February 2018  
 
The FAS Research Development group publishes this monthly Funding Newsletter for SEAS faculty and researchers. The newsletter includes notable Federal, private, and internal Harvard funding opportunities. To provide feedback, please complete our two-question survey.  
 
Questions?
Erin Hale: [email protected] | 617-496-5252 
Jennifer Corby:  [email protected] | 617-495-1590  
 
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News, Announcements, & Special Features
 
Feature: New Investigator Opportunity Spotlight
 
Internal Funding Opportunity: Harvard Solar Geoengineering Research Program
Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program (SGRP) aims to focus on advancing solar geoengineering science and technology; assessing efficiency and risks; and laying out governance options and social implications. Current available funding mechanisms are a residency program and Harvard faculty research grants. Learn more about these opportunities here . 

Funding Opportunities

Click on the links below to read a program synopsis

Foundation Opportunities

Industry/Corporate Opportunities

I nternal Opportunities
U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)
 
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) 
 
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA)
 
National Institutes of Health (NIH)

National Science Foundation: Directorate for Computer & Information Science and Engineering (NSF: CISE)
 

Foundation Opportunities
2018 International AI Safety Grants Competition
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent: February 25, 2018
OSP Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): May 13, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): May 20, 2018
Award Amount: $50,000 - $400,000 for up to 3 years
 
This 2018 grants competition is the second round of the multi-million dollar grants program announced in January 2015, and will give grants totaling millions more to researchers in academic and other nonprofit institutions for projects up to three years in duration, beginning September 1, 2018. It is limited to research that aims to help maximize the societal benefits of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), explicitly focusing not on the standard goal of making AI more capable, but on making it more robust and/or beneficial. In consultation with other organizations, the Institute has identified a list of relatively specific problems and projects of particular interest to the AGI safety field. These will serve both as examples and as topics for special consideration. Successful grant proposals will either relate directly to AGI issues, or clearly explain how the proposed work is a necessary stepping stone toward safe and beneficial AGI.
 
Researchers and outreach specialists working in academic and other nonprofit institutions are eligible to apply, as well as independent researchers.
Internet Freedom Fund
OSP Deadline: February 22, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: March 1, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $900,000 for a yearlong contract, though most supported efforts range between $50,000 and $200,000.
 
The Internet Freedom Fund is OTF's primary way to support projects and people working on open and accessible technology-centric projects that promote human rights, internet freedom, open societies, and help advance inclusive and safe access to global communications networks for at-risk users including journalists, human rights defenders, civil society activists, and every-day people living within repressive environments who wish to speak freely online.
 
Preference is given to organizations and individuals without a history of prior support, and who have a deep understanding of the surveillance, censorship and security issues affecting communities from the Global South living in repressive environments. Strong priority goes to projects with the potential for immediate impact and long-term sustainability, and that make intellectual property publicly available via open licensing and open source code. OTF highly values projects that incorporate collaborative partnerships with other organizations and/or individuals within the internet freedom community or their respective area of focus.
Wireless Innovation Project
OSP Deadline: February 26, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: March 5, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $300,000 over three years
 
The Wireless Innovation Project seeks to identify and fund the best innovations using wireless related technology to address critical social issues. Project proposals must demonstrate significant advancement in the field of wireless-related technology applied to social benefit use. The project must be at a stage of research where an advanced prototype or field/market test can occur during the award period.
 
Projects should involve an established multi-disciplinary team that demonstrates the expertise needed for a comprehensive solution to the targeted problem. For example, a team may consist of members from two or more of the following disciplines: engineering, design, business, international development, or other relevant disciplines. A team may also consist of university-based researchers and non-profit organizations working such areas as international development, health or environment.
Targeted Topics in Mining Safety and Health Research
OSP Deadline: March 2, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: March 9, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $250,000 for up to 18 months
 
The Alpha Foundation's mission is to improve mine safety and health through funding research and development projects. The goal is to address the root causes of disease, injuries, and fatalities in the mining industry and, where possible, to achieve successful implementation of practical solutions derived from the research effort. While the foundation is always interested in receiving strong proposals that address other compelling mining safety and health needs, the following topics are of particular interest for this solicitation:
  • Respirable Dust Material Composition
  • Understanding the Role of Overburden Mechanics in Pillar Design and Global Ground Stability
  • Pillar Stability of Old Workings in Underground Stone Mines
  • Evaluation of Current Seal Design Criteria
  • Innovative Methods of Methane Detection Near the Face and De-energizing the Longwall Equipment
  • Development of Remote-Controlled Roof Bolting Capability
  • Proof-of-Concept Development of Explosion Permissible Sensory or Robotic Equipment
  • Using Refuge Alternatives as a Base of Operations
  • Examination of the Relationships between Mine Environment Exposures and the Development or Exacerbation of Asthma and COPD
  • Identification of Mining Jobs and Operations with High Rates of Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders
  • Characterization of Chemical Exposures and the Hazards They Pose to Miners in the Metal/Non-metal Sector

Prostate
2018 Young Investigator Awards
OSP Deadline: March 12, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: March 19, 2018 by 3:00 PM
Award Amount: $75,000 per year for three years
 
The Prostate Cancer Foundation champions investment in human capital to fast-forward solutions for prostate cancer with the ultimate goal of ending death and suffering from metastatic prostate cancer. Applications are encouraged from early-career basic scientists, medical oncologists, pathologists, urologists, radiologists, radiation oncologists, public health experts, bioinformaticians, bioengineers, or professionals from any other field that could contribute to the end of prostate cancer. Applicants may be working in basic, translational, or clinical research and need not be trained specifically in prostate cancer research. Research proposals should, if successful, provide high impact to the field. "Small-step" or incremental proposals are usually non-competitive. Highly innovative basic science programs will be carefully considered, but priority will be given to "bench to bedside" translational research proposals with the potential to deliver near term benefit to patients. Access to and interaction with a clinical environment and translational prostate cancer physician-scientists is highly desired. Projects that involve a VA Hospital in their research proposal planning will be appreciated.
 
To be eligible, applicants should: be within six-years of completing a professional degree or subsequent mentored academic or clinical training program; hold the title of Postdoctoral Fellow, Instructor, Research Associate, Assistant Professor or equivalent; be under the direct supervision of a mentor(s), including at least one from the applicant's institution; and have received no more than $200,000 in direct research funding from all sources including institutional funds during the term of this award.

Burroughs
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: March 20, 2018 by 12:00PM
Award Amount: $150,000 for direct costs only. This award does not allow for indirect costs and thus falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss with your grants administrator before preparing an application.
 
The Burroughs Wellcome Fund announces a one-time award program providing support for faculty time spent on developing improved approaches to training graduate students for a more quantitative and statistically-informed approach to thinking and a more model-driven approach to doing research in the biomedical and related life sciences. These grants will support faculty effort and relevant administrative support for up to two years of work on curricular development, and/or pulling together elements from multiple departments, and/or course and workshop development, as well as other efforts focused on building or substantially restructuring didactic elements of graduate training.
 
This is a limited submission opportunity and Harvard may put forward only one application. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research will administer an internal competition to select the Harvard nominee. Interested applicants should submit a pre-proposal online here by March 20, 2018 .
 

RWJF2
Opioid Challenge
OSP Deadline: Not required
Sponsor Deadline for Phase 1: March 22, 2018
Award Amount: Each of the Finalists chosen during Phase 1 will receive a prize of $5,000. In Phase 2, the first place winner will receive a prize of $50,000, second place will receive a prize of $15,000, and third place will receive a prize of $10,000.
 
The Opioid Challenge seeks to develop technology applications that help support and connect individuals affected by opioid addiction. It will be conducted in two phases with the goal of producing a functioning prototype: During Phase 1, five winning Entrants will be selected as finalists from the entries submitted during the Entry Period. Phase 2 will be open only to the Finalists selected from Phase 1. During Phase 2 of the challenge, finalists will be awarded several promotional opportunities to showcase the top-ranking solutions and gain visibility in the health tech space, listed here . The Challenge is open to business and nonprofit entities in the US as well as individuals and teams of no more than five individuals who are citizens or permanent residents of the US.
 
For Phase 1, submissions will be evaluated and scored based on:
  • Innovation: Creativity and uniqueness of the solution
  • Scalability: Potential for widespread adoption
  • UX/UI: Overall design and intuitiveness of the solution
For Phase 2, submissions will be evaluated and scored based on:
  • Impact: Overall potential to improve quality of life for those affected by opioid addiction
  • Potential for Adoption: Likelihood that the solution will be well-received and use retained by the end user
  • Strength of Presentation: Overall strength of live pitch presentation at the Health 2.0 2018 Fall Conference

AHA-AWS
2.0 Data Grant Portfolio: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
OSP Deadline: March 22, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: March 29, 2018
Award Amount: $100,000/year for two years plus Amazon Web Services credit for use on the AHA Precision Medicine Platform for computational storage and analysis up to $50,000/year. This award allows 10% for indirect costs, which falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss with your grants administrator before preparing an application.
   
The purpose of this program is to train student researchers (undergraduate, graduate or pre/post-doctoral) in testing and refining artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms using learning health care system data and/or multiple longitudinal data sources to improve our understanding of all data related to precision medicine. Data source examples include but are not limited to: images, electronic health records, wearable devices, smart phone and other sensor related technology, genetics, biology, and community engagement. Priority will be given to applications with a new dataset(s) that is uploaded into a workspace on the Precision Medicine Platform with accompanying preliminary data generated within the workspace. Priority will also be given to applicants using multiple sources of data or longitudinal data to continue to refine algorithms. Example topics for applicants include but are not limited to:
  • identifying machine learning approaches for classification of images from multiple data sources;
  • predicting behavioral and lifestyle choices from data sources;
  • predicting income level, educational level from data sources;
  • new pipelines to enable more effective and efficient workflows for analyzing data in the cloud.
These grants are open to all scientists, though knowledge of biology and/or computer science may be helpful. Faculty/staff members must be conducting independent research at time of application.


HFSF
Research Grants
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent: March 28, 2018 
Award Amount: $250,000 for a team of 2; $350,000 for a team of 3; $450,000 for a team of 4 or more. A maximum of 10% overhead may be charged to the Program Grants. This falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss with your grants administrator before preparing an application. The Young Investigator Grants are exempt from this policy.
HFSP supports international, preferably intercontinental, collaborations in basic life science research. Applications are invited for grants to support innovative approaches to understanding complex mechanisms of living organisms. Applicants must initiate an application (with a 2019 reference number) via the website by March 19, 2018. Applicants are expected to develop novel lines of research distinct from their ongoing research. The principal applicant must be located in one of the HFSP member countries but co-investigators may be located in any country.
 
Two types of Research Grants are available:
  • Young Investigators' Grants are awarded to teams of researchers, all of whom are within the first five years after obtaining an independent laboratory (e.g. Assistant Professor, Lecturer or equivalent). Applications for Young Investigators' Grants will be reviewed in competition with each other independently of applications for Program Grants.
  • Program Grants are awarded to teams of independent researchers at any stage of their careers. The research team is expected to develop new lines of research through the collaboration. Applications including independent investigators early in their careers are encouraged.

