March 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

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)
National Science Foundation: Directorate for Engineering (NSF: ENG)
 
National Science Foundation: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary
 

Foundation Opportunities

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; and
  • 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.
Pathways to Stop Diabetes
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: April 2, 2018 by 12:00PM
Career stage: Early career researchers (including postdoctoral fellows) or established investigators new to diabetes research
Eligible disciplines: Medicine, biology, chemistry, computing, engineering, mathematics and physics
Award Amount: Varies by award, see below
 
The Pathway to Stop Diabetes Program will support creative scientists who are just starting their careers in diabetes research, or who are already established in another field but want to expand their focus to diabetes research. The program will consider applications directed toward all topics relative to prevention, treatment and cure of all types of diabetes, diabetes related states and the complications of the disease. The program seeks exceptional nominees from a broad range of disciplines, including medicine, biology, chemistry, computing, engineering, mathematics and physics.
 
This is a limited submission opportunity and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research is facilitating the internal competition for potential applicants who hold a primary appointment at a school on the Cambridge campus. The nomination can be in one of the three available Pathway award types:
  • Initiator Award: This two-phased award is designed to support the transition of scientists from mentored training to independent research faculty. Eligible applicants must currently be in research training positions (post-doctoral fellow, research fellowship) and have no more than seven years of research training following terminal doctoral degree. Awards provide two distinct phases of research support: Phase 1 provides up to two years of support for mentored training at a maximum of $100,000 per year, Phase 2 provides up to five years of support for independent research at a maximum of $325,000 per year. Apply here for the Initiator Award.
  • Accelerator Award: This award is designed to support exceptional, independent early-career researchers who have distinguished themselves as promising investigators and are in the beginning stages of establishing successful, sustainable diabetes research programs. Awards are available to early-career diabetes investigators proposing innovative and ambitious diabetes-related research programs. Applicants must hold faculty positions and have demonstrated independent productivity in diabetes research. Awards provide five years of research support at a maximum of $325,000 per year. Apply here for the Accelerator Award.
  • Visionary Award: Awards are designed to support established, experienced investigators with strong records of outstanding productivity in fields outside of diabetes who are interested in applying their considerable skills and expertise to diabetes research. These awards are highly competitive and intended to support particularly innovative and transformational ideas that have the potential to have an exceptional impact in diabetes. Applicants must hold independent faculty positions and have demonstrated significant productivity in their current field of research. Awards provide two distinct phases of research support: Phase 1 provides up to three years of support at a maximum of $325,000 per year, Phase 2 provides up to two years of support at a maximum of $325,000 per year. Apply here for the Visionary Award.
Collaborative Science Awards
Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent: April 3, 2018
Award Amount: $350,000 per year for three years
Target Applicants: Small group collaborations in which at least one member is a physician with active clinical engagement in an area relevant to the proposal.
 
The Collaborative Science Awards program welcomes applications for small group, interdisciplinary collaborations that support innovative, bold, high risk/high impact projects at the interface of basic and disease biology in neurodegeneration. Recent advances in neurodegenerative disease research, especially in genetics and genomics, have expanded the view of contributing mechanisms, such as the immune system, glia, vascular systems, and metabolism. This program aims to build on these advances by investing in collaborative, cross-cutting research that focuses on foundational science (as opposed to translation and clinical application), aligned with clinical context.
 
The program strongly encourages applications from researchers who are working in relevant fields outside of neurodegeneration and neuroscience, such as cell biology, immunology, metabolism, physiology, and computational biology. Previous work in neurodegeneration is not a prerequisite as long as the proposal is able to make a strong case for potential relevance to neurodegeneration. Successful projects will be foundational and mechanistic studies grounded in human biology and disease pathology that provide new avenues for future translational and clinical development work. Applications are welcome from both investigators who are tackling underexplored topics as well as those addressing more well-developed mechanisms where there remain significant gaps in understanding. The selection process for this award involves three steps: a Letter of Intent, a full application from invited groups, and an in-person interview with finalists from the full application round.
Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Awards
OSP Deadline: April 10, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 17, 2018
Award Amount: $500,000 per year for five years
Target Applicants: Applicants should be in their first independent faculty position for at least two years but not more than six years at the time of application.
 
The Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Awards program offers grants for early career academic investigators, with an emphasis on those who are new to the field of neurodegeneration. Recent advances in neurodegenerative disease research, especially in genetics and genomics, have expanded the view of contributing mechanisms, such as the immune system, glia, vascular systems, and metabolism. This program aims to build on these advances by empowering early career investigators to pursue bold, cross-cutting approaches to understanding these disorders within a supportive and collaborative environment. Awardees will benefit from mentorship support, training and professional development, networking opportunities, and practical career guidance.
 
The program strongly encourages applications from researchers who are working in relevant fields outside of neurodegeneration and neuroscience, such as cell biology, immunology, metabolism, physiology, and computational biology. Previous work in neurodegeneration is not a prerequisite as long as the proposal is able to make a strong case for potential relevance to neurodegeneration. Successful projects will be foundational and mechanistic studies grounded in human biology and disease pathology that provide new avenues for future translational and clinical development work. Applications are welcome from both investigators who are tackling underexplored topics as well as those addressing more well-developed mechanisms where there remain significant gaps in understanding. The selection process for this award includes a written application followed by an in-person interview for finalists.

Research Grants
OSP Deadline: May 11, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: May 18, 2018
Award Amount: $10,000 to $45,000. Funds will not be granted for indirect costs. This falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss with your grants administrator before preparing an application.
 
Each year the Foundation awards research grants for basic scientific research directed at early detection, improved treatment modalities, and technological advances that will ultimately improve outcomes for patients with brain aneurysms. Projects that are focused on translational research, clinical outcome research, early detection, imaging, and aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage and its associated complications are also awarded funding.
 
Funds may be used for startup projects or supplementary funding. Salaries, including graduate student or postdoctoral fellows, may be requested at the principal investigator's discretion. Grant awards will be presented at the Brain Aneurysm Foundation's Annual Research Grant Awards Dinner in Pittsburgh, PA on September 20, 2018. Grant awardees or an appropriate representative must be present to receive the award and present a poster of the research during the opening reception.

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
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: March 30, 2018 by 4:00PM
Award Amount: Up to $50,000
Target applicants: All members of the Harvard community are invited to submit proposals.
 
This grant will fund creative partnerships between Harvard faculty and Harvard Library staff that improve access to information and the experience of using library resources at Harvard University. Innovations can take a variety of forms: technological, cultural, or operational. Proposals are invited from across the Harvard community, but must include at least one Harvard faculty member and one staff member affiliated with Harvard Library. Preference will be given to proposals that align with the  Harvard Library Objectives in Action .
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.
SEAS Internal Deadline: April 23, 2018 by 11:59PM
Award Amount: $100,000 maximum for junior faculty; $10,000 maximum for doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows
 
The Arango Family Research Fund is a new internal funding opportunity that will provide critical funding to advance high-risk, high reward science conducted by graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty at Harvard Medical School, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Applications should propose research in the natural sciences, specifically for work that may be considered high-risk, high-reward. 

Funds will be awarded in two categories:
  1. Junior Faculty ($100K per award): Each of four schools (Harvard Medical School, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences) is invited to submit up to two nominations in the Junior Faculty category to be considered in the University-wide competition. One award will be made in this category to support work over one to two years.
  2. Doctoral Students and Postdoctoral Fellows ($10K per award): Each of four schools (Harvard Medical School, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences) is invited to submit up to two nominations in the Doctoral Students and Postdoctoral Fellows category to be considered in the University-wide competition. For the purposes of this competition, the affiliation of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows is determined by the school in which their faculty adviser is appointed. One award per school, for a total of four awards, will be made in this category to support work over one year.
The Office of the Vice Provost for Research will administer the Fund on behalf of the President of Harvard University, and each of the four eligible schools will put forward nominees in each category to be considered in a University-wide competition. To be considered for the SEAS nomination, applicants with a primary SEAS affiliation should apply here by April 23, 2018.
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
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors (PALS)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Proposal Abstracts (strongly encouraged): March 19, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: April 30, 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. The three program phases will have a total duration of 48 months. Phase 1 will be 18 months, Phase 2 will be 18 months, and Phase 3 will be 12 months.
 
