive meetings that bring together multiple diverse perspectives to focus on finding innovative cross-disciplinary solutions to grand challenge problems. The ultimate aim of this Ideas Lab is to facilitate the development and operation of a practical-scale quantum computer. The aspiration is that bringing together researchers from diverse scientific backgrounds will engender fresh thinking and innovative approaches that will provide a fertile ground for new ideas on the design and fabrication of quantum devices and processors and implementation of quantum information processing algorithms. This will enable the solution of science problems that are currently beyond the reach of modern high-performance computing applications on classical computers. The goal is to form teams of domain scientists and engineers that will develop multidisciplinary ideas that eventually will be submitted as full proposals.
 
This Ideas Lab will take place at the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, NM, from August 28 to September 1, 2017. The Ideas Lab is an interactive gathering on a focused problem and typically involves up to 30 participants from multiple disciplines, who might not normally interact. Any individual interested in participating in the Ideas Lab should respond to this solicitation by submitting a preliminary proposal application. Following the Ideas Lab, teams may be selected to submit full proposals to the NSF by the November 30, 2017 deadline. 
NSFMacroSysNEONScience
National Science Foundation (NSF)  
Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO)
MacroSystems Biology and Early NEON Science
Sponsor Deadline: October 16, 2017
OSP Deadline: October 6, 2017
Award Information: Early Career Awards (ECA) will be made up to $300,000 over 2 years. The b udget and duration (up to 5 years) for Full Research Awards (FRA) and Early NEON Science Awards (ENSA) should reflect the scope and complexity of the work proposed.  
 
The MacroSystems Biology and Early NEON Science: Research on Biological Systems at Regional to Continental Scales program will support quantitative, interdisciplinary, systems-oriented research on biosphere processes and their complex interactions with climate, land use, and invasive species at regional to continental scales as well as planning, training, and development activities to enable groups to conduct MacroSystems Biology and Early NEON Science research. Proposals should include quantitative research approaches such as mathematical or computational models, numerical simulations, artificial intelligence techniques, statistics, visualization, or database development. Proposals are encouraged for the development and/or integration of macrosystems models (e.g., data-assimilation, biological, ecological, environmental) that connect local, regional, and continental scales. These models should address key problems linking ecological and evolutionary processes over a variety of spatial and temporal scales. Projects should develop theoretical foundations that will be useful for modeling based on either existing data and/or data to be collected by existing or planned environmental observatories. Mathematical models should include appropriate estimates of uncertainty, and experiments should assess power and precision.

Three categories of awards will be made:
Category 1: Early Career Awards (ECA). Awards to early career scientists employing innovative and creative approaches to advance understanding of regional to continental scale processes and cross-scale interactions. Individuals must hold an appointment as an Assistant Professor at a U.S. academic institution at the time of proposal submission. Proposers must hold a doctorate degree by the deadline date and be untenured until October 1 following the deadline.
Category 2: Full Research Awards (FRA). Awards to support Macrosystems Biology Research or Innovative Training to conduct MacroSystems research.
Category 3: Early NEON Science Awards (ENSA). Grants that do not otherwise fit into the macrosystems biology focus on regional to continental scale questions, but 1) use or leverage NEON data and/or NEON samples/specimens to address innovative ecological or other biological questions, and/or 2) develop analytic or computational tools that enhance the use and value of NEON data. 
NSFPRAC
National Science Foundation (NSF)  
Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE)
Petascale Computing Resource Allocations (PRAC)
Sponsor Deadline: November 6, 2017
OSP Deadline: October 30, 2017
Award Information: Awards will consist of  allocations to access Blue Waters to support the proposed research, along with limited travel funds (up to $15,000 for 1 year). 12-15 awards are anticipated.   
 
In 2013, a new NSF-funded petascale computing system, Blue Waters, was deployed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The goal of this project and system is to open up new possibilities in science and engineering by providing computational capability that makes it possible for investigators to tackle much larger and more complex research challenges across a wide spectrum of domains. The purpose of this solicitation is to invite research groups to submit requests for allocations of resources on the Blue Waters system. Proposers must show compelling science or engineering challenges that require petascale computing resources. Proposers must also be prepared to demonstrate that they have science or engineering research problems that require and can effectively exploit the petascale computing capabilities offered by Blue Waters. Proposals from or including junior researchers are encouraged, as one of the goals of this solicitation is to build a community capable of using petascale computing.

Successful proposals will receive allocations to access Blue Waters to support the research that they have planned, along with limited travel funds to support technical coordination with the Blue Waters project team and with other research teams with allocations on Blue Waters. Note that, this program does not provide funds for the research itself or for the development of models or analysis tools.
NSFSaTC
Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC)
Sponsor Proposal Windows: October 12-19, 2017 for Large and Medium projects; November 2-16, 2017 for Small projects; December 1-15, 2017 for Cybersecurity Education projects
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Small Projects may request up to $500,000 total budget with durations up to 3 years; Medium Projects may request $500,001 to $1,200,000 total budget with durations up to 4 years; and Large Projects may request $1,200,001 to $3,000,000 total budget with durations up to 5 years. Education projects may request up to $300,000 total budget for up to 2 years. In FY 2017, NSF anticipates approximately 10 Education awards, 50 Small awards, 25 Medium awards and 3 Large awards.
 