Industry/Corporate Opportunities

Cisco 
Cisco Research Center Grants
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: Budgets depend on the institution and geography. Overhead is limited to 5%. This falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss with your grants administrator before preparing an application.
Cisco Research Center (CRC) connects researchers and developers from Cisco, academia, governments, customers, and industry partners with the goal of facilitating collaboration and exploration of new and promising technologies. Cisco is primarily interested in exploring issues, topics, and problems that are relevant to its core business of improving the Internet. It is also deeply interested in adjacent technologies that leverage the power of the network to change the world around us.
 
CRC supports a broad range of research interests and award types in engineering and applied sciences. For a complete list of Requests for Proposals (RFPs), please scroll to the bottom of this link. Please note that CRC also welcomes research proposals that do not fit cleanly into any of the RFPs listed.
 IBM_World
IBM
World Community Grid
OSP Deadline: Not required 
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: Up to 150,000 years of computing power through World Community Grid; weather data from The Weather Company, an IBM Business; and cloud storage from IBM Cloud
IBM invites scientists studying climate change or ways to mitigate or adapt to its impacts to apply for free crowdsourced supercomputing power, weather data and cloud storage to support their climate or environmental research projects. In return, awardees are asked to publicly release the research data from their collaboration with IBM, enabling the global community to benefit from and build upon those findings.
 
Grantees will receive free, 24/7 access to computing power though World Community Grid, an award-winning IBM Citizenship initiative that enables anyone with a computer or Android device to support scientific research by carrying out computational research tasks on their devices. This allows researchers to conduct large-scale investigations, often magnitudes larger than they would have otherwise been able to conduct. Grantees may also request access to weather data and cloud storage.

Internal Opportunities
 Star
Deadline: February 28, 2018
Award Amount: $20,000-$200,000 in direct costs (project budgets should not include indirect costs). In 2017, the average award size was $106,250. Up to five awards will be made annually.
Eligible Applicants: This competition is open to ladder faculty members in FAS and SEAS. Collaborative proposals are welcome but the lead investigator on the application must hold a faculty appointment in FAS or SEAS.
 
Established in 2013 by a generous gift to Harvard University at the suggestion of James A. Star, AB (1983), the Star Family Challenge for Promising Scientific Research provides seed funding to interdisciplinary high-risk, high-impact projects in the natural or social sciences. Early stage projects which are unlikely to receive funding from traditional grant-making agencies are encouraged. Award recipients will present and discuss their projects with a range of scholars in multiple disciplines at a Challenge event on April 9, 2018, prior to receipt of funding.
Deadline: March 6, 2018 by 5:00PM
Award Amount: Up to $100,000
Eligible Applicants: Individuals who hold a faculty appointment at a Harvard school and who have principal investigator rights at that school
 
The goal of the Data Science Initiative Competitive Research Fund is to support research that advances data science at Harvard in new ways. In 2018, funds will be used to support planning grants within and across each of five themes:
  1. Data-Driven Scientific Discovery (includes discovery of new materials, drug and gene discovery, environment, astronomy, neuroscience)
  2. Markets and Networks (includes networks and influence, innovation and crowds, digital economy, jobs, fairness, privacy, accountability, crowdsourcing)
  3. Personalized Health (includes precision medicine, precision public health, medical informatics, diagnostics, personal devices)
  4. Evidence-Based Policy (includes equality of opportunity, healthcare economics, democracy and governance, climate change -- resilience and mitigation)
  5. Advanced Methodologies (includes causal inference, deep learning, visualization, Monte Carlo methods, experimental design, interpretability, non-parametric Bayesian, high-dimensional inference, robust machine learning, control of false discovery, human-in-the-loop, reinforcement learning, data systems, reproducibility, data sharing)
This call invites innovative ideas for projects that will be foundational to longer-term research programs in any of the five themes listed above. Projects that span two or more themes are also encouraged.
Deadline: March 8, 2018 by 5:00PM
Award Amount: Up to $50,000
Eligible Applicants: FAS and SEAS assistant, associate and tenured faculty; professors in residence and professors of the practice are also eligible.
 
The Dean's Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship is a targeted program that provides funding in the following categories:
  1. Bridge funding, to allow faculty to continue work on previously funded research, scholarship, or creative activity that does not currently have external funding. Faculty who apply in this category should demonstrate that efforts have been made or will be made to obtain new external funding.
  2. Seed funding, to encourage faculty to launch exciting new scholarship or research directions that might not yet be ready to compete in traditional funding programs.
  3. Enabling subventions, to provide small funds to purchase (or upgrade) critical equipment. Applicants for such funds must have no existing startup funds on which they could draw for this purpose.
For all categories, applicants should clearly explain in non-specialist language the critical need, make a compelling case for large marginal gain, and justify the need for support from this fund rather than traditional sources.  
HILT
 
Spark Grant for Collaboration, Research, and Engagement
Deadline: March 21, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $15,000
Eligible Applicants: Harvard University benefits-eligible faculty, staff, and postdoctoral researchers are eligible to apply for funding, individually or as groups. 
 
Grants are designed to help "spark" promising teaching and learning projects from idea to reality and position innovations for future success. Funding can be used in various ways; for example, to pay for a research assistant, hire a graduate student with academic technology expertise, or convene collaborative groups. Through Spark Grants, awardees will receive resources, feedback, and community support to help them develop their ideas into prototypes, pilots, and small-scale innovations. HILT will also strive to support any future scaling-up of Spark Grant projects by increasing their visibility and connecting awardees and project outcomes with others in the broader Harvard community. In general, grant proposals should align with HILT's mission to catalyze innovation and excellence in teaching and learning at Harvard University.
Deadline: April 3, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $50,000
Eligible Applicants: Applications are invited from individuals who hold a junior faculty appointment, which includes FAS and SEAS Assistant or Associate Professors. Junior Fellows of the Harvard Society of Fellows are also eligible.
 
The Milton Fund supports research projects in the fields of medicine, geography, history and science that promote the physical and material welfare and prosperity of the human race, investigate and determine the value and importance of any discovery or invention, or assist in the discovery and perfecting of any special means of alleviating or curing human disease. Funds awarded through the Milton Fund support research to explore new ideas, to act as the catalyst between ideas and more definitive directions, and to consider new methods of approaching solutions.

 Please note that the eligibility requirements for the Milton Award have changed this year and the fund is no longer open to FAS tenured faculty.
Deadline: May 18, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $20,000
Eligible Applicants: The designated faculty leader(s) must hold primary Harvard faculty appointments at the rank of Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor or senior non-ladder faculty appointments including Senior Lecturer, Senior Preceptor, and Professor of Practice.
 
The Provost's Fund for Interfaculty Collaboration (PFIC) was developed to promote faculty collaboration across multiple Harvard Schools. This fund can be used to support a variety of projects, including but not limited to cross-School interdisciplinary course support, research working groups, and small-scale conferences. The Fund will occasionally prioritize particular forms of collaboration, and during the 2017-2018 academic year, funding priority will be given to proposals intended to advance cross-School teaching. 
 
To be eligible for support, the designated faculty leader(s) must hold primary Harvard faculty appointments at the rank of Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor or senior non-ladder faculty appointments including Senior Lecturer, Senior Preceptor, and Professor of Practice, and the project must engage faculty and/or students from at least two Harvard Schools. Priority will be given to applicants who have not previously received funding from the grant. Colleagues from outside Harvard may be included as well.
 
These one-year grants should be considered seed money rather than continuing support. Funding should be expended within a year of the award. Preference will be given to proposals that illustrate the potential cross-School impact of funding (e.g., cross-listed courses, sponsored research opportunities, resulting scholarly products) as well as to proposals that leverage other resources (e.g., cost-sharing with a Department, School, or outside funder).

InternalSolar
Residency Program and Harvard Faculty Research Grants 
Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: Varies by award type

Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program (SGRP) aims to focus on advancing solar geoengineering science and technology; assessing efficiency and risks; and laying out governance options and social implications. The following funding mechanisms are currently available:  

Residency Program:  This program will accept a small number of researchers focused on solar geoengineering to spend between 1 and 3 weeks at Harvard University, working directly with researchers at SGRP and other members of the Harvard community. The main purpose of this program is to enable visitors to work in collaboration with Harvard researchers and each other on discrete research projects. SGRP will cover the cost of travel and accommodations as well as per diem for meals.
 
Harvard Faculty Research Grants:  SGRP will provide direct support for research activities that cannot be fulfilled by students or fellows. That could involve multi-investigator collaborations, field or laboratory work in the sciences, or field or survey work in the social sciences.

U.S. Department of Defense
Naval Supply Systems Command
Research Initiatives at The Naval Postgraduate School
OSP Deadline: February 21, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: February 28, 2018 
Award Amount: The funding amount and period of performance of each selected proposal will vary depending on the research area and the technical approach pursued by the selected prospective Grantee.
 
The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is interested in receiving proposals for research initiatives that offer potential for advancement and improvement in the NPS core mission of graduate education and research. Readers should note that this is an announcement to declare NPS's solicitation in competitive funding of meritorious research initiatives across a spectrum of science and engineering, business, politics and public/foreign policy, operational and information sciences, and interdisciplinary disciplines that are in-line with the NPS' graduate education and research mission.
 
Additional information on the Naval Postgraduate School's graduate education and research mission is available at:
 
 
Prior to preparing proposals, potential Offerors are strongly encouraged to contact an NPS point of contact (POC) whose program and research efforts best match the Offeror's field of interest. The academic and research programs links above can be used to locate an appropriate POC by exploring the information provided about the faculty members in NPS' schools, research institutes, and interdisciplinary centers and research groups.
Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)
Fundamental Research to Counter Weapons of Mass Destruction - Call for Specific Topics
OSP Deadline: February 21, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers: February 28, 2018
Award Amount: Varies by topic
 
DTRA safeguards America and its allies from weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and provides capabilities to reduce, eliminate, and counter the threat and effects from chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high yield explosives.
 