DARPA seeks innovative proposals for new systems that employ natural or engineered marine organisms as sensor elements to amplify signals related to the presence, movement, and classification of manned or unmanned underwater vehicles (M/UUV). The Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors (PALS) program will leverage or develop living organisms as sensor transducers, and pair them with a detector and analysis suite to produce deployable sensor systems able to provide timely information on vehicle activity across a wide variety of maritime environments.
 
The program is comprised of two technical areas (TAs). Performer teams must propose to both TAs jointly in order to produce fully integrated systems:
  • Technical Area 1: Characterize Biological Signal
  • Technical Area 2: Interpret the Biological Signal
Multiple awards are anticipated.
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 ONR Research Opportunity: "CLAWS"
OSP Deadline: March 21, 2018 [UPDATED DEADLINE]
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: March 28, 2018. Full Proposals received after this date will be considered as time and availability of funding permit. [UPDATED DEADLINE]
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 http://www.onr.navy.mil/ContractsGrants/Funding-Opportunities/Broad-Agency-Announcements.aspx. 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)
Epigenetic CHaracterization and Observation (ECHO)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Proposal Abstracts (strongly encouraged): March 22, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: May 3, 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. ECHO will have a period of performance of 48 months (24-month Phase I base effort and 24-month Phase II option effort).
 
DARPA is soliciting innovative proposals to provide a field-forward system that evaluates an individual's epigenome, revealing their history of exposure to threats, including weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their molecular precursors. Success in this program will require groundbreaking approaches to characterize epigenetic signatures from militarily relevant exposure events, and new bioinformatics tools to perform forensic analysis and disease diagnostics with high sensitivity, specificity and temporal resolution. These novel signatures and associated analytics will integrate into a single, man-portable device that operates in an austere setting with an untrained user. Proposing teams should be multidisciplinary with expertise in WMD threat agents, chromatin biology, epigenetics, gene expression, bioinformatics, microfluidics, next-generation sequencing, forensics, circulating biomarker discovery, point-of-care diagnostic device development, and computational modeling.
 
The ECHO program will consist of two Technical Areas (TAs): TA1 will focus on epigenetic signature identification, and TA2 will focus on the integrated device. Proposing teams will be required to address both TAs.
 
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.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Polyplexus Pilot
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Proposers Day Webcast (registration required to participate in pilot): March 23, 2018; with a repost on March 27, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Abstracts (strongly encouraged): June 1, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: July 20, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $100,000 for up to 1 year
 
The Defense Sciences Office (DSO) at DARPA is seeking participants for a pilot program designed to utilize modern connectivity to rapidly develop promising basic research pathways and then efficiently develop basic research proposals. Polyplexus is an online platform being developed under the DARPA Gamifying the Search for Strategic Surprise (GS3) program. The goal of the new Polyplexus platform is to fundamentally reshape the R&D process by reducing the time between concept emergence and worthy proposal submission. The Polyplexus platform aims to achieve this goal via efficiency gains that arise from collaborative activities focused on rigorous evidence collection and hypothesis generation, both of which are facilitated by online conversation. Faculty and postdoctoral researchers are eligible to participate. Graduate students and undergraduates who perform research under the supervision of faculty or postdoctoral researchers may also qualify if they are participating in original scientific or technical research. Qualified participants will be selected on a first registered for the Proposers Day, first invited basis. The registration website for the Proposers Day webcast is available here.
 