The SaTC program welcomes proposals that address cybersecurity and privacy, and draw on expertise in one or more of these areas: computing, communication and information sciences; engineering; economics; education; mathematics; statistics; and social and behavioral sciences. Proposals that advance the field of cybersecurity and privacy within a single discipline or interdisciplinary efforts that span multiple disciplines are both encouraged.
 
Proposals must be submitted pursuant to one of the following designations:
  • CORE: The main focus of the SaTC research program, spanning the interests of NSF's Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Engineering (ENG), Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS), and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). Interdisciplinary proposals are welcomed to CORE.
  • EDU: The Education (EDU) designation will be used to label proposals focusing entirely on cybersecurity education.
  • STARSS: The Secure, Trustworthy, Assured and Resilient Semiconductors and Systems (STARSS) designation will be used to label proposals that are submitted to the joint program focused on hardware security with the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC). The STARSS designation may only be used for Small proposals. This designation has additional administrative obligations.
  • TTP: The Transition to Practice (TTP) designation will be used to label proposals that are focused exclusively on transitioning existing research results to practice. The TTP designation may only be used for Small and Medium proposals. 
NSFSI2
Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2)
Sponsor Deadline: September 19, 2017 (for SSI proposals)
OSP Deadline: September 12, 2017
Award Information: SSI awards shall range from $200,000 to $1,000,000 per year, and shall be 3 to 5 years in duration.  Up to $11,000,000 is expected to be available for 12 awards to SSI proposals, subject to availability of funds.
 
Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI 2 ) is a bold and long-term investment that maintains a sustained focus on realizing the Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering , which envisions a highly reusable and interoperable cyberinfrastructure architecture that integrates large-scale computing, high-speed networks, massive data archives, instruments and major facilities, observatories, experiments, and embedded sensors and actuators, across the nation and the world, to help make great strides towards revolutionizing virtually every science and engineering discipline. 

The SIprogram focuses on supporting robust, reliable and sustainable software that will support and advance sustained scientific innovation and discovery. The goal of this program is to catalyze and nurture the interdisciplinary processes required to support the entire software lifecycle, and result in the development of sustainable community software elements and reusable components at all levels of the software stack. The SI2 program aspires to support vibrant partnerships among academia, government, and industry researchers, including international entities, for the development and stewardship of a sustainable software infrastructure.

SI2 currently invites applications in the following classification:

 

Scientific Software Integration (SSI): SSI awards target larger, interdisciplinary teams organized around the development and application of common software infrastructure aimed at solving common research problems faced by NSF researchers in one or more areas of science and engineering. SSI awards will result in a sustainable community software framework serving a diverse community or communities.

NSFLeadershipClassCompFacility
Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE)
Towards a Leadership-Class Computing Facility - Phase 1
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (required): July 14, 2017
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: November 20, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: 
A total of $60,000,000 in FY 2018 will be used to fund one award, subject to the availability of funds. At least 95% of the proposal amount should be for the system acquisition cost.  The project duration will be for up to five years.
 
NSF invites proposals for the acquisition and deployment of a High Performance Computing (HPC) system, called the Phase 1 system, with the option of a possible future upgrade to a leadership-class computing facility. The Phase 1 system will serve two important and complementary purposes:  
  1. It will serve as a robust, well-balanced, and forward-looking computational asset for a broad range of research topics for which advances in fundamental understanding require the most extreme computational and data analysis capabilities; and
  2. It will serve as an evaluation platform for testing and demonstrating the feasibility of an upgrade to a leadership-class facility five years following deployment.
A competitive proposal in response to this solicitation will have the following five characteristics:
  1. A detailed acquisition plan for deploying a reliable and well-balanced HPC system with at least two- to three-fold time-to-solution performance improvement over the current state of the art, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's (UIUC) Blue Waters system, for a broad range of existing and emerging computational and data intensive applications;
  2. A thorough operations plan for the Phase 1 system to ensure that it will serve as an effective computational tool for the broad scientific and engineering community, and for the Nation at large;
  3. A detailed three- to five-year project plan for scientific and technical evaluation of the Phase 1 system that will lead to an upgrade design of a leadership-class system, called the Phase 2 system, as well as the physical facility that will host it: the Phase 2 system is expected to have a ten-fold or more time-to-solution performance improvement over the Phase 1 system;
  4. Clear and compelling science and engineering use cases, as well as detailed strategic project goals for a leadership-class computing facility; and
  5. A persuasive articulation of educational and industry outreach, and the achievement of other broader societal impact goals, in the long-term strategic plan for the leadership-class computing facility.
Note that the award of a Phase 1 system does not imply any commitment beyond support for beginning the initial planning process for a leadership-class computing facility. The facility planning process may be terminated at any time if satisfactory progress is not demonstrated through annual reviews.  PIs or co-PIs are expected to commit at least 50% time to this activity. Please note that organizations are limited to submitting one proposal in response to this Program Announcement. If you are interested in applying, please contact Erin Hale in FAS Research Development at erin_hale@fas.harvard.edu 
SamsungGRO
Global Research Outreach (GRO) Program
Sponsor Deadline: June 12, 2017
OSP Deadline: June 5, 2017
Award Information: Up to $100,000 per year for up to 3 years

The SAMSUNG Global Research Outreach (GRO) Program is an important part of growing SAMSUNG's (Samsung Electronics & related Samsung companies) academic research engagement and collaboration platforms.  World-class university researchers have been annually invited since 2009 to propose novel research ideas and to work with Samsung's R&D teams to foster technological innovation. This has resulted in actively collaborative relationships with over 100 leading universities worldwide. The 2017 GRO program is seeking proposals in 26 research themes (see the RFP for more detailed information).
Sloan
Digital Technology - Data and Computational Research
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling, requires Letter of Inquiry
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Two types of applications, <$125,000 and >$125,000

This program seeks to support the efficient management and sharing of research data and code from acquisition through analysis; and grow the current and future scientific data work force. 