DTRA has announced specific topics of interest in several of its thrust areas:
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 1-Topic H1: Predicting Trends for Combined High Stopping Power and Energy Resolution Tl-based Materials for Detecting Gamma Radiation
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 1-Topic H2: Prompt Signatures of Nuclear Detonations and their Interactions with Existing Urban Networks for Forensics
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 2-Topic H3: Fundamental Quantitative Limits on Quantum Communication Networks in a Nuclear Disturbed Environment
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 2-Topic H4: Novel Approaches to Determine Missing Graph Edge and Flow Information for Physical Network Analysis
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 2-Topic H5: Machine Learning and Data Acquisition to Predict Human Behavior following a WMD Event
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 3-Topic H6: Global Redox Changes as Indicators of CBR Exposure
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 3-Topic H7: Plasmonics and Nanophotonics for Light Generation, Energy Concentration, and Plasma Generation
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 3-Topic H8: System Level Nuclear Survivability Assurance Modeling
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 4-Topic H9: Inverse Regression Uncertainty Quantification for High Pressure and High Temperature Environments
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 4-Topic H10: Novel Materials with Synergistic Decomposition/Neutralization Mechanisms against Chemical Agents, Simulants and Precursors
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 5-Topic H11: Exploring Fundamental Mechanisms and Predicting Properties of New Adsorbent Materials for Collection of Radionuclide Gases
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 7-Topic H12: Design Rules for Biomimetic Enzymes and Binders
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 7-Topic H13: Determining the Fundamental Differences Between In Vitro and In Vivo Test Models
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 7-Topic H14: Elucidating Design Rules in Nanoporous Materials for Destruction of Chemical Warfare Agents
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 7-Topic H15: Evaluating the Human Metabolism of Chemical Warfare Agents
  • Basic Research-Thrust Area 7-Topic H16: Novel Reactive, Porous, and Processable Polymers for Chem-Bio Defense
These topics do NOT require pre-coordination of an abstract prior to the submission of pre-application white papers. Responses must address only basic research. DTRA is interested in research projects that span from those that focus on exploratory aspects of a unique problem or a high-risk approach to those that involve a comprehensive program with interdisciplinary areas. Consistent across all proposals should be the focus on innovative research with the potential for high impact to C-WMD science. Proposals from Young Investigators (within 5 years of the Ph.D.) will be given preference under a number of the topics.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Network Universal Persistence (Network UP)
OSP Deadline: February 23, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: March 2, 2018
Award Amount: The amount of resources made available under this BAA will
depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. DARPA has structured Network UP as a two-phase program covering 36 months. Each phase will be 18 months in duration.
 
The Network Universal Persistence (Network UP) program will develop and demonstrate radio technology that maintains network reliability through periods of frequent signal degradation that routinely occur during military operational environments. The key insight is that isolation of the critical control channel information in a separate, robust wireless link will allow creation of a protected control channel that can maintain network reliability even when the data channel is lost.
 
DARPA seeks innovative proposals in the following Technical Areas:
  • Technical Area One (TA-1): Developing Radio Architecture and Control Link Channel - Multiple TA-1 performers will design, develop, and demonstrate a radio architecture and supporting technology that implement separate control and data channels.
  • Technical Area Two (TA-2): Developing Bursty Link Network - Multiple TA-2 performers will design, develop, and demonstrate network architectures and technologies that enable creation of a network with physically separated control and data links.
Multiple awards are anticipated.

Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) Exploratory Development (SEED)
OSP Deadline: February 27, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: March 6, 2018
Award Amount: These projects will be funded at a level not to exceed $200,000 in total cost and approximately one year in duration.
 
SERDP is DoD's environmental science and technology program, planned and executed in partnership with DOE and EPA, with participation by numerous other federal and non-federal organizations. SERDP is interested in receiving proposals for innovative research in the Munitions Response area as set forth in the Announcement of the SERDP Exploratory Development (SEED) program. Work performed under the SEED Solicitation should investigate innovative approaches that entail high technical risk and/or have minimal supporting data. At the conclusion of the project, sufficient data analysis should be available to provide risk reduction and/or a proof-of-concept. The objective is to develop technologies to detect, classify, and remediate military munitions found at underwater sites. Capabilities are needed for a wide variety of aquatic environments such as ponds, lakes, rivers, estuaries, and coastal and open ocean areas. Munitions of interest range from small projectiles and mortars to large bombs, although proposals need not address the entire range of potential munitions with a single solution. Water depths up to 35 meters are of interest although there is a specific need for systems that can operate in depths less than 5 meters. Proposals addressing any aspect of munitions response for underwater sites will be considered, with particular interest in the following topics:
  • Characteristics of Munitions Underwater and Their Environment
  • Wide Area and Detailed Surveys
  • Cost-Effective Recovery and Disposal
Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP)
Environmental Technology Demonstrations
OSP Deadline: March 1, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Pre-Proposals: March 8, 2018
Award Amount: It is expected that multiple awards totaling approximately $12M will result, depending on availability of funds.
 
The Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) is the Department of Defense's (DoD) demonstration and validation program for environmental and installation energy technologies. The ESTCP Office is interested in receiving pre-proposals for innovative technology demonstrations that address DoD environmental and installation energy requirements as candidates for funding.
 
The Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) requests pre-proposals responding to the following topics:
  • Innovative Technology Transfer Approaches
  • Long Term Management of Contaminated Aquatic Sediments
  • Management of Contaminated Groundwater
  • Detection, Classification, and Remediation of Military Munitions in Underwater Environments
  • Department of Defense (DoD) Installation Infrastructure Risk Exposure and Resilience Decision Support Tools
  • Demonstration/Validation of Fluorine-Free Aqueous Film Forming Foam
  • Energy Efficiency Technology Demonstrations Integrated with Utility Energy Services Contracts (UESC)
  • Effective Use of Utility and Facility Data to Improve the Management, Operation and Maintenance of Facilities
  • Large Scale Energy Storage and Microgrids
Office of Naval Research (ONR)
Special Program Announcement for 2018 ONR Research Opportunity: "CLAWS"
OSP Deadline: March 9, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: March 16, 2018
Award Amount: Awards under both technology areas will consist of a 6-12 month base effort with funding ranging from $500,000-$1M, plus a 2-3 year option period.
 
This announcement describes a research thrust, entitled "CLAWS," to be launched under the N00014-18-S-B001, Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology which can be found at https://www.onr.navy.mil/Contracts-Grants/Funding-Opportunities/Broad-Agency-Announcements. The research opportunity described in this announcement specifically falls under numbered paragraph A of the Ocean Battlespace Sensing S&T Department (Code 32).
 
The CLAWS Innovative Naval Prototype (INP) effort will develop autonomy and supporting technologies required to enable the survivability of Large and Extra Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (L&XL UUV) to complete functional assignments. In accordance with the Navy's UUV Family of Systems, Large UUVs are defined as vehicles greater than 21in and less than 84in diameter, Extra Large UUVs are diameter larger than 84". The goals of this effort will be focused on vehicle autonomy for awareness, decision making, and validation of the autonomous behaviors. The L&XL UUVs will enable the extension of Navy platforms sensing capability and oceanographic collections. The creation of these technologies and behaviors will fill critical warfighting gaps at both the strategic and tactical levels. The technology areas specific to this effort that have been identified as critical to achieving these goals are 1) Autonomy and Sensing Technologies and 2) Autonomy Validation.
 
ONR plans to fund three to five individual awards for each technical topic area.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Ocean of Things
OSP Deadline: March 16, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: March 23, 2018; however, proposals received after this deadline may be received and evaluated up to six months (180 days) from date of posting on FedBizOpps (which was December 19, 2017). Proposers are warned that the likelihood of available funding is greatly reduced for proposals submitted after the initial closing date deadline.
Award Amount: The amount of resources made available under this BAA will
depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds.
 
The Ocean of Things program is an opportunity to provide affordable ocean sensing at large scales and high resolution. Improved maritime analysis provides detailed understanding of the ocean environment, informs regulatory commitments to protect natural resources, and enables the military to operate more effectively on the high seas.
 
DARPA is soliciting innovative proposals for Phase 1 of a two-phase effort in the following technical areas (separate proposals for TA 1 and TA 2 are required):
  1. Design, development, and manufacture of low-cost, persistent maritime floats that sense and report relevant data from the physical and operational environment;
  2. Development of analytical techniques to process float data and produce mission products (i.e., vessel track reports) from float declarations.
Phase 1 consists of an initial design effort and proof-of-concept sea test while Phase 2 refines those designs and culminates with an operational sea test demonstration.
 
Multiple awards are anticipated for the design and production of float hardware. Multiple awards are also anticipated for the data analytics effort. DARPA intends to make a total of $37M available for this program over two phases.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge
OSP Deadline: March 16, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: March 23, 2018; however, proposals received after this deadline may be received and evaluated up to 12 months (365 days) from the date of posting (1/25/2018) of the original BAA on FedBizOpps. Proposers are warned that the likelihood of available funding is greatly reduced for proposals submitted after the initial closing date deadline.
Award Amount: In Track A, up to 6 teams will be funded at a level of up to $1.5M/team during each of three phases. In Track C, up to 8 teams will be funded at a level up to $250,000/team during each of three phases. Prizes are also offered (see below).

The goal of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge is to discover innovations that enable integrated and rapid mapping, navigation, and search of complex environments. The Challenge aims to bring together multi-disciplinary teams and industries across disparate fields to establish a broader research community and develop innovative leap-ahead capabilities. Teams participating in the challenge will be tasked with designing and developing systems that address the challenges of subterranean environments across three subdomains: human-made tunnel systems, urban and municipal underground infrastructure, and natural cave networks.
 
Competitors may enter the DARPA Subterranean Challenge via one of the following four distinct tracks. The Challenge is organized into two competitions (Systems and Virtual), each with two tracks for DARPA-funded and self-funded competitors:
  • Track A/DARPA-funded/Systems Competition: Must submit a proposal to this BAA to be considered. Selected Systems teams will receive a contract award. They must participate in Systems Circuit Events to be considered for the next phase of funding.
  • Track B/Self-funded/Systems Competition: Should not submit a proposal to this BAA. Systems teams that are self-funded will be required to qualify to compete in any of the Systems Circuits and Final Event.
  • Track C/DARPA-funded/Virtual Competition: Must submit a proposal to this BAA to be considered. Selected Virtual teams will receive a contract award. They must participate in Virtual Circuit Events to be considered for the next phases of funding.
  • Track D/Self-funded/Virtual Competition: Should not submit a proposal to this BAA. Virtual teams that are self-funded will be required to qualify to compete in any of the three Virtual Circuits and Final Event.
Multiple awards are anticipated. Approximately $40M total is expected to be awarded under this project. It is anticipated that funding will be allocated as follows: Track A - Up to $30M; Track C - Up to $6M; Prizes - Approximately $4M. The following prizes are also offered:
  • Circuit Events: Self-funded teams in Track B and Track D will compete for monetary prizes to be announced at the Challenge Kickoff. DARPA-funded teams from Track A and Track C are not eligible for these prizes.
  • Systems Final Event: Teams in Track A and Track B will compete for monetary prizes, anticipated to be approximately $2M.
  • Virtual Final Event: Teams in Track C and Track D will compete for monetary prizes, anticipated to be approximately $750,000.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Millimeter-Wave Digital Arrays (MIDAS)
OSP Deadline: March 19, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: March 26, 2018; however, proposals
received after this deadline may be submitted and evaluated up to five months (150 days) from date of posting on FedBizOpps (which was January 23, 2018). Proposers are warned that the likelihood of available funding is greatly reduced for proposals submitted after the initial closing date deadline.
Award Amount:  The amount of resources made available under this BAA will
depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds.
 
DARPA seeks innovative proposals for the development of element-level digital beamforming array technology at millimeter wave frequencies. The primary goal of the program is to develop and demonstrate a tile building block sub-array (>16 elements) that supports scaling to large arrays (100's-10,000+) in the 18-50 GHz band. It is expected that this will be enabling hardware for multi-function, multi-beam phased array applications and emerging massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) techniques in communication and sensing.
 