As an inducement to participate on a platform that is not fully mature, DARPA is making research funding available for ideas and concepts of scientific merit that may emerge from the online conversation that occurs during the pilot. DARPA anticipates making any such funding awards in September 2018. Note that submission of abstracts and proposals is not required to participate in the Polyplexus Pilot. Researchers who desire to participate due to curiosity; the desire to learn, teach, or explore; or any other constructive reason are encouraged to do so.
 
DARPA anticipates four awards if worthy ideas emerge from this process.
DARPA_UGB

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Disruption Opportunity Special Notice - Understanding Group Biases (UGB)
OSP Deadline: April 4, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: April 11, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $1M (the Phase 1 (base) award value should not exceed $150,000 and the Phase 2 (option) award value should not exceed $850,000). The period of performance is 18 months.
 
The objective of the UGB program is to test whether there may be new capabilities for radically enhancing the scale, speed, and scope of automated ethnographic-like methods for capturing group biases and cultural models from increasingly available large digital datasets.
 
Proposals must address two independent and sequential project phases (a Phase 1 Feasibility Study (base) and a Phase 2 Proof of Concept (option)). Phase 1 objectives are to secure access to relevant, publicly available datasets; evaluate the appropriateness of machine learning approaches; determine and justify the necessary level(s) of analyses for datasets and cultural model detection; provide early evidence of the technical credibility for use case scenario(s) for their algorithms and prototypes, and; outline specific validation approaches. Phase 2 objectives are to develop and test algorithms on identified datasets to derive cultural models and group biases from those datasets; instantiate algorithms and prototypes in one or more use case scenarios; validate algorithms; and transition prototypes and/or identify further promising research avenues for future UGB capabilities.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Mobile Offboard Clandestine Communications and Approach (MOCCA) - Phase 2
OSP Deadline: April 6, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: April 13, 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. Phase 2 will be an 18-month effort.
 
This solicitation is for Phase 2 of the Mobile Offboard Clandestine Communications and Approach (MOCCA) program and seeks a performer to develop compact active source, signal processing, and secure undersea communications technology options for an offboard mobile unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) in direct support of submarine Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW). A classified addendum is available upon request.
 
DARPA is soliciting innovative proposals in the following technical areas: active sonar and undersea clandestine communications systems. MOCCA is envisioned as a three phase, 51-month program. This solicitation is for execution of Phase 2. Proposers should also provide a non-binding draft Statement of Work (SOW) and Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) estimate for Phase 3.
 
$10M is available to fund a single award.
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 [UPDATED DEADLINE]
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: April 2, 2018 [UPDATED DEADLINE]
Award Amount: The level of funding for ind ividual 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
U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI)
U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences Broad Agency Announcement for Basic Research (Fiscal Year 2018)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (strongly encouraged): April 4, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: June 15, 2018
Award Amount: No award floor or ceiling thresholds have been established for individual awards under this BAA. In recent years, the performance period of Standard Research Awards has typically been 2-3 years, with a median total award of $556,000. Budgets for Early Career proposals should be modest: approximately $110,000 for the initial year. No specific dollars have been reserved for total awards under this BAA.
 
The U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences is the Army's lead agency for the conduct of research, development, and analyses for the improvement of Army readiness and performance via research advances and applications of the behavioral and social sciences that address personnel, organization, training, and leader development issues. The basic research program supports research projects that are designed to expand fundamental knowledge and discover general principles in the behavioral and social sciences. ARI will accept Standard and Early Career proposals, and requests for Conference support, in response to this BAA. To be eligible for an Early Career award, the Principal Investigator must have received their Ph.D. within five years of the time of proposal submission, and not previously received funding from ARI as a Principal Investigator.
 