Grants in this program tend to fall into four broad types:
  • Software grants support technology development ranging from prototyping funds to substantial scaling resources;
  • Training grants aim at supporting work force training and curricular initiatives as well as targeted adoption of new technologies by specific communities;
  • Research grants bring historical, ethnographic, and economic research methods to bear on our understanding of scholarly activities in a changing technological context;
  • Community grants build networks for knowledge exchange across disciplines as well as institutions that serve to incubate sustainable research and software projects.
Grant requests can be made at any time. A brief letter of inquiry is the first step for an applicant.
Biomedical Science
DODUSAMRMC
United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC)
FY17 Broad Agency Announcement for Extramural Medical Research
Sponsor Deadline for Preliminary Proposals (required): Rolling through September 30, 2017 
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: No budget limits; award duration is up to 5 years

The USAMRMC mission is to provide solutions to medical problems of importance to the American Service member at home and abroad, as well as to the general public at large. Projects must be for scientific study and experimentation directed toward advancing the state of the art or increasing knowledge or understanding rather than focusing on a specific system or hardware solution. Research and development funded through this BAA are intended and expected to benefit and inform both military and civilian medical practice and knowledge. Support for conferences and symposia is also available, in addition to research funding. 

Under USAMRMC's Medical Simulation and Information Sciences Research Program, the Health Information Technology and Informatics (HITI) Portfolio solicits applications in the area of Health Information Technology Infrastructure and Data Management, specifically about improvements to data availability, management, storage, and operational use of Enterprise Health Data. Proposed objectives should ensure the unique identification of each patient, as well as aggregated data strategies for population health and big data.
HHMIInvestigators
Investigator Program
Sponsor Deadline: June 27 2017
OSP Deadline: June 20, 2017
Award Information: HHMI determines a budget amount for each new HHMI investigator. HHMI pays the full salary of the investigator and offers a comprehensive benefits package to investigators and other eligible employees. The investigator budget also includes research funding that may be used for non-investigator personnel (e.g., compensation and benefits for laboratory staff) and for laboratory operations (e.g., supplies, services and minor equipment). In addition, investigators may submit requests to HHMI for funding of major equipment. 

The HHMI investigator competition is open to basic researchers and physician scientists at eligible institutions  who bring innovative approaches to the study of biological problems in biomedical disciplines, including computational biology. Those selected in this competition will receive a seven-year appointment to HHMI, which is renewable pending favorable scientific review.  HHMI encourages its investigators to push their research fields into new areas of inquiry. By employing scientists as HHMI investigators-rather than awarding them research grants-the Institute is guided by the principle of "people, not projects." HHMI investigators have the freedom to explore and, if necessary, to change direction in their research. Moreover, they have support to follow their ideas through to fruition-even if that process takes many years.

Successful candidates are expected to meet the following criteria:
  • Hold a PhD, and/or MD (or the equivalent).
  • Hold a tenured or tenure-track position as assistant professor or higher academic rank (or the equivalent) at an eligible U.S. institution.
  • Have more than 3, but no more than 12 years, of post-training, professional experience.
  • Be the principal investigator on one or more active, national, peer-reviewed research grants with an initial duration of at least three years.
HHMI requires investigators to devote at least 75% of their total professional effort to the direct conduct of research, regardless of how funded.
NIHDrugAbuseResearchR01
Accelerating the Pace of Drug Abuse Research Using Existing Data (R01)
Sponsor Deadlines: June 5, 2017; October 5, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Application budgets are limited to $500,000 direct costs per year. The maximum project period is 5 years.  The number of awards is contingent upon NIH appropriations and the submission of a sufficient number of meritorious applications.

The purpose of this FOA is to invite applications proposing the innovative analysis of existing social science, behavioral, administrative, and neuroimaging data to study the etiology and epidemiology of drug using behaviors (defined as alcohol, tobacco, prescription and other drug) and related disorders, prevention of drug use and HIV, and health service utilization. This FOA encourages the analyses of public use and other extant community-based or clinical datasets to their full potential in order to increase our knowledge of etiology, trajectories of drug using behaviors and their consequences including morbidity and mortality, risk and resilience in the development of psychopathology, strategies to guide the development, testing, implementation, and delivery of high quality, effective and efficient services for the prevention and treatment of drug abuse and HIV.   
NIHDataArchivesR24
BRAIN Initiative: Data Archives for the BRAIN Initiative (R24)
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (requested): September 19, 2017
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: October 19, 2017
OSP Deadline: October 12, 2017 
Award Information:  Application budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.The maximum project period is 5 years.  Issuing IC and partner components intend to commit an estimated total of $3 million to fund 3-5 awards in both FY17 and FY18. It is expected that costs will be substantially higher after the first year of these awards.
 