The MIDAS program will focus on the following three Technical Areas:
  • Technical Area 1: Wideband Millimeter Wave Digital Tiles
  • Technical Area 2: Wideband Millimeter Wave Apertures
  • Technical Area 3: Millimeter Wave Array Fundamentals
It is anticipated that $64.5M of total funding will be awarded across all technical areas, approximately partitioned as follows:
  • $30-40M for Technical Area 1 (TA1), two phases, 36 months, 6.3 funding;
  • $20-30M for Technical Area 2 (TA2), three phases, 48 months, 6.3 funding.
  • <$5M for Technical Area 3 (TA3), two phases, 36 months, 6.1/6.2 funding.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
PREventing EMerging Pathogenic Threats (PREEMPT)
OSP Deadline: March 20, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: March 27, 2018
Award Amount:  The amount of resources made available under this BAA will
depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. DARPA anticipates that the PREEMPT program will provide up to three and a half years of funding for research and development to be performed over Phase I (base) and II (option) periods of 24 and 18 months, respectively.
 
DARPA is soliciting innovative proposals for research to develop new tools and models to quantify the likelihood of a virus to jump from an animal host into humans, and to develop and validate new scalable technologies to target potential human-capable viral pathogens in wild reservoirs and/or mosquito vectors to prevent transmission to humans.
 
PREEMPT research objectives are structured along two Technical Areas (TAs). Both Technical Areas must be performed in parallel by vertically integrated, interdisciplinary teams. Proposers must present a plan to address both Technical Areas and meet key milestone decision points that occur at the end of year 2.
  1. TA1: Develop and validate integrated, multiscale models that quantify the likelihood a human-capable virus will emerge from an animal reservoir residing in a "hot spot" geographic region.
  2. TA2: Develop scalable approaches that target and suppress the animal virus in its reservoir(s) and/or vector(s), to reduce the likelihood of virus transmission into humans.
Multiple awards are anticipated.
Office of Naval Research (ONR)
Special Program Announcement for 2018 Office of Naval Research Basic Research Opportunity: "Advancing Artificial Intelligence for the Naval Domain"
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (strongly encouraged): March 22, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: May 11, 2018
Award Amount:  Up to $500,000/year for 4 years
 
This announcement describes a research thrust entitled "Advancing Artificial Intelligence for the Naval Domain" to be launched under the Fiscal Year (FY) 18 Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology .
 
ONR is specifically interested in the following Topic Areas:
  1. Integration of Domain Knowledge and Machine Learning
  2. Artificial Intelligence in support of Collaborative Complex Decision-Making
  3. Decentralized Perception and Planning in Dynamic Environments
Multiple awards are anticipated under each Topic Area.
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
Defense Enterprise Science Initiative (DESI)
OSP Deadline: March 23, 2018 [UPDATED DEADLINE]
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: March 30, 2018 [UPDATED DEADLINE]
Award Amount: $750,000 per year for 2 years (the university partner must receive at least 50% of total funding requested)
 
The Department of Defense (DoD) Defense Enterprise Science Initiative (DESI) is a pilot program that supports use-inspired basic research performed by university-industry teams. DESI incentivizes use-inspired basic research projects, defined as a scientific study or experiment directed toward increasing fundamental knowledge and understanding in the context of end-use applications. Projects funded in the program bring together industry and university teams with the aim of discovering completely new solutions to challenging defense and national security problems, and using that knowledge to influence existing or new acquisition programs. DESI-funded projects also aim to accelerate the impact of basic research results on defense capabilities.
 
Industry's initial role in a DESI project is to provide a national security context for the defense challenge, and to collaborate with the university research team throughout the project. The university's role is to invent or discover knowledge that could be leveraged for completely new solutions to the defense challenge. As a follow-on to research conducted with DESI funding, the industry partner is expected to further develop the project's results into new capabilities that may be offered to DoD for future acquisition considerations.
 
The FY 2018 DESI BAA program seeks proposals addressing the recommended topics:
  • Topic 1: Power Beaming
  • Topic 2: Highly-maneuverable autonomous UAV
  • Topic 3: Soft Active Composites with Intrinsic Sensing, Actuation, and Control
  • Topic 4: Metamaterial-based Antennas
  • Alternate Topics Encouraged
Approximately $6 million in total funding will be made available for this program to fund approximately four awards.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Driven and Nonequilibrium Quantum Systems (DRINQS)
OSP Deadline: March 26, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: April 2, 2018
Award Amount:  The level of funding for individual awards made under this BAA will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. DRINQS is a 42-month program divided into two phases: Phase I (18-month duration) and Phase II (24-month duration).
 
The Defense Sciences Office at DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of driven and non-equilibrium quantum systems. The DRINQS program aims to demonstrate that the gains in coherence times that can be achieved in such systems can be exploited to improve the capabilities of quantum sensors and devices of importance to national security.
 
The program has three Technical Areas (TAs) that will explore: 1) driven spin systems; 2) driven new correlated phases; and 3) other driven systems that do not fit in the other two areas. Each proposal should address a single TA. Addressing all program requirements, metrics, and milestones in a TA is expected to require a collaborative team of theoretical and experimental physicists, materials scientists and/or chemists, depending on the underlying material system and approach.
 
Multiple awards are anticipated.
Office of Naval Research (ONR)
Enhanced Superconductors for Future Naval Applications
OSP Deadline: April 3, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: April 10, 2018
Award Amount: ONR plans to fund up to four awards with an approximate value of up to $150,000 per year, using research funds. However, lower and higher cost proposals will be considered. The period of performance for projects may be from 24 to 36 months.
 
This announcement describes a research thrust entitled "Enhanced Superconductors for Future Naval Applications" to be launched under the Fiscal Year (FY) 18 Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology . The research opportunity described in this announcement falls under the following section of the BAA: Appendix 1 "Program Description," Section IV, entitled "Sea Warfare and Weapons Department (Code 33)," specific thrusts and focused research areas: Paragraph A. "Ship Systems and Engineering Research," subparagraph 3, entitled "Electrical and Thermal Systems"; and Paragraph D. entitled, "Naval Energy Resiliency and Sustainability."
 
ONR is interested in receiving white papers and proposals in support of advancing high temperature superconducting wire technology for future naval applications. The overall objective of this program is to advance the state of art characteristics of high temperature superconductors to support applications demanding power delivery, pulsed current delivery, AC and DC magnetic fields, and magnetic energy storage. Interested parties are welcome to propose against one or more of the following topics:
  • Topic Area 1: Superconducting Materials
  • Topic Area 2: Superconducting Tape Processing and Modification
  • Topic Area 3: Superconductors for Novel Applications
  • Topic Area 4: Superconducting State Protections

DoDExtraDev
Department of the Army - USAMRAA
U.S. Special Operations Command Broad Agency Announcement for Extramural Biomedical Research and Development
OSP Deadline: April 6, 2018 
Sponsor Deadline for Pre-Proposals: April 14, 2018
Award Amount: A budget should be commensurate with the nature and complexity of the proposed research.    
 
Special Operations Forces (SOF) medical personnel place a premium on medical equipment that is small, lightweight, ruggedized, modular, multi-use, and designed for operation in extreme environments. The equipment should be easy to use, require minimum maintenance, and have low power consumption. Drugs and biologics should not require refrigeration or other special handling. All materiel and related techniques should be simple and effective. Research projects may apply existing scientific and technical knowledge for which concept and/or patient care efficacy have already been demonstrated to meet SOF requirements. The following are SOF's Research Areas of Interest (RAIs):
  1. Medical Simulation and Training Technologies;
  2. Damage Control Resuscitation;
  3. Prolonged Field Care (PFC);
  4. Portable Lab Assays and Diagnostics;
  5. Force Health Protection and Environmental Medicine;
  6. Canine Medicine; and
  7. Human Operational Performance.
Research and development funded through this BAA are intended and expected to benefit and inform both military and civilian medical practice and knowledge. It is estimated that approximately $3 million is available for this BAA.

Research Associateship Programs
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadlines: May 1, 2018; August 1, 2018
Award Amount: Awards include stipends (ranging from $42,000-$80,000), health insurance, professional travel and relocation. Award durations vary by program.
 
The National Research Council (NRC) administers competitive graduate, postdoctoral and senior research awards on behalf of 26 U.S. federal research agencies and affiliated institutions with facilities at over 100 locations throughout the U.S. and abroad. Awardees have the opportunity to conduct independent research in an area compatible with the interests of the sponsoring laboratory; devote full-time effort to research and publication; access the excellent and often unique facilities of the federal research enterprise; and collaborate with leading scientists and engineers at the sponsoring laboratories. Disciplines include Chemistry; Earth, Atmospheric and Space Sciences; Engineering, Applied Science, and Mathematics; Life Sciences; and Physics.
 
Find research opportunities that match your interests by exploring this website: www.nationalacademies.org/rap . Contact prospective Research Adviser(s) and host lab(s) to discuss your interests and then you may apply online using the WebRAP electronic application system. Prospective applicants should carefully read the details and eligibility of the program to which they are applying. Some laboratories have citizenship restrictions (open only to U.S. citizens and permanent residents), and some laboratories have Research Opportunities that are not open to senior applicants (more than 5 years beyond the Ph.D.). In addition, applicants should note application deadlines, as not all laboratories participate in all reviews.
Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, Pacific (SSC Pacific)
C4ISR, Information Operations and Information Technology System Research
OSP Deadline: May 7, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers: May 14, 2018
Award Amount: The amount of resources made available under this BAA will depend on the quality of the submissions received and the availability of funds.
 
Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, Pacific (SSC Pacific), is soliciting proposals for research in areas relating to the advancement of Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities, enabling technologies for Information Operations and Cyber Operations, and Information Technology systems. Proposed research should investigate unique and innovative approaches for defining and developing next generation integratable C4ISR capabilities and command suites.
 
Technical topics of interest include:
  1. General C4ISR
  2. Command and Control
  3. Communications
  4. Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance
  5. Unmanned Vehicles
  6. Information Operations/Cyber Operations
  7. Ubiquitous Communications and Computing Environment
  8. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Research
  9. Advanced Power and Energy Production and Efficient Use
Multiple awards are anticipated.
Office of Naval Research (ONR)
FY18 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Navy and Marine Corps Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM), Education and Workforce Program
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Window for White Papers (required): April 2-July 31, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Invited Full Proposals: September 28, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $250,000 per year, with one-year option periods, for up to 3 years
 
The ONR seeks a broad range of applications for augmenting existing or developing innovative solutions that directly maintain, or cultivate a diverse, world-class STEM workforce in order to maintain the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps' technological superiority. The goal of any proposed effort must provide solutions that will establish and maintain pathways of diverse U.S. citizens who are interested in uniformed or civilian DoN (or Navy and Marine Corps) STEM workforce opportunities. As the capacity of the DoN Science and Technology (S&T) workforce is interconnected with the basic research enterprise and STEM education system, ONR recognizes the need to support efforts that can jointly improve STEM student outcomes and align educational efforts with Naval S&T current and future workforce needs. This announcement explicitly encourages projects that improve the capacity of education systems and communities to create impactful STEM educational experiences for students and workers. Submissions are encouraged to consider including active learning approaches and incorporating 21st century skill development. Projects must aim to increase student and worker engagement in STEM and enhance people with needed Naval STEM capabilities. ONR encourages applications to utilize current STEM educational research for informing project design and advancing our understanding of how and why people choose STEM careers and opportunities of naval relevance.
 