In addition to looking for proposals that provide for programmatic efforts to develop and evaluate psychological and behavioral theory, ARI strongly encourages applicants to propose novel, state-of-the-art, and multidisciplinary approaches that address difficult problems. A key consideration in the decision to support a research proposal is that its findings are likely to stimulate new, basic behavioral research which, in turn, will lead to improved performance of Army personnel and their units. Proposals may address both traditional behavioral issues as well as psychophysiological (to include neuroscience) and network science approaches to social phenomena, memory, cognition, and personality. While all proposals will be considered, ARI has identified the following five domains as particularly germane to its basic research needs: 1) Personnel Testing and Performance; 2) Leader Development; 3) Organizational Effectiveness; 4) Learning in Formal and Informal Environments; and 5) Culture.

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.
Office of Naval Research (ONR)
Advancing Robotic Capability & Usability for Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (required): April 13, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals (if invited): July 13, 2018
Award Amount: The amount and period of performance of each selected proposal may vary depending on the research area and the technical approach to be pursued by the selected Offeror. The period of performance of the awards typically ranges from 24-36 months.
 
The goal of this BAA is to develop and demonstrate manipulators and end effectors that when combined with EOD platforms approach human performance without latency at extended distances. The capability improvements sought include: (1) dual manipulators (arms and end effectors) that can work together to plan and execute bi-manual tasks that require a high level of dexterity; (2) end effectors (hands) that can use the sense of touch to interpret and visualize the shape and texture of an explosive threat or object when external sensors are not available; and, (3), end effectors that can sense and understand changes in the weight and temperature profiles as the explosive threat or object is being lifted or moved. The desired outcomes are EOD robotic systems and subsystems that machine learn through on-board sensors and processing and team and co-learn with humans. The motivation for these advancements is improved and efficient EOD operational decisions in safe, situationally aware settings that may include items that are buried or concealed (visually denied) and/or underwater (GPS denied). A recognized challenge for the learning efforts is the data limited environment for development.
 
ONR plans to make two to four awards. A total of $2M is anticipated to be available for this program in FY19.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Friend or Foe
OSP Deadline: April 18, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: April 25, 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.
 
Friend or Foe will develop a high throughput screening platform that improves our readiness against new microbial threats through isolation and phenotypic characterization of bacterial pathogenicity. The performing teams for Friend or Foe will develop complete end-to-end systems that will probe the phenotypes of bacteria to assess their pathogenic potential.
 
The Friend or Foe program is structured into three Technical Areas (TAs)-Viable Bacterial Isolation (TA1), Interrogation (TA2), and Bioinformatics and Decision Management (TA3)-with an additional and separate Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) component. Proposals must be written to address milestones in all three TAs.
 
Multiple awards are anticipated.

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.
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
Air Force Fiscal Year 2019 Young Investigator Research Program (YIP)
OSP Deadline: May 24, 2018
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: June 1, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $150,000 per year for 3 years. Exceptional proposals will be considered individually for higher funding levels and/or longer duration.
 
The Fiscal Year 2019 Air Force Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) intends to support early career scientists and engineers who have received Ph.D. or equivalent degrees by 1 April 2012 or later showing exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research. The program objective is to foster creative basic research in science and engineering; enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators; and increase opportunities for the young investigator to recognize the Air Force mission and related challenges in science and engineering. YIP PIs must be a U.S. citizen, national, or permanent resident.
 
AFOSR seeks unclassified proposals from qualified and responsible applicants in the research areas of interest identified in the most recent Broad Agency Announcement titled "Research Interests of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research". Proposals may be submitted for only one research portfolio area.
 
AFOSR anticipates approximately 36 awards under this competition.
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; and
  • 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


DOE_SSAA 

U.S. Department of Energy
National Nuclear Security Administration

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.