This FOA solicits applications to develop web-accessible data archives to capture, store, and curate data related to BRAIN Initiative activities. The data archives will work with the research community to incorporate tools that allow users to analyze and visualize the data, but the creation of such tools is not part of this FOA. The data archives will use appropriate standards to describe the data, but the creation of such standards is not part of this FOA. A goal of this program is to advance research by creating a community resource data archive with appropriate standards and summary information that is broadly available and accessible to the research community for furthering research.  
NIHBRAINDataIntAnalysisR24
BRAIN Initiative: Integration and Analysis of BRAIN Initiative Data (R24)
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (requested): September 26, 2017
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: October 26, 2017
OSP Deadline: October 19, 2017 
Award Information:  Application budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.The maximum project period is 3 years.  Issuing IC and partner components intend to commit an estimated total of $4 million to fund 10 awards in both FY17 and FY18. 
 
This FOA solicits applications to develop informatics tools for analyzing, visualizing, and integrating data related to the BRAIN Initiative or to enhance our understanding of the brain.
NIHLongAnalysisU01
Intensive Longitudinal Analysis of Health Behaviors: Leveraging New Technologies to Understand Health Behaviors (U01)
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (requested): September 5, 2017
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: October 5, 2017
OSP Deadline: September 28, 2017
Award Information:  Application budgets are limited to $500,000 in direct costs per year. The maximum project period is 4 years. Issuing IC and partner components  intend to commit an estimated total of $2.5 million to fund 5 awards. 

This FOA is intended to provide funding to encourage research projects that seek to explain underlying mechanisms and predict health behaviors within individuals over time utilizing intensive longitudinal, within-person protocols that leverage recent advances in mobile and wireless sensor technologies and big data analytics. The research projects will collect and analyze data, disseminate project findings, and work collaboratively with each other and the research coordinating center.
NIHNCCIHCollabU24
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)
Mind and Body Intervention Multi-Site Clinical Trial Data Coordinating Center (Collaborative U24)
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (requested): 30 days prior to the deadline
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: June 2, 2017; February 2, 2018
OSP Deadlines: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Application budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.  The period of award for the U24 phase is expected to be 5 years.  Up to 7 years may be requested if strongly justified.  The number of awards is contingent upon NIH appropriations and the submission of a sufficient number of meritorious applications.

This FOA, utilizing the U24 grant funding mechanism, encourages applications for a collaborating Data Coordinating Center (DCC) that accompanies an investigator-initiated multi-site clinical trial (Phase III and beyond) application submitted under  PAR-17-175 . The DCC application must be specific to the collaborating Clinical Coordinating Center (CCC) application. The objective of the DCC application is to propose a comprehensive plan that provides overall project coordination, and administrative, data management, and biostatistical support for the proposed clinical trial. Both a DCC application and a corresponding CCC application need to be submitted simultaneously for consideration by NCCIH.  Trials for which this FOA applies must be relevant to the research mission of the NCCIH and considered a high priority by the Center. For additional information about the mission, strategic vision, and research priorities of the NCCIH, applicants are encouraged to consult the NCCIH website: ( http://www.nccih.nih.gov).
NIHNCCIHNaturalProdsU24
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)
Natural Product Multi-Site Clinical Trial Data Coordinating Center (Collaborative U24)
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (requested): 30 days prior to the deadline
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: October 6, 2017; June 7, 2018
OSP Deadlines: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Application budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.  The period of award for the U24 phase is expected to be 5 years.  Up to 7 years may be requested if strongly justified.  The number of awards is contingent upon NIH appropriations and the submission of a sufficient number of meritorious applications.

This FOA, utilizing the U24 grant funding mechanism, encourages applications for a collaborating Data Coordinating Center (DCC) application that accompanies an investigator-initiated multi-site clinical trial (Phase III and beyond) application submitted under  PAR-17-174 . The DCC application must be specific to the collaborating Clinical Coordinating Center (CCC) application. The objective of the DCC application is to propose a comprehensive plan that provides overall project coordination, and administrative, data management, and biostatistical support for the proposed clinical trial. Both a DCC application and a corresponding CCC application need to be submitted simultaneously for consideration by NCCIH. T rials for which this FOA applies must be relevant to the research mission of the NCCIH and considered a high priority by the Center. For additional information about the mission, strategic vision, and research priorities of the NCCIH, applicants are encouraged to consult the NCCIH website: ( http://www.nccih.nih.gov).
NIHCancerBehResInteratingData
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Cancer-Related Behavioral Research through Integrating Existing Data (R01 and R21)
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: June 7, 2017 and February 7, 2018 for R01 applications; June 15, 2017 and February 15, 2018 for R21 applications
OSP Deadline:  5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: For R01 applications, the budget is not limited and the maximum project period is 5 years. For R21 applications , direct costs are limited to $275,000 over a 2 year period, with no more than $200,000 in direct costs allowed in any single year.