While this announcement is relevant for any stage of the STEM educational system, funding efforts will be targeted primarily toward projects addressing the below communities or any combination of these communities:
  • Secondary education communities;
  • Post-Secondary communities;
  • Informal science communities;
  • Current naval STEM workforce communities.
ONR intends to award approximately 25 awards for an estimated total value of $6,250,000, subject to the availability of funds.
U.S. Army Communications, Electronics, Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC)
Space and Terrestrial Communications Directorate (S&TCD) Broad Agency Announcement
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Varies by Topic Area
Award Amount: The award amount should be commensurate with the scope of the proposed work. It is anticipated that proposals submitted in response to this BAA will range from approximately 1 man-year of effort, for study/analysis type work with limited data and no hardware/software deliverables, and to up to 5 man-years of effort, for component developments, techniques, developments/demonstrations with breadboards/brassboards with significant data and substantial hardware/software deliverables.
 
The Space and Terrestrial Communications Directorate (S&TCD) is part of the Communications, Electronic Research Development Engineering Command (CERDEC). There are six Program Divisions: Cyber Security and Information Assurance (CSIA), Satellite Communications Systems (SATCOM), Systems Engineering, Architecture, Modeling and Simulation (SEAMS), Radio Frequency Communications (RFC), Tactical Communications (TC), Operations (OPS). Each Division has a specific mission area of responsibility in support of the Army's need for the most modern strategic and tactical communication technologies.
 
This BAA lists the following topic areas of interest: 
  • Topic Number: S0801 - Antennas and Antenna Technologies for Tactical Communications
  • Topic Number: S0802 - Spectrum Management for Tactical and Strategic Military Communications
  • Topic Number: S0804 - Power Amplifier
  • Topic Number: S0805 - Advanced Technologies in Network Operations on the Battlefield
  • Topic Number: S0808 - Tactical Defensive Cyber Operations (DCO)
  • Topic Number: S0809 - Airborne Line of Sight (LOS) and Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) Range Extension and Reachback Communications On-the-Halt and On-the-Move
  • Topic Number: S0810 - Tactical Satellite Communications On-the-Move (SOTM) Research
  • Topic Number: S0811 - Advanced Satellite System Control Capabilities
  • Topic Number: S0812 - Advanced Technologies for Fixed and Transportable Satellite Earth Terminals
  • Topic Number: S0813 - Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) for the Tactical Army
  • Topic Number: S0814 - Systems Engineering, Architecture, Modeling & Simulation (SEAMS)
  • Topic Number: S0815 - Ubiquitous Wireless Mobile Communications Concepts and Technologies
  • Topic Number: S0816 - Reduced Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) Software Defined Radios (SDR's)
  • Topic Number: S0817 - Advanced Algorithms and Techniques for Ad Hoc Network Design
  • Topic Number: S0821 - Expert Systems/Knowledge Base Engineering
  • Topic Number: S0824 - Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) Technologies for Tactical Communications and Electronic Warfare
  • Topic Number: S0825 - Radio Frequency Device Convergence
  • Topic Number: S0826 - Radio Frequency Compatibility and Interference Cancellation
  • Topic Number: S1701 - Software Defined Networking
  • Topic Number: S1702 - Advanced Information Sciences and Networks
 DoD_Other

Other DoD Opportunities:

I f you are interested in DoD funding opportunities, please note:
The  Defense Innovation Marketplace  is a centralized source for Department of Defense science and technology (S&T) planning, acquisition resources, funding, and financial information. 
 

U.S. Department of Energy
FY2018 Research Opportunities in Accelerator Stewardship
Pre-Application Deadline (required): March 13, 2018 by 5:00PM
OSP Deadline: April 19, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 26, 2018 by 5:00PM
Award Amount: No specified limit for Tracks 1 and 2; $75,000-$300,000 for Track 3. It is anticipated that approximately $3,000,000 will be available for all Accelerator R&D Stewardship new and renewal awards in FY 2018
 
The mission of the Accelerator Stewardship program is to support fundamental accelerator science and technology development of relevance to many fields beyond HEP, and to disseminate accelerator knowledge and training to the broad community of accelerator users and providers. This call for applications is focused on three distinct activities: (1) applied research that is focused on developing a prototype in response to a specific technical challenge, (2) basic research that broadly impacts many accelerator applications, and (3) facilitating access to accelerator R&D capabilities at the Office of Science National Laboratories for academic research.
 
This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is only for opportunities within the Accelerator Research & Development (R&D) Stewardship mission, and that there is a separate Funding Opportunity Announcement for research and development within the objectives of the High Energy Physics (HEP) program. This Accelerator Stewardship FOA is for R&D activities that may impact HEP, but which predominantly impact other non-HEP applications.


DOE_SSAA 

Stewardship Science Academic Alliances (SSAA) 

OSP Deadline: March 19, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: March 26, 2018

Award Amount: $50,000-$300,000 per year for 3 years
 
The Stewardship Science Academic Alliances (SSAA) Program was developed to support state-of-the-art research at U.S. academic institutions in areas of fundamental physical science and technology of relevance to the Stockpile Stewardship Program mission, with a focus on those areas not supported by other federal agencies.
 
The objectives of the SSAA Program are to:
  • Support the U.S. scientific community by funding research projects at universities that conduct fundamental science and technology research that is of relevance to Stockpile Stewardship;
  • Provide opportunities for intellectual challenge and collaboration by promoting scientific interactions between the academic community and scientists at the DOE/NNSA laboratories; and
  • Develop and maintain a long-term recruiting pipeline to the DOE/NNSA laboratories by training and educating the next generation of scientists in the fundamental research of relevance to Stockpile Stewardship and thereby increasing the visibility of the DOE/NNSA scientific activities to the U.S. academic communities.
The DOE/NNSA will consider applications for university-led research in one or more of the fundamental areas of physical sciences outlined below:
  • Topic Research Area # 1: Properties of Materials under Extreme Conditions and/or Hydrodynamics Research proposals are solicited in the area of fundamental properties and response of materials under extreme conditions and/or hydrodynamics (condensed matter physics and materials science, and fluid dynamics).
  • Topic Research Area # 2: Low Energy Nuclear Science Research proposals are solicited in the area of low energy nuclear science.
  • Topic Research Area # 3: Radiochemistry Research proposals are solicited in the area of radiochemistry with an emphasis on studies of the heavier elements and the actinides.
Innovative Technology Development to Enhance Fossil Power System Operability, Reliability, and Economic Performance
OSP Deadline: March 29, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 5, 2018
Award Amount: $500,000 maximum for Area of Interest 1; $2,500,000 maximum for Area of Interest 2. Cost share of at least 20% is required.
 
Innovations in the solicited areas are supported by the National Energy Technology Laboratory's Crosscutting Research Program, which aims to bridge the gap between the basic sciences and applied research as it relates to advanced energy systems that utilize domestic resources. Long-range transitional research is needed to support the identification and growth of novel concepts that will lead to scientific breakthroughs and early adoption of innovative concepts for power generation. Goals for this research include enabling, improving, and protecting power systems through the application of applied novel concepts of the key technologies identified under the Crosscutting Research Program.
 
The FOA has two Areas of Interest (AOI) as follows:
 
AOI 1: Sensors & Controls Technology Development for Cybersecure Fossil Power (Paper Study): Applications are requested for comprehensive analyses of potential approaches to reduce cybersecurity risks associated with the deployment of distributed sensors and advanced controls. Studies should target fault-tolerant approaches that address the needs of existing coal-based power plant technology as well as the more connected plants of the future. Consideration should be given to proactive and predictive security measures. Analyses should also address the technology development process for sensors with extreme environment capability that are cybersecure. Technologies, frameworks, and best practices developed for other operational environments - for example, with funding support from the DOE Office of Electricity Transmission and Energy Delivery - and particularly the transmission and distribution electricity infrastructure, should be evaluated for applicability in the fossil power generation context. A detailed survey of technical and non-technical gaps for coal-based power generation should be included.
 
AOI 2: Computational Tools to Support Advanced Manufacturing of Fossil Energy Technologies: Novel computational approaches are sought to predict the structure and properties of Extreme Environment Material (EEM) for fossil energy applications produced by advanced manufacturing. The proposed approach should address the capabilities of modeling embedded microstructures, component geometry, multi-scale behaviors, and multi-material components, because such variations are now physically realizable and widely used. High-temperature mechanical properties consistent with component application service conditions (e.g. high-temperature, dynamic loading) should be included in the modeling methodology. Modeling methodologies capable of predicting corrosion and oxidation properties based on the manufacturing process are also of interest.
Support of Fossil Energy Research at United States Colleges and Universities Including University Coal Research (UCR) and Research by Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Other Minority Institutions (HBCU/OMI)
OSP Deadline: April 2, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 9, 2018 by 8:00PM
Award Amount: Award size not specified. The largest award made under the FY15 version of this FOA received no more than $4,000,000 in annual funding. Project durations may range from 6 months to 5 years.
 
This Funding Opportunity Announcement is for the solicitation of applications from United States Colleges and Universities for Fossil Energy Research. It encompasses two distinct programs with their own dedicated funding, requirements, and restricted eligibility: the University Coal Research (UCR) Program; and the Historically Black Colleges & Universities and Other Minority Institutions (HBCU/OMI) Program. Both programs seek to educate the next generation of scientists and engineers while advancing the frontiers of fossil energy science and technology. 
 
The FOA has two Areas of Interest (AOI) as follows:
 
AOI 1: Coal Contaminant Partitioning in Power Plant Wastewater : Studies are desired that evaluate the overall fate of coal contaminants from various control methods that have been implemented or are being considered with the intent of optimizing the ultimate fate of contaminants (e.g., selenium) while minimizing the cost and treatment energy required. Plant owner/operator engagement is required.
 
AOI 2: Automated Plant Component Inspection, Analysis, and Repair Enabled by Robotics: The research and development desired will make progress toward the integration of several technologies (e.g., automation, NDE, robotics, repair) for application in the fossil-based power generation context. Applicants will be asked to make progress toward any or all of the following sub-objectives:
  • Robotics-enabled inspection
  • Robotics-enabled repair
  • Automation of inspection data gathering and analysis

DOE_Other
Other DOE Opportunities


IARPA
Proposers' Day Notification for Molecular Analyzer for Efficient Gas-phase Low-power INterrogation (MAEGLIN) Phase 2
Registration Deadline: March 14, 2018
Conference Date: March 22, 2018
 
The Intelligence Advance Research Projects Activity (IARPA) will host a Proposers' Day Conference for the MAEGLIN Phase 2 program on March 22, 2018, in anticipation of the release of a new solicitation. The conference will be held from 8 am to 4 pm EST in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The purpose of the conference will be to provide information on MAEGLIN Phase 2 and the research problems the program aims to address, to address questions from potential proposers, and to provide a forum for potential proposers to present their capabilities for teaming opportunities. The Proposers' Day Conference does not constitute a formal solicitation for proposals or proposal abstracts. Conference attendance is voluntary and is not required to propose to future solicitations (if any) associated with this program. 
 