DOE_Flexible
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Flexible Combined Heat and Power for Grid Reliability and Resiliency
Concept Paper Deadline (required): March 23, 2018
OSP Deadline: May 3, 2018
Full Proposal Deadline: May 10, 2018
Award Amount: $1,000,000-$1,500,000; Cost sharing is required and must be at least 20% of the total allowable costs for research and development projects and must come from non - federal sources
 
The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office seeks to conduct research and development activities to further the utilization of cost - effective, highly efficient combined heat and power (CHP). This FOA includes two areas of interest to research enabling technologies for CHP systems that are specifically designed to provide cost - effective support to the electric grid: Area of Interest 1 - Power Electronics and Control Systems; Area of Interest 2 - Electricity Generation Components. Such systems would have the benefits of conventional CHP5 while at the same time being able to sell electricity to and serve as a stabilizing factor for the Grid. This will shorten the time required to recover the costs of the system. The lower barrier to adoption will enable small to mid - size manufacturers to gain the benefits of CHP systems while at the same time providing a resource to the grid so that it is more reliable, resilient and secure.
 
DOE_Developing
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Fossil Energy
Developing Technologies to Advance the Understanding of State of Stress and Geomechanical Impacts Within the Subsurface
Concept Paper Deadline (required): March 26, 2018
OSP Deadline: April 30, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: May 7, 2018
Award Amount: $2.5M-$6.4M for Area of Interest 1; $1.5M-$4M for Area of Interest 2; Cost sharing is required and must be at least 20% of the total allowable costs for research and development projects and must come from non - federal sources
 
The Carbon Storage Program's Advanced Storage R&D Technology Area supports research to develop technologies that improve storage efficiency and containment and reduce the risks associated with carbon storage operations. A key Technology Component of the Advanced Storage Technology Area is Storage Complex Efficiency and Security, which provides improved tools todesign effective injection operations, optimize injection rates, and ensure the sealing capability of caprocks. By 2025, research addressing this component should integrate geomechanical impacts into models to assess and mitigate risk, including studies of faults, fractures, and seismicity from pressure changes related to injection, and integration of results into basin scale models.
 
This FOA seeks applications which propose research to develop tools, methods and/or technologies that 1) improve the measurement of in-situ maximum principle stress in the deep subsurface and 2) further seek to understand pressure migration and geomechanical impacts related to injection into a storage complex. These tools, methods and/or technologies are expected to be demonstrated in a relevant field environment or applied to relevant field data for validation. Successful technologies will increase the understanding of the geomechanical impacts associated with an injection operation and therefore decrease the geomechanical risks throughout the life cycle of the project.
 
The Areas of Interest (AOIs) of this Announcement are:
  • AOI 1 - Tools and Methods for Determining Maximum Principal Stress in the Deep Subsurface
  • AOI 2 - Methods for Understanding Impact of Vertical Pressure Migration due to Injection on State of Subsurface Stress

DOE_Quantum
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Science, High Energy Physics
Quantum Information Science Enabled Discovery (QuantISED) for High Energy Physics
Letter of Intent Deadline (required): March 26, 2018
OSP Deadline: April 9, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 16, 2018
Award Amount: $100,000-$500,000 per award for Track 1; $500,000-$2,000,000 per award for Track 2
 
The High Energy Physics (HEP) Quantum Information Science (QIS) Thrust is intended to forge new routes to scientific discovery along the HEP mission and P5 science drivers, invoking interdisciplinary advances in the convergent field of QIS, and their intersection with expertise, techniques, and technology developed within the HEP community. The goals of the HEP QIS Thrust include developing interdisciplinary consortia that positively impact both HEP and QIS fields.
 
Research Topics responsive to this FOA are divided into categories A and B:
 