These FOAs invite applications that seek to integrate two or more independent data sets to answer novel cancer control and prevention questions. The goal is to encourage applications that incorporate Integrative Data Analysis (IDA) methods to study behavioral risk factors for cancer, including tobacco use, sedentary behavior, poor weight management, and lack of medical adherence to screening and vaccine uptake. It is important that the data being integrated are from different sources and types (including both quantitative and qualitative; data may span different levels such as genetic and environmental) and should include at least one source of behavioral data. Importantly, applicants should use existing data sources rather than collect new data. In addition, creating harmonized measures, developing culturally sensitive measures, replicating results and cross-study comparisons will be encouraged.
NIHNCI
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Development of Innovative Informatics Methods and Algorithms for Cancer Research and Management (R21)
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (requested): 30 days prior to the deadline
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: June 14, 2017; November 20, 2017
OSP Deadlines: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Up to $275,000 in direct costs over a 2 year period

The purpose of this FOA is to invite exploratory/developmental research grant (R21) applications for the development of innovative methods and algorithms in biomedical computing, informatics, and data science addressing priority needs across the cancer research continuum, including cancer biology, cancer treatment and diagnosis, cancer prevention, cancer control and epidemiology, and/or cancer health disparities.  As a component of the NCI's Informatics Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR) Initiative, this FOA encourages applications focused on the development of novel computational, mathematical, and statistical algorithms and methods that can considerably improve acquisition, management, analysis, and dissemination of relevant data and/or knowledge.
NIHNHLBITOPMedDataR01
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
Integrative Computational Biology for Analysis of NHLBI TOPMed Data (R01)
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (requested): 30 days prior to the deadline
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: July 6, 2017; July 6, 2018
OSP Deadlines: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Application budgets may not exceed $324,000 in direct costs per year. The maximum project period is 2 years. NHLBI intends to commit total costs of $3,000,000 in FY 2018, $6,000,000 in FY 2019, and $3,000,000 in FY 2020 to fund up to 12 awards.

The purpose of this FOA is to support integrated analysis of whole genome, large scale "omic" data generated by the NHLBI's Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program and associated phenotype and clinical data using systems approaches. Ultimately, these studies will advance our understanding of the molecular underpinnings of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disease.
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Genetics of Alzheimer's Disease Data Storage Site (U24)
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: May 25, 2017; September 25, 2017
OSP Deadlines: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Direct costs should not exceed $1,000,000 per year for up to 5 years.

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) invites applications specific to infrastructure that will support storage and analysis of primary and secondary data for the genetics and genomics of Alzheimer's Disease. This FOA addresses NIA's vital need for a central database for the storage and exchange of AD genetics and related data. The NIA is committed to facilitating the collection and sharing of data related to research in the area of the genetics of AD. The  NIA Genetics of Alzheimer's Disease Data Storage Site (NIAGADS) is a critical facet of the NIA Alzheimer's Disease Genetics Initiative that effectively leverages the investments already made related to the etiology of AD. Applications considered for funding should effectively leverage the investments already made related to investigation of the root causes of the disease.  The research resource should provide a large database of publicly available sequence and annotation data along with an integrated tool set for examining and comparing the genomes of affected and unaffected individuals, aligning sequence to genomes, and displaying and sharing users' own annotation data. Besides data storage and data processing, the database should provide effective mechanisms for data distribution.
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Limited Competition: Analysis of Data from NIA's Alzheimer's Disease Sequencing Project Follow-Up Study (U01)
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (requested): 45 days prior to the deadline
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: June 5, 2017; October 5, 2017
OSP Deadlines: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Application budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.  The maximum project period is 5 years.

The National Institute on Aging invites applications specific to the analysis of genome-wide association studies and whole-genome and related sequencing data generated under PAR-16-406.
NIHHIV
Harnessing Big Data to Halt HIV (R01)
Sponsor Deadlines: September 7, 2017; January 7, 2018
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: 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 FOA is to promote research that transforms understanding of HIV transmission, the HIV care continuum, and HIV comorbidities using Big Data Science (BDS). These approaches should include projects to assemble big data sources, conduct robust and reproducible analyses, and create meaningful visualization of big data.
NIHNIGMS
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
National Institute of General Medicine (NIGMS)
Modeling of Infectious Disease Agent Study Research Projects (R01)
Sponsor Deadlines: June 5, 2017; October 5, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: 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 FOA is to support innovative research that will develop and apply computational tools and methods for modeling interactions between infectious agents and their hosts, disease spread, prediction systems and response strategies. The models should be useful to researchers, policymakers, or public health workers who want to better understand and respond to infectious diseases. This research opportunity encourages applications from institutions/organizations that propose to provide the scientific and public health communities better resources, knowledge, and tools to improve their ability to prepare for, identify, detect, control, and prevent the spread of infectious diseases caused by naturally occurring or intentionally released pathogens, including those relevant to biodefense.

Areas of focus include c onceptual development of models, particularly analytical and statistical tools for interpreting and using large data sets or model results.
NIHU24
National Institutes of Health (NIH): (PAR-15-331) (PAR 15-333)
National Cancer Institute (NCI) 
Informatics Resources/Technologies for Cancer Research and Management (U24)
Sponsor Deadlines: June 14, 2017; November 20, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Application budgets for Advanced Development may not exceed $600,000 in Direct Costs (excluding consortium F&A costs) per year for up to 5 years.  B udgets for Sustained Support applications are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project; duration may be up to 5 years.
 