The MAEGLIN Phase 2 program intends to develop an integrated ultra-low-power chemical analysis system combining high dynamic range separation with absolute chemical identification for monitoring of explosives, narcotics, nuclear materials, and other chemicals. In Phase 2, MAEGLIN will focus on integrated prototype demonstration. The goals for Phase 2 include:
  • Integrated prototype device with ultra-low-power consumption.
  • High selectivity and sensitivity across a broad range of chemicals.
  • Effective operation in a real world environment over long time periods.
  • Small form factor, including power source.
MAEGLIN Phase 2 is a fully open solicitation, and prior involvement with MAEGLIN Phase 1 is not required. Collaborative efforts and teaming among potential performers will be encouraged. It is anticipated that teams will be multidisciplinary and may include expertise in: pre-concentrators and sorbents; aerosol concentration and separation; chromatography; spectrometry; ionization techniques; Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) device design and fabrication; microfluidics and computational fluid dynamics; spectral library development; chemical detection and clutter filter algorithms; miniature vacuum pump technology; low power electronics; and battery and fuel cell technology.
IARPA_other

Other IARPA Opportunities
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
NASA Fellowship Activity 2018
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Phase I Proposals: March 20, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Phase II Proposals: May 31, 2018
Award Amount: Each Fellowship is $50,000-$55,000 per year for three years (includes stipend, tuition offset and fees, Center-Based Research Experience (CBRE) allowance, health insurance allowance, faculty advisor allowance, and Fellow professional development allowance). NASA expects to select a minimum of 13 proposals for award.
 
Through this solicitation, NASA is strengthening involvement with higher education institutions to ensure that NASA can meet future workforce needs in STEM fields. Participation in NASA projects and research stimulates increasing numbers of students to continue their studies at all levels of the higher education continuum and to earn advanced degrees in these critical fields. The NASA Fellowship Activity opportunity is conducted in conjunction with the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) and the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD). All NASA investments in postdoctoral fellows are excluded from this announcement.
 
The NASA Fellowship Activity provides funding for fellowship candidates to perform graduate research at their respective campuses during the academic year under the guidance of their Faculty Adviser, who will serve as the Principal Investigator (PI) on the award. In addition to his or her Faculty Adviser, each selected fellow will be paired with a NASA Researcher (based on the proposal or the suggestion of a NASA supporting researcher), who will serve as the fellow's NASA Technical Adviser. Graduate research requires an educational collaboration between the fellow's faculty members and a NASA Technical Adviser.
 
To be eligible, the Fellowship candidate must be a U.S. citizen or naturalized citizen (permanent residents are not eligible) at the time of proposal submission.
Cooperative Agreement Notice: Dual Use Technology Development at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) - 2018
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Step-1 White Papers (required): May 2, 2018
Award Amount: MSFC resource contribution awards will range from $10,000 to $100,000, and must be matched or exceeded by Offeror contributions. Contributions can be cash, in-kind (non-cash) resources, or a combination of each. Project duration is up to 12 months.
 
NASA will award cooperative agreements for technology development partnerships with United States commercial businesses and/or colleges and universities with the goal of developing a technology to meet a specific NASA need at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), as well as those of the partner. This goal will be accomplished by selecting Offerors who will cooperatively share in the development cost of the technology that meets the specified NASA need.
 
MSFC has several technology development focus areas for this solicitation, including:
  • Innovative/Advanced Propulsion Systems
  • Advanced Manufacturing; Structures and Materials
  • Technologies Supporting Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS)
  • Technologies Supporting Spacecraft Systems
  • Technologies Enabling Science Research
  • Technologies Supporting Systems Engineering
For more information on the technology programs and capabilities at MSFC, please see the following link: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/capabilities/index.html.
 
NASA anticipates funding up to 10 pending acceptable proposals.
Unsolicited Proposals
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling through September 30, 2018
Award Amount: Proposed budget should be commensurate with the scope of the project.
 
NASA encourages the submission of unique and innovative proposals that will further the Agency's mission. While the vast majority of proposals are solicited, a small number of unsolicited proposals that cannot be submitted to those solicitations and yet are still relevant to NASA are reviewed and some are funded each year. Proposals should be submitted at least six months in advance of the desired starting date.
Before any effort is expended in preparing a proposal, potential proposers should:
  1. Review the current versions of the NASA Strategic Plan and documents from the specific directorate, office, or program for which the proposal is intended to determine if the work planned is sufficiently relevant to current goals to warrant a formal submission.
  2. Potential proposers must review current opportunities (e.g., at https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/solicitations/solicitations.do?method=init&stack=push) to determine if any solicitation already exists to which the potential project could be proposed.
  3. Potential proposers should review current awards (e.g., by doing key word searches at Research.gov, or at the NASA Shared Services Center (NSSC) grant status page, and the NASA Life and Physical Sciences Task Book) to learn what, if any, related work is already funded by NASA. Such preparation reduces the risk of redundancy, improves implementation, and sometimes results in collaboration.
After those three things have been done, the proposer may contact an appropriate NASA person to determine whether NASA has any interest in the type of work being proposed and if any funding is currently available.
Dual Use Technology Development Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN) 2018
OSP Deadline: Not required for Notices of Intent 
Sponsor Deadline for Notices of Intent (required): Rolling through September 30, 2018
Award Amount: The budget must be sufficient and reasonable to accomplish the project. The participating partner will contribute an equal value of resources to match the NASA funding for the project.
 
John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC) is the primary NASA rocket propulsion testing center. SSC tests items ranging from multi-engine stages to individual components of rocket engines. Propulsion test customers include NASA, the Department of Defense and the commercial space launch industry. SSC manages a large federal city that is home to over forty federal, state, university and industry entities. SSC manages a restricted airspace that is available for development, testing and operation of unmanned aerial vehicles. SSC engineering laboratories design and test electronics, sensors, algorithms and mechanical components. This CAN supports identification and implementation of cost-sharing partnerships to develop technology to meet a specific NASA need at SSC. This notice seeks responses from potential partners interested in entering into a Cooperative Agreement with NASA for the joint development of technologies to meet SSC needs.
 
SSC technology interests include, but are not limited to, the following:
  • Propulsion system test technology
  • Autonomous & intelligent systems
  • Advanced sensors & instruments
  • Image & signal processing
  • Energy harvesting
  • Innovative components & materials
  • Big data processing & analysis
  • Systems engineering & optimization
  • Computational modeling & simulation
  • Decision support tools & systems

NASAJohnsonSpace
Johnson Space Center:  Research Opportunities for ISS Utilization
Exploration Technology Demonstration and National Lab Utilization Enhancements
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to sponsor deadline
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (recommended): Rolling through October 31, 2019 (see solicitation for schedule of review cycles)
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: Rolling through December 31, 2019 (see solicitation for schedule of review cycles)
Award Amount: Details below
 
This announcement is for the development of experiment hardware with enhanced capabilities; modification of existing hardware to enable increased efficiencies (crew time, power, etc.);  development of tools that allow analyses of samples and specimens on orbit; enhanced ISS infrastructure capabilities (ex. communications or data processing); and specific technology demonstration projects. Submission of a white paper is recommended in advance of a full proposal.
 
Within the NASA International Space Station (ISS) Research Integration Office, the Technology and Science Research Office (TSRO) and Commercial Space Utilization Office (CSUO) act as "gateways" to the ISS. The Technology and Science Research Office serves as the gateway for NASA-funded technology demonstrations. The Commercial Space Utilization Office serves as the gateway for non-NASA government-funded investigations, as well as non-profit or commercially-funded investigations.
 
Proposed technology demonstrations submitted to TSRO should address at least one of the technology areas mentioned in the ISS Technology Demonstration Plans . In addition, NASA seeks technology demonstrations related to the following thrust areas: Space Suit CO2 Sensor and Experiment Housing for Space Biology Pathfinder Research on Orion EM-1 (please note that submissions for this second Thrust Area do not fit into a standard NRA Cycle).
 
NASA also seeks technological concepts via CSUO related to the National Lab Thrust Areas and to expand the onboard research and analytical capabilities. The general thrust areas are:
  • Innovative uses of the ISS or ISS hardware that leverage existing capabilities to stimulate both utilization of the ISS and economic development in the U.S.
  • Other improvements to existing ISS capabilities, including but not limited to infrastructure, in situ analytical tools, and communication/data transmittal, to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the technology demonstrations and science investigations performed on the ISS.
  • Unique partnering arrangements that leverage NASA's existing capabilities but increase the commercial participation in research and on board services. 
Funds are not currently available for awards under this NASA Research Announcement (NRA). The Government's ability to make award(s) is contingent upon the availability of appropriated funds from which payment can be made and the receipt of proposals that NASA determines acceptable for award under this NRA. Successful proposals will have launch and integration costs covered by NASA. 

OtherNASA
Other NASA Opportunities
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
FAS/SEAS Statement of Intent Deadline: March 5, 2018 by 5:00PM
Sponsor Deadline: May 31, 2018
Award Amount: $50,000-$600,000
Target Applicants: Groups of three or more PIs on active, distinct NIH research awards
 
The objective of the NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) Program is to make available to institutions expensive research instruments that can only be justified on a shared-use basis and that are needed for NIH-supported projects in basic, translational or clinical areas of biomedical and bio-behavioral research. The SIG Program provides funds to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, state-of-the-art, specialized, commercially available instrument or an integrated instrumentation system. An integrated instrumentation system is one in which the components, when used in conjunction with one another, perform a function that no single component could provide. The components must be dedicated to the system and not used independently.
 
While there is no restriction on the number of applications an institution can submit for these opportunities, there are restrictions on applications submitted for similar equipment from the same institution.  In order to determine if there are any overlapping requests within Harvard, potential applicants from FAS and SEAS are asked to submit a brief statement of intent to Erin Hale at [email protected] no later than March 5, 2018 . 
 
The statement of intent should include the following:
  • PI Name
  • Brief description of the proposed instrument (one brief paragraph)
  • Major User group (three or more investigators who are Program Director(s)/Principal Investigator(s) on three distinct active NIH research grants)
  • Proposed location of the instrument, if funded

NIH_HighEnd
FAS/SEAS Statement of Intent Deadline: March 5, 2018 by 5:00PM
Sponsor Deadline: May 31, 2018
Award Amount: $600,001-$2,000,000
Target Applicants: Groups of three or more PIs on active, distinct NIH research awards
 
The Objective of the High End Instrumentation Program is to make available to institutions expensive research instruments that can only be justified on a shared-use basis and that are needed for NIH-supported projects in basic, translational or clinical areas of biomedical/behavioral research. The HEI Program provides funds to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, specialized, commercially available instrument or an integrated instrumentation system. An integrated instrumentation system is one in which the components, when used in conjunction with one another, perform a function that no single component could provide. The components must be dedicated to the system and not used independently.
 
While there is no restriction on the number of applications an institution can submit for these opportunities, there are restrictions on applications submitted for similar equipment from the same institution. In order to determine if there are any overlapping requests within Harvard, potential applicants from FAS and SEAS are asked to submit a brief statement of intent to Erin Hale at [email protected] no later than March 5, 2018 . 
 