Topic A: High Energy Physics and QIS Research
  • Theoretical, Computational, and/or experimental research exploiting recent convergence of developments in quantum gravity, computational complexity, AdS/CFT holographic correspondence, quantum information theory, emergence of space-time, quantum error correction, black hole physics, scrambling, and qubit system thermalization;
  • Foundational field theory techniques, gauge symmetries, and tensor networks invoking quantum information and entanglement concepts that advance knowledge including description of scattering, bound state problems, and advanced gauge theories;
  • Analog simulations/quantum emulators/teleportation experiments that advance HEP and QIS, including tests of fundamental string theory and other particle physics models in qubit systems;
  • Novel experiments probing HEP science drivers using QIS technology and tools exploiting superposition, entanglement, and/or squeezing with goals for near term science goals and/or steps to scientific;
  • HEP relevant instrumentation, data transfer and quantum communication tools using QIS concepts and QIS technology exploiting superposition, entanglement, and/or squeezing that produce new experimental methods for HEP; and
  • Foundational and/or technological advances in QIS by incorporation of techniques, tools, and physical principles from particle physics.
Topic B: Quantum Computing for HEP on current or future quantum computing systems
  • Quantum field theory algorithms and simulations including quantum chromodynamics and electrodynamics, accelerator modeling codes, and computational cosmology relevant to HEP science drivers and P5 projects and experiments;
  • Quantum machine learning and data analysis techniques and tools that can enhance efficiency or analysis methods for HEP applications. Applications using available annealer platforms are within scope and so are use of quantum computers simulated classically;
  • Developing quantum computing simulators and/or frameworks for HEP applications to be developed on existing computers or hybrid systems.
Applications may follow one of two Tracks but cannot combine Tracks.
 
Track 1: Pioneering Pilots (open to Topics A or B) 1-2 year pilots (expected to be pioneering efforts and may be speculative):
  • Propose novel concepts, models, test problem, or re-analysis of existing data for exploratory research in topics A or B to be developed via the proposed work;
  • Propose ideas or design studies for new high impact QIS based HEP experiments exploring P5 science drivers along with costing and timeline estimates.
Track 2: HEP-QIS Consortia (open to Topic A only) Required: Collaboration with DOE Labs 2-3-year multi institutional, interdisciplinary, consortium applications that satisfy one or more of the following:
  • Aim to answer one or more fundamental questions pertaining to the P5 Science drivers focusing on one of the sub topics in A;
  • Propose experiments within Topic A with detailed costing that can completed in the time frame of the proposal;
  • Early stage research aiming to produce, implement, and characterize novel HEP relevant instrumentation, data transfer and quantum communication tools as per Topic A;
  • Early stage research intended to make notable contributions to QIS and related technology, using expertise, knowledge, and technology developed within HEP.

DOE_Operability
U.S. Department of Energy
National Energy Technology Laboratory
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.
DOE_UCR National Energy Technology Laboratory
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_Scientific

U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Science
Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing: Runaway Electron Avoidance and Mitigation in Tokamak Plasmas
Sponsor Pre-Application Deadline (required): April 6, 2018
OSP Deadline: May 7, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: May 14, 2018
Award Amount: $50,000-$2,000,000 per year for up to 4 years
 
This FOA focuses on the development of a comprehensive simulation capability to advance predictive understanding in the critical area of runaway electron physics in tokamak plasmas. Runaway electrons created during plasma disruptions pose a significant threat to the operation and integrity of burning plasma devices such as International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) and future fusion reactors, since the substantial energy carried by the relativistic runaway electron beam can damage the plasma-facing components. Responsive proposals should focus on the development and application of high-fidelity simulation models that address multiple aspects of runaway electron physics, including runaway formation, evolution, avoidance, and mitigation. In addition, the partnership that will be selected for an award will be expected to develop a high-fidelity runaway electrons computational module that can be integrated in Whole-Device Modeling (WDM) computational frameworks. To enable and facilitate integration and Whole-Device Modeling (WDM) development, the partnership that will be selected for an award, in addition to its specific scientific objectives, will be expected to dedicate a fraction of its efforts to work on large-scale integration issues and participate in coordinated activities with all the other active partnerships in the FES SciDAC portfolio and in particular with those focusing on disruption physics and WDM development.