NCI invites applications in response to two Program Announcements: PAR-15-331: Advanced Development of Informatics Technologies for Cancer Research and Management (U24) and PAR-15-333: Sustained Support for Informatics Resources for Cancer Research and Management (U24).   

The purpose of PAR-15-331, Advanced Development of Informatics Technologies for Cancer Research and Management (U24), is to invite Cooperative Agreement (U24) applications for advanced development and enhancement of emerging informatics technologies to improve the acquisition, management, analysis, and dissemination of data and knowledge across the cancer research continuum, including cancer biology, cancer treatment and diagnosis, cancer prevention, cancer control and epidemiology, and/or cancer health disparities. As a component of the NCI's Informatics Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR) Initiative, this FOA focuses on emerging informatics technology, defined as one that has passed the initial prototyping and pilot development stage, has demonstrated potential to have a significant and broader impact, has compelling reasons for further improvement and enhancement, and has not been widely adopted in the cancer research field. The central mission of ITCR is to promote research-driven informatics technology across the development lifecycle to address priority needs in cancer research. In order to be successful, proposed development plans must have a clear rationale on why the proposed technology is needed and how it will benefit the cancer research field. In addition, mechanisms to solicit feedback from users and collaborators throughout the development process should be included. 

PAR-15-333, Sustained Support for Informatics Resources for Cancer Research and Management (U24), invites applications for the continued development and sustainment of high-value informatics research resources to serve current and emerging needs across the cancer research continuum.As a component of ITCR Program, this FOA focuses on supporting activities necessary for improved user experience and availability of existing, widely-adopted informatics tools and resources. This is in contrast to early-stage and advanced development efforts to generate these tools and resources that are supported by companion ITCR FOAs. In addition, mechanisms for assessing and maximizing the value of the resource to researchers and supporting collaboration and/or deep engagement between the resource and the targeted research community should be described.
NIHNIAID
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
Informatics Methodology and Secondary Analyses for Immunology Data in ImmPort (UH2)
Sponsor Deadline for Letter of Intent (requested): 30 days prior to the deadline
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: October 4, 2017; October 4, 2018
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Direct costs are limited to $275,000 over a 2 year period. No more than $200,000 may be requested in any single year. The maximum project period is 2 years.

With rapid technological advances and application of high-throughput assays, NIAID-supported research programs are not only changing the landscape of immunological studies, but also generating datasets in such large volume and complexity that specialized infrastructure is required to support data sharing as well as integrative, secondary and reproducibility analyses. Recognizing this growing need, the NIAID Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Transplantation (DAIT) has funded the development of a public data sharing repository, the Immunology Database and Analysis Portal ( ImmPort), which serves as a unique resource for public data sharing of immunological studies. 

The goals of this FOA are to support the development of new or improved informatics tools and methods for the reuse of shared data in ImmPort; and to support secondary analyses of existing immunology datasets to address basic and clinical immunology questions.
NIHNIDA
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
The Application of Big Data Analytics to Drug Abuse Research (R01)
Sponsor Deadline for Letter of Intent (requested): 30 days prior to the deadline
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: June 5, 2017; October 5, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: 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 FOA is to encourage the application of Big Data analytics to reveal deeper or novel insights into the biological and behavioral processes associated with substance abuse and addiction. NIDA recognizes that to accelerate progress toward understanding how the human brain and behavior is altered by chronic drug use and addiction, it is vital to develop more powerful analytical methods and visualization tools that can help capture the richness of data being generated from genetic, epigenetic, molecular, proteomic, metabolomic, brain-imaging, micro-electrode, behavioral, clinical, social, services, environmental studies as well as data generated from electronic health records. Applications for this FOA should develop and/or utilize computational approaches for analyzing large, complex datasets acquired from drug addiction research. The rapid increase of technologies to acquire unprecedented amounts of neurobiological and behavioral data, and an expanding capacity to store those data, results in great opportunity to bring to bear the power of the computational methods of Big Data analytics on drug abuse and addiction.
NIHConvergentNeuroU01
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
From Genomic Association to Causation: A Convergent Neuroscience Approach for Integrating Levels of Analysis to Delineate Brain Function in Neuropsychiatry (U01)
Sponsor Deadline for Letter of Intent (requested): 30 days prior to the deadline
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: June 5, 2017; October 5, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Up to  $2,500,000 direct cost per year for up to 5 years.
 
The primary objective of this FOA is to stimulate innovative Convergent Neuroscience (CN) approaches to establish causal and/or probabilistic linkages across contiguous levels of analysis (e.g., gene, molecule, cell, circuit, system, behavior) in an explanatory model of psychopathology. In particular, applicants should focus on how specific constituent biological processes at one level of analysis contribute to quantifiable properties at other levels, either directly or as emergent phenomena. Although not required, it is preferable that applications link at least three levels of analysis and include an emphasis on genetics. The projects under this FOA will develop novel methods, theories, and approaches through a CN team framework, bringing together highly synergistic inter/transdisciplinary teams from neuroscience and "orthogonal" fields (e.g., data/computational science, physics, engineering, mathematics, and environmental sciences). Successful teams will combine, expand upon, or develop conceptual frameworks and theoretical approaches, and build explanatory computational models that connect contiguous levels of analysis. Such frameworks, theories, and computational explanatory models should be validated through experimental approaches to elucidate biological underpinnings of complex behavioral (including cognitive and affective) outcomes in psychopathology. Additionally, a goal of this program is to advance research in CN by creating a shared community framework of resources which may be used by the broader research community to further research, as such, successful team will have robust plan for sharing data and other resources.