The statement of intent should include the following:
  • PI Name
  • Brief description of the proposed instrument (one brief paragraph)
  • Major User group (three or more investigators who are Program Director(s)/Principal Investigator(s) on three distinct active NIH research grants)
  • Proposed location of the instrument, if funded
FAS/SEAS Statement of Intent Deadline: March 5, 2018 by 5:00PM
Sponsor Deadline: May 31, 2018
Award Amount: $50,000-$750,000
 
The Shared Instrumentation for Animal Research (SIFAR) Grant Program encourages applications from groups of NIH-funded investigators to purchase or upgrade scientific instruments necessary to carry out animal experiments in all areas of biomedical research supported by the NIH. Applicants may request clusters of commercially available instruments configured as specialized integrated systems or as series of instruments to support a thematic well-defined area of research using animals or related materials. Priority will be given to uniquely configured systems to support innovative and potentially transformative investigations. This program supports requests for state-of-the art commercially available technologies needed for NIH-funded research using any vertebrate and invertebrate animal species. This program does not support requests for single instruments. 
 
While there is no restriction on the number of applications an institution can submit for these opportunities, there are restrictions on applications submitted for similar equipment from the same institution. In order to determine if there are any overlapping requests within Harvard, potential applicants from FAS and SEAS are asked to submit a brief statement of intent to Erin Hale at [email protected] no later than March 5, 2018. 
 
The statement of intent should include the following:
  • PI Name
  • Brief description of the proposed instrument (one brief paragraph)
  • Major User group (three or more investigators who are Program Director(s)/Principal Investigator(s) on three distinct active NIH research grants)
  • Proposed location of the instrument, if funded

OtherNIHOpps
 
National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation: Dear Colleague Letters
Stimulating Educational Neuroscientific Research through the Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems (NCS) Program
Letter of Intent Deadline (required for Foundations): February 20, 2018
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of a full proposal
Sponsor Deadline: April 17, 2018 (Foundations); Rolling (Conference and EAGER)
Award Amount: Varies by award type
 
The   Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems (NCS) program  supports projects that provide new empirical insights, expand theoretical understanding, facilitate development of computational and bioengineered systems, promote new educational approaches, and generate new hypotheses that connect physical, biological, and cognitive mechanisms. With this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), the National Science Foundation (NSF) seeks to stimulate work in educational neuroscience in the NCS program through foundational grants, noting that advances in neural systems can have significant implications for research on education. As NCS is a basic research program, the output of proposed projects need not have a direct and immediate impact on practice. Rather, the short-term goal of projects should be to advance the research literature. A broader impact of the projects should be to help foster the growth of such a multidisciplinary community of researchers. NCS projects must endeavor to advance foundational knowledge in one or more of the following focus areas:
  1. Neuroengineering and Brain-Inspired Concepts and Designs;
  2. Individuality and Variation;
  3. Cognitive and Neural Processes in Realistic, Complex Environments; and
  4. Data-Intensive Neuroscience and Cognitive Science.
NSF is also interested in supporting capacity-building proposals through conference proposals and Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals. Conference and EAGER proposals may be submitted to NCS at any time throughout the year.
Rules of Life (RoL): Forecasting and Emergence in Living Systems (FELS)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to sponsor deadline
Sponsor Deadline: February 20, 2018 (EAGERs and RAISE proposals), June 1, 2018 (Conference proposals)
Award Amount: Varies
 
NSF seeks to highlight the importance of research that forecasts the direction and dynamics of change in living systems. The robustness and reproducibility of processes associated with the emergence of complex properties in biological systems suggests the existence of underlying general principles ("rules") across the spectrum of biological phenomena. Identification and application of these fundamental rules would be of high value to both the scientific community and the Nation. This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) describes an initial opportunity to identify areas where such rules may exist, to catalyze approaches toward their discovery, and to focus efforts on using these rules for prediction and design of useful biological systems. Activities supported via this DCL include Conferences, EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGERs), and Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (RAISE) grants to create opportunities for enabling predictive capability.
Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Supplemental Funding
OSP Deadline: March 23, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: March 30, 2018
Award Amount: $8,000 per student

NSF CISE invites grantees with active CISE awards to submit requests for Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Supplemental funding, following the guidelines in the NSF REU program solicitation. A student must be a US citizen or permanent resident of the US. The duration for new requests is typically one year.
Division of Chemistry's 2018 Supplemental Funding Requests for International Collaboration
OSP Deadline: March 26, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 2, 2018
Award Amount: Varies
 
The Division of Chemistry is inviting requests for supplemental funding from its existing awardees who may wish to add a new, or strengthen an existing, international dimension of their award when such collaboration advances the field of chemistry and enhances the U.S. investigator's own research and/or education objectives.   NSF's Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG)  Chapter VI.E.4, provides specific guidance on preparing a request for supplemental funding.   Principal Investigators supported by NSF Division of Chemistry awards are advised to consult with their NSF program director prior to submitting a supplemental funding request.
 
Supplemental funding requests for international collaboration should fully address these two criteria:
  • True intellectual collaboration with the foreign research partner; and
  • Benefit to the U.S. science/engineering community from expertise, facilities, or resources of the international collaborator.
Additionally, one or both of the following criteria may be described but are not required:
  • New international collaborations;
  • Active engagement of U.S. students and postdoctoral researchers at the foreign site.

NSFDCIncludes
Announcement of an Effort to Expand the NSF INCLUDES National Network
OSP Deadline: April  9, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 16, 2018
Award Amount: $300,000 for two years (EAGER); $250,000 for up to two years (Conference); less than 20% of the original award amount, with direct costs not to exceed $200,000 (Supplements) 
 
Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) is a comprehensive effort to enhance U.S. leadership in science and engineering discovery and innovation by proactively seeking and effectively developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) talent from all sectors and groups in our society. As one element of its multi-faceted approach to NSF INCLUDES, NSF is currently focusing on and identifying novel ways in which new and currently-funded NSF projects from across all NSF directorates can engage with the NSF INCLUDES National Network. We have called this process building "on-ramps" to the NSF INCLUDES National Network. To do this, we encourage the submission of funding requests for i) Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER), ii) Conferences and Workshops, and iii) Supplements to existing NSF-funded grants.
NSF Accepting Proposals Related to Hurricane Irma
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline: N/A
Award Amount: See details below
 
Through this Dear Colleague Letter, NSF encourages the submission of proposals that seek to address the challenges related to Hurricane Irma. NSF also will support fundamental science and engineering research projects whose results may enable our country to better prepare for, respond to, recover from, or mitigate future catastrophic events. Research proposals relating to a better fundamental understanding of the impacts of the storm (both physical, biological and societal), human aspects of natural disasters (including first responders and the general public), emergency response methods, and approaches that promise to reduce future damage also are welcome.

Multiple proposal mechanisms are available to conduct new research related to Hurricane Irma.
  • RAPID: Proposals focusing on projects with severe urgency with regard to availability of, or access to, data, facilities or specialized equipment, including quick-response research on natural disasters. RAPID proposal project descriptions are expected to be brief and may not exceed 5 pages, with a maximum request of $200K for one year, although many are much smaller.
  • EAGER: Proposals to conduct fundamental research representing exploratory work in its early stages on untested, but potentially transformative, research ideas or approaches. This research may be considered especially "high risk-high payoff" in the sense that it, for example, involves radically different approaches, applies new expertise, or engages novel disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives. EAGER proposal project descriptions are expected to be brief, and may not exceed 8 pages. Requests may be up to $300K and with a maximum award duration of two years.
  • Supplements to existing awards: Small amounts of supplemental funding to existing awards may be requested.
Proposals may be submitted at any time.

NSFDCD3SC
 
Successful D3SC proposals will emphasize new information that can be obtained from better utilization of data (including data from multiple laboratories, techniques, and/or chemical systems), and how this can lead to new research directions. Proposals that foster and strengthen interactions among chemists (especially experimental chemists) and data scientists to advance research goals are strongly encouraged. The most competitive proposals will provide detailed discussion of specific data-enabled approaches to be used, the significant chemical problem to be studied, new fundamental chemical knowledge to be gained, as well as the broader relevance of the proposed activities to other areas of chemical research. Proposal elements that consider error and uncertainty analysis, record and store appropriate metadata, and determine the robustness and reliability of data are encouraged. Examples of possible topics include (but are not limited to) using tools of data visualization, data mining, machine learning (including emerging approaches such as deep learning and active learning), or other data analysis approaches to: 
  • Accelerate the discovery of more efficient or selective catalysts; 
  • Advance the design of new chemical species and/or synthetic reactions, and forecast improved synthetic conditions; 
  • Map the mechanisms by which chemicals interact and transform, both covalently and noncovalently, and predict structure/property relations based on existing chemical datasets; 
  • Discover principles of multiscale organization underlying emergent chemical phenomena in macromolecular systems; 
  • Enable real-time feedback loops between chemical data collection and processing for rapid identification and correlation of key events during chemical measurements; 
  • Harness chemistry's rich, diverse but distributed datasets and identify novel ways of sharing and utilizing chemical data derived from multiple instruments, datatypes, and locations; 
  • Develop innovative approaches for integrating, correlating, and analyzing chemical simulation or measurement data to provide new chemical insights.

NSFDCUpdatedPrograms
 
  • Biophotonics: This program's scope remains unchanged.
  • Cellular and Biochemical Engineering (CBE): The name change for this program, formerly Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering (BBE), indicates the addition of the characterization and engineering of therapeutic live cells to the program. Another significant revision is that all proposals are required to include a section on the impact of proposed research on the associated biomanufacturing process.
  • Disability and Rehabilitation Engineering (DARE): This program has been refocused from the previous General and Age Related Disabilities Engineering (GARDE) program. The new scope retains the primary emphasis on engineering advancements that will positively impact the lives of individuals with disabilities while expanding the focus to include fundamental research in two areas: human movement and injury mechanisms. Fundamental research in these focus areas is linked directly to both minimizing disabilities and improving outcomes for individuals with disabilities.
  • Engineering of Biomedical Systems (EBMS): This program has been refocused from the previous Biomedical Engineering (BME) program. The primary shift in focus is to emphasize the engineering nature of research to be funded by EBMS, as compared to an application of existing technology. The targeted themes were removed to instead focus on the engineering process of studying biomedical systems, including the validation of hybrid system designs and models of physiological and pathophysiological systems.
  • Nano-Biosensing:  This program was revised to emphasize the importance of incorporating reproducibility of measurements and sensor performance, while decreasing error rate in the developed nano-biosensing systems.

National Science Foundation: Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (NSF: CISE)

CISE_Exped
NSF: CISE
Expeditions in Computing
OSP Deadline for Preliminary Proposals: April 18, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Preliminary Proposals: April 25, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 16, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $2,000,000 per year for five years
 
The far-reaching impact and rate of innovation in the computer and information science and engineering fields has been remarkable, generating economic prosperity and enhancing the quality of life for people throughout the world. The Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) has established 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 computer and information science and engineering for many years to come.

CISE_US-EU
NSF: CISE

US-EU Internet Core & Edge Technologies (ICE-T)
OSP Deadline: April 30, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: May 7, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $300,000 over 3 years (RCs); up to $100,000 over up to one year (RIs); up to $50,000 over up to 1 year with a fellowship duration of 2-6 months (RFs) 
 
NSF/CISE and the European Commission's (EC) Directorate General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) seek to enable US and European Union researchers to collaborate to address compelling research challenges in Next Generation Internet (NGI) and Advanced Wireless Networking (AWN). Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, software-defined infrastructures; network function virtualization; resource management in support of content delivery; open data architectures for shared, federated research infrastructures; advanced wireless technologies; and research software tools to support advanced wireless and smart city/community testbeds. This NSF solicitation is expected to align with the EC's Horizon 2020's Work Program for 2018-2020.
NSF's ICE-T program will support awards in three classes:
  • Research Collaboration (RC) awards support collaborative research partnerships, pairing investigators at US institutions with EC-funded ICT investigators at EU institutions (or EU investigators who are requesting funding separately from the EC), for periods of up to 3 years.
  • Research Collaboration Initiation (RI) awards support the establishment of entirely new collaborations, pairing investigators at US institutions with EC-funded investigators at EU institutions (or EU investigators who are requesting funding separately from the EC), to pursue preliminary research investigations for periods of up to 1 year.
  • Research Fellowships (RF) awards support graduate students at US institutions to travel to EU institutions to engage in in situ research collaborations with EC-funded investigators (or EU investigators who are requesting funding separately from the EC) for fellowship periods of 2-6 months, and an award duration of up to 1 year.

CISE_FMitF
NSF: CISE
Formal Methods in the Field (FMitF) 
OSP Deadline: May 1, 2018 
Sponsor Deadline: May 8, 2018 
Award Amount: Up to $1,000,000

The Formal Methods in the Field (FMitF) program aims to bring together researchers in formal methods with researchers in other areas of computer and information science and engineering to jointly develop rigorous and reproducible methodologies for designing and implementing correct-by-construction systems and applications with provable guarantees. FMitF encourages close collaboration between two groups of researchers. The first group consists of researchers in the area of formal methods, which is broadly defined as principled approaches based on mathematics and logic, including modeling, specification, design, program analysis, verification, synthesis, and programming language-based approaches. The second group consists of researchers in the "field," which is defined as a subset of areas within computer and information science and engineering that currently do not benefit from having established communities already developing and applying formal methods in their research. Each proposal must have at least one Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI with expertise in formal methods and at least one with expertise in one or more of these fields: computer networks, cyber-human systems, machine learning, and operating/distributed systems.
National Science Foundation: Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences (NSF: MPS)

MPS_CBMS
NSF: MPS
NSF-CBMS Regional Research Conferences in the Mathematical Sciences
OSP Deadline: April 20, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 27, 2018
Award Amount: E ach anticipated 1-year award will total approximately $35,000 including direct and indirect costs.
 
The NSF-CBMS Regional Research Conferences in the Mathematical Sciences are a series of five-day conferences each of which features a distinguished lecturer delivering ten lectures on a topic of important current research in one sharply focused area of the mathematical sciences. CBMS refers to the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences which publicizes the conferences and administers the resulting publications. Support is provided for about 30 participants at each conference. Proposals should address the unique characteristics of the NSF-CBMS conferences, outlined in the Program Description.
 MPS_RTG
NSF: MPS
Research Training Groups in the Mathematical Sciences (RTG)
OSP Deadline: May 29, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: June 5, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $500,000 per year for 3 to 5 years
 
The long-range goal of the Research Training Groups in the Mathematical Sciences (RTG) program is to strengthen the nation's scientific competitiveness by increasing the number of well-prepared U.S. citizens, nationals, and permanent residents who pursue careers in the mathematical sciences. The RTG program supports efforts to improve research training by involving undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral associates, and faculty members in structured research groups centered on a common research theme. Research groups supported by RTG must include vertically-integrated activities that span the entire spectrum of educational levels from undergraduates through postdoctoral associates.
 
OtherNSFMPS 
Other NSF: MPS Opportunities 

National Science Foundation: Directorate for Engineering (NSF: ENG)

NSF_ENG_CASISfluid
NSF: ENG 
NSF/CASIS Collaboration on Fluid Dynamics and Particulate and Multiphase Processes Research on the International Space Station to Benefit Life on Earth 
OSP Deadline: February 26, 2018 
Sponsor Deadline: March 5, 2018 
Award Amount: Up to $400,000 over up to 4 years
 
The Division of Chemical, Bioengineering and Environmental Transport (CBET) in the Engineering Directorate of the NSF is partnering with The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) to solicit research projects in the general field of fluid dynamics and particulate and multiphase processes that can utilize the International Space Station (ISS) National Lab to conduct research that will benefit life on Earth. NSF awards under this solicitation will provide PIs with support to conduct fundamental and translational research, to prepare experiments for on board the ISS, to collaborate with service providers as necessary, to provide preliminary analysis to conduct the experiment, to analyze and interpret data, and to disseminate results broadly. CASIS operations will assist grantees in translating ground-based experiments and technologies into an appropriate ISS certified hardware solution, where possible. All costs associated with the translation of the proposed experiments to experiments on board the ISS, including training of ISS crews, transporting equipment to the ISS, and conducting experiments aboard the ISS, will be supported by CASIS.

 

  NSF_ENG_CRISP20
NSF: ENG 
Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes 2.0 FY18 (CRISP 2.0) 
OSP Deadline: February 28, 2018 
Sponsor Deadline: March 7, 2018 
Award Amount: Type 1 Awards: Smaller-scale Projects that are 2-3 years in duration with a maximum total budget of $750,000; Type 2 Awards: Larger-scale projects that are 3-4 years in duration with a total budget ranging from $750,001 to 2 million.
 
The goals of the Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes 2.0 (CRISP 2.0) solicitation are to: (1) foster an interdisciplinary research community of engineers and social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) scientists who work synergistically together for innovation in the design and management of infrastructures as processes and services; (2) transform relevant fields by re-thinking Interdependent Critical Infrastructures (ICIs) as processes and services that may have complementary and/or substitutional roles with each other; (3) create innovations in ICIs that contribute directly and positively to people's quality of life, spur economic growth, and respond to both internal perturbations and external shocks, regardless of whether they are natural, technological or human-induced. These goals lead to the following specific objectives for this solicitation:
  • To generate new knowledge, approaches, and solutions to resilience and improve the capability of existing and future ICIs to respond to internal and external changes;
  • To create innovative, theoretical frameworks and multidisciplinary models of ICIs, processes and services, capable of modeling, monitoring, and predicting complex behaviors and outcomes in response to both internal and external shocks;
  • To develop integrative frameworks to understand interdependencies among ICIs and leverage them to enhance the processes and services that ICIs provide;
  • To study socioeconomic, cultural, political, legal, and psychological and other obstacles to improving ICIs and to identify strategies for overcoming these obstacles; and
  • To support the creation, curation, and use of publicly accessible data on infrastructure systems and processes, whether in the context of explanation, prediction or modeling.
Successful proposals are expected to study at least two infrastructures which are interdependent in the provision of one or more services, thereby contributing to a new interdisciplinary paradigm in research on ICIs. Proposals must broadly integrate engineering and social, behavioral and/or economic sciences. Therefore, proposals that do not have at least one social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) scientist and one engineer on the team will be returned without review. Additionally, PIs are also encouraged to incorporate complementary perspectives from other disciplines such as computing and data science, ecology, seismology, and statistics.
 
NSF:ENG
Other NSF: ENG Opportunities
National Science Foundation: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary

CI_Integrative
NSF: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary
Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems: Foundations and Core+ Supplements
Letter of Intent Deadline (required for Foundations): February 20, 2018
OSP Deadline: April 10, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 17, 2018
Award Amount: $500,000 to $1,000,000 for 2 to 4 years (Foundations);
supplemental funding up to 20% of an existing NSF award, not to exceed $200,000 (Core+ Supplements)
 
The complexities of brain and behavior pose fundamental questions in many areas of science and engineering, drawing intense interest across a broad spectrum of disciplinary perspectives while eluding explanation by any one of them. Rapid advances within and across disciplines are leading to an increasingly interwoven fabric of theories, models, empirical methods and findings, and educational approaches, opening new opportunities to understand complex aspects of neural and cognitive systems through integrative multidisciplinary approaches. This program calls for innovative, integrative, boundary-crossing proposals that can best capture those opportunities and map out new research frontiers. NSF seeks proposals that are bold and risky, and transcend the perspectives and approaches typical of disciplinary research efforts. Projects supported by this program will bridge temporal and spatial scales, levels of abstraction, levels of analysis, and disciplinary, methodological, and technological approaches. The aim is to engage a broad community of researchers in creative, interdisciplinary efforts that yield innovations and advances in and across cognitive science, neuroscience, neuroengineering, and education research.

Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM (CCE STEM)
OSP Deadline: April 10, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 17, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $400,000 for 3 year awards; up to $600,000 for 5 year awards
 
Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM (CCE STEM) funds research projects that identify (1) factors that are effective in the formation of ethical STEM researchers and (2) approaches to developing those factors in all the fields of science and engineering that NSF supports. CCE STEM solicits proposals for research that explores the following: 'What constitutes responsible conduct for research (RCR), and which cultural and institutional contexts promote ethical STEM research and practice and why?' Successful proposals typically have a comparative dimension, either between or within institutional settings that differ along these or among other factors, and they specify plans for developing interventions that promote the effectiveness of identified factors.
Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) - Data and Software: Elements and Frameworks
OSP Deadline: April 11, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 18, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $600,000 for 3 years (Elements); $600,000 - $5M for 3 to 5 years (Framework Implementations)
The Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) umbrella program encompasses the long-running Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBs) and Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) programs, as NSF seeks to enable funding opportunities that are flexible and responsive to the evolving and emerging needs in data and software cyberinfrastructure.
The CSSI umbrella program anticipates four classes of awards. This particular CSSI solicitation requests only Elements and Framework Implementations classes of awards.
  1. Elements (either Data Elements or Software Elements): These awards target small groups that will create and deploy robust capabilities for which there is a demonstrated need that will advance one or more significant areas of science and engineering.
  2. Framework Implementations (either Data Frameworks or Software Frameworks): These awards target larger, interdisciplinary teams organized around the development and application of common infrastructure aimed at solving common research problems faced by NSF researchers in one or more areas of science and engineering, resulting in a sustainable community framework serving a diverse community or communities.

CI_IUCRC
NSF: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary
Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers Program (IUCRC)
OSP Deadline for Preliminary Proposal: April 11, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Preliminary Proposal: April 18, 2018
Award Amount: Varies; subject to availability of funds
The Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRC) Program strives to develop long-term partnerships among industry, academe and government to promote research programs of mutual interest, contribute to the nation's research infrastructure base, enhance the intellectual capacity of the engineering or science workforce through the integration of research and education, and facilitate technology transfer. The IUCRC program seeks to achieve these goals by:
  • Leveraging NSF funds with industry to support graduate students performing industrially relevant pre-competitive research; 
  • Expanding the innovation capacity of our nation's competitive workforce through partnerships between industries and universities; and 
  • Encouraging the nation's research enterprise to remain competitive through active engagement with academic and industrial leaders throughout the world.
 
OtherNSFCross2 
Other NSF: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary Opportunities

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For assistance, please contact:

Erin Hale
Senior Research Development Officer
[email protected] | 617-496-5252

Jennifer Corby
Research Development Officer
[email protected] | 617-495-1590


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