Applications requiring two or more collaborating sites to complete the proposed research should apply as a linked set of collaborative U01 applications to the companion collaborative U01 FOA ( PAR-17-176).  All awards supported under this FOA and the companion collaborative U01 FOA  will be governed by the Convergent Neuroscience Network for Psychiatry (CNN-Psych) Steering Committee.
NIHNLM
National Library of Medicine (NLM)
NLM Career Development Award in Biomedical Informatics and Data Science (K01)
Sponsor Deadlines: June 12, 2017; October 12, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Award budgets are composed of salary (up to $100,000 plus fringe benefits) and other program-related expenses ($50,000  per year). The total project period may not exceed 3 years.

The purpose of the NLM Career Development Award (K01) in Biomedical Informatics and Data Science is to provide support and "protected time" (a minimum of 75% of full-time professional effort for up to three years) for an intensive career development experience in biomedical informatics and data science leading to research independence. NLM invites K01 applications from junior investigators, who have either a health professional or research doctorate and who are in the first three years of their initial faculty positions. Candidates who received their training at one of NLM's university-based biomedical informatics training programs are encouraged to apply.
NIHNLMPersonalHealthLibraries
National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Data Science Research: Personal Health Libraries for Consumers and Patients (R01)
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (requested): February 16, 2018
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: March 19, 2018
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Up to $250K direct costs may be requested in any single year for up to 4 years.

To bring the benefits of big data research to consumers and patients, new biomedical informatics and data science approaches are needed, shaped to meet the needs of consumers and patients, whose health literacy, language skills, technical sophistication, education and cultural traditions affect how they find, understand and use personal health information. Novel data science approaches are needed to help individuals at every step, from harvesting to storing to using data and information in a personal health library. The National Library of Medicine seeks applications for novel informatics and data science approaches that can help individuals gather, manage and use data and information about their personal health. A goal of this program is to advance research and application by patients and the research community through broadly sharing the results via publication, and through open source mechanisms for data or resource sharing.  Please note that organizations are limited to submitting one proposal in response to this Program Announcement. If you are interested in applying, please contact Erin Hale in FAS Research Development at erin_hale@fas.harvard.edu.
NIHNLM2
National Library of Medicine (NLM)
NLM Express Research Grants in Biomedical Informatics (R01)
Sponsor Deadlines: June 5, 2017; October 5, 2017
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: The NLM Express Research Grant has a limit of $250,000 per year in direct costs. The maximum project period is 4 years.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) offers support for innovative research in biomedical informatics and data science. The scope of NLM's interest in the research domain of informatics is broad and interdisciplinary, developing methods and approaches in biomedical computing, data science and related information fields for application domains of health and biomedicine, including health care delivery, basic biomedical research, clinical and translational research, precision medicine, public health, biosurveillance, health information management in disasters, and similar areas. NLM defines biomedical informatics as the science of optimal representation, organization, management, integration and presentation of information relevant to human health and biology, for purposes of learning, sharing and use.
NIHMSMU01
Multiple Partners
Predictive Multiscale Models for Biomedical, Biological, Behavioral, Environmental and Clinical Research (U01)
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (strongly encouraged): 30 days prior to the deadline
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: May 29, 2017; September 29, 2017
OSP Deadlines: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  Projects are limited to below $500,000 direct costs per year.  Budgets are expected to range from $200,000 to $400,000 in Total Direct Costs each year for up to 5 years. NASA may consider funding projects in the range of $150,000 in direct costs per year, for up to 3 years. 

The goal of this interagency funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to support the development of multiscale models to accelerate biological, biomedical, behavioral, environmental and clinical research. The NIH, ARO, DOE, FDA, NASA, NSF, and ONR recognize that in order to efficiently and effectively address the challenges of understanding multiscale biological and behavioral systems, researchers will need predictive, computational models that encompass multiple biological and behavioral scales. This FOA supports the development of non-standard modeling methods and experimental approaches to facilitate multiscale modeling, and active participation in community-driven activities through the Multiscale Modeling (MSM) Consortium.  
NIHSecondAnalysisCancerRisk
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Secondary Analysis and Integration of Existing Data to Elucidate the Genetic Architecture of Cancer Risk and Related Outcomes (R01 and R21)
Sponsor Deadlines:  June 5, 2017 and October 5, 2017 for R01 proposals; June 16, 2017 and October 16, 2017 for R21 proposals
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information:  For R01 awards, t he budget is limited to $350,000 in direct costs per year for up to 5 years. For R21 awards, d irect costs are limited to $275,000 over a 2 year project period, with no more than $200,000 in direct costs allowed in any single year.

These FOAs encourage applications that propose to conduct secondary data analysis and integration of existing datasets and database resources, with the ultimate aim to elucidate the genetic architecture of cancer risk and related outcomes. The goal of this initiative is to address key scientific questions relevant to cancer epidemiology by supporting the analysis of existing genetic or genomic datasets, possibly in combination with environmental, outcomes, behavioral, lifestyle, and molecular profiles data. Applications to this FOA are encouraged to leverage existing genetic data and perform innovative analyses of the existing data. Applications may include new research aims that are being addressed with existing data, new or advanced methods of analyses, or novel combinations and integration of datasets that allow the exploration of important scientific questions in cancer research.
NSFCogNeuro
Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences (SBE)
Cognitive Neuroscience (CogNeuro) 
Sponsor Deadlines: August 14, 2017; February 12, 2018
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Average award size is ~$175K per year (including both direct and indirect costs) and the average duration is 3 years
 
The cognitive neuroscience program seeks to fund highly innovative proposals that employ brain-based measurements in order to advance our understanding of the neural systems that mediate cognitive processes.  New frontiers in cognitive neuroscience research have emerged from investigations that integrate data at different spatial and temporal scales.  Human cognitive science encompasses a wide range of topics, including attention, learning, memory, decision-making, language, social cognition, and emotions. Proposals will be considered that investigate a particular cognitive process using human brain data. 
Education and Training
AERA
American Educational Research Association (AERA)
AERA Research Grants
Sponsor Deadline: TBA (Fall 2017)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Award Information: Awards for Research Grants are up to $20,000 for 1 year projects, or up to $35,000 for 2 year projects
 
This program seeks to stimulate research on U.S. education issues using data from the large-scale, national and international data sets supported by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), NSF, and other federal agencies, and to increase the number of education researchers using these data sets. Applicants are encouraged to submit proposals that:
  • develop or benefit from new quantitative measures or methodological approaches for addressing education issues;
  • include interdisciplinary teams with subject matter expertise, especially when studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning;
  • analyze TIMSS, PISA, or other international data resources; or
  • include the integration and analysis of more than one data set.
Research projects related to at least one of the strands above and to science and/or mathematics education are especially encouraged. Other topics of interest include policies and practices related to student achievement in STEM, contextual factors in education, educational participation and persistence (kindergarten through graduate school), early childhood education, and postsecondary education.
NSFWorkforceSurveyData
Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences (SBE)
Research on the Science and Technology Enterprise: Statistics and Surveys - R&D, U.S. S&T Competitiveness, STEM Education, S&T Workforce
Sponsor Deadline: January 16, 2018
OSP Deadline: January 8, 2018
Award Information: The total maximum amount for all awards in FY18 is $750,000. 7-12 awards are anticipated.

The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) is one of the thirteen principal federal statistical agencies within the United States.  It is responsible for the collection, acquisition, analysis, reporting and dissemination of objective, statistical data related to the science and engineering enterprise in the United States and other nations that is relevant and useful to practitioners, researchers, policymakers and the public. The Center would like to enhance its efforts to support analytic and methodological research in support of its surveys, and to engage in the education and training of researchers in the use of large-scale nationally representative datasets.  NCSES welcomes efforts by the research community to use NCSES data for research on the science and technology enterprise, to develop improved survey methodologies for NCSES surveys, to create and improve indicators of S&T activities and resources, and strengthen methodologies to analyze and disseminate S&T statistical data. To that end, NCSES invites proposals for individual or multi-investigator research projects, doctoral dissertation improvement awards, workshops, experimental research, survey research and data collection and dissemination projects under its program for Research on the Science and Technology Enterprise: Statistics and Surveys.
NSFCyberTraining
National Science Foundation
Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE)
Training-based Workforce Development for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (CyberTraining)
Sponsor Deadline: October 9, 2017
OSP Deadline: September 29, 2017
Award Information: $300,000-$500,000 for up to 3 years. NSF anticipates a total budget for this program of  $4,500,000 to support 10-15 awards.
 
The overarching goal of this program is to prepare, nurture and grow the national scientific workforce for creating, utilizing, and supporting advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) that enables cutting-edge science and engineering and contributes to the Nation's overall economic competitiveness and security.  For the purpose of this solicitation, advanced CI is broadly defined as the resources, tools, and services for advanced computation, data handling, networking and security. This solicitation calls for developing innovative, scalable training programs to address the emerging needs and unresolved bottlenecks in scientific and engineering workforce development of targeted, multidisciplinary communities, at the postsecondary level and beyond, leading to transformative changes in the state of workforce preparedness for advanced CI in the short and long terms.  A primary goal is to broaden CI access and adoption by (i) increasing or deepening accessibility of methods and resources of advanced CI and of computational and data science and engineering by a wide range of institutions and scientific communities with lower levels of CI adoption to date; and (ii) harnessing the capabilities of larger segments of diverse underrepresented groups. Proposals from and in partnership with the aforementioned communities are especially encouraged.  For student training, a key concern is not to increase the time to degree; hence the emphasis shall be on out-of-class, informal training.

There are three tracks for submissions:

(i)  CI Professionals (CIP): aimed at the training and career pathway development of research cyberinfrastructure and professional staff who  develop, deploy, manage, and support effective use of advanced CI for research;
(ii)  Domain science and engineering (DSE): aimed primarily at the communities of CI Contributors and sophisticated CI Users, and aligned with the  research and education priorities of the participating domain directorates; and
(iii)  Computational and data science literacy (CDL): aimed at the CI User community at the undergraduate level.  
Questions about this newsletter or proposal submission may be directed to:

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

To see previous Big Data Funding Newsletters, please visit our   email archive .
Research Development | Research Administration Services | research.fas.harvard.edu