 
DOE_Transformational
U.S. Department of Energy
National Energy Technology Laboratory
Transformational Pre-combustion Carbon Capture Technologies
OSP Deadline: April 12, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 19, 2018
Award Amount: $800,000-$7,000,000; Cost sharing is required and must be at least 20% of the total allowable costs for research and development projects and must come from non - federal sources
 
The Carbon Capture Program will solicit applications under this FOA to develop technologies in the area of pre-combustion carbon capture. Approaches that look at either hydrogen (H2) separation or carbon dioxide (CO2) separation will be accepted. The carbon capture technologies developed through this FOA will have direct application to coal gasification processes where coal derived synthesis gas or hydrogen are produced. Additionally, because gasification technology is often used to produce industrial chemicals, the technologies developed through this FOA will also be directly applicable to industrial gasifiers. Finally, as these technologies are successfully developed, they can represent an export opportunity to other countries that have a larger installed base of gasifiers than the U.S. Coal or petcoke derived syngas may be proposed, but if the fuel source isn't coal, the Applicant must show the applicability to a coal-based system. The technologies developed through this FOA will help the United States maintain expertise in the area of gas separations and be prepared in the event that coal gasification-based power generation returns to the U.S. due to increased natural gas prices.
 
There will be two areas of interest as follows:
  1. Area of Interest 1: Lab-Scale CO2 Capture Development and Testing on Simulated Syngas
  2. Area of Interest 2: Bench-Scale CO2 Capture Development and Testing on Actual Syngas
DOE_Solid

 U.S. Department of Energy
National Energy Technology Laboratory
Solid Oxide Fuel Cells Core Technology Research
OSP Deadline: April 23, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 30, 2018
Award Amount: $3,500,000 over 2 years for Area of Interest 1; $6,000,000 over 2 years for Area of Interest 2. Cost sharing is required and must be at least 20% of the total allowable costs for research and development projects and must come from non-federal sources.
 
This Funding Opportunity Announcement is soliciting applications to develop Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Technology in order to support fuel cells system manufacturers in addressing issues related to cost and reliability of fuel cells systems. Applications are sought in two areas of interest:
  • Area of Interest 1 - Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) Core Technology Research: Supports transformational technologies that are focused on early-stage laboratory-scale R&D. Successful projects will result in validation of concepts at a laboratory-scale. Collaboration with a fuel cell system manufacturer is encouraged.
  • Area of Interest 2 - Core Technology Research and Development (R&D) in Support of Near-Term SOFC Power Systems Prototype Tests: Seeks projects that address reliability issues facing 2nd Generation SOFC power systems in an operational environment. This AOI will require a team approach where the participation of at least one fuel cell system manufacturer as a prime or a sub-recipient in the team is required. Teams should be able to take the technology developed during the award to the point that it can be validated in an operational system. 

DOE_Prelim
U.S. Department of Energy
National Energy Technology Laboratory
Preliminary Design and Techno-Economic Analysis of MWe-Class Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Systems
OSP Deadline: April 30, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: May 7, 2018
Award Amount: $4,500,000; Cost sharing is required and must be at least 20% of the total allowable costs for research and development projects and must come from non-federal sources.

The mission of the DOE FE Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) program is to enable the efficient generation of low-cost electricity for (a) 2nd Generation natural gas-fueled SOFC DG systems and modular, coal-fueled systems and (b) Transformational coal or natural gas-fueled utility-scale systems with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). The program supports the overarching goals of the Clean Coal and Carbon Management Research Program (CCCMRP) through the collaboration between the R&D that addresses the technical and economic barriers to commercial viability and the development and deployment of SOFC power systems that validate those solutions.

The objective of this FOA is to develop a conceptual design of a MWe-class SOFC power system for distributed generation application (DG) and a techno-economic analysis (TEA) in Phase I. Phase I will be 18 months in duration. In Phase II, up to three awards will be made through a competitive down-select to build and test nominally 1 MWe SOFC systems that meet the cost target of $6,000/kWe (exclusive of First-Time Engineering) and degradation target of 0.5 percent/1,000 hours. These systems will be field-tested for a minimum of 5,000 hours. Phase II awards are anticipated in FY 2020, subject to availability of funding. Only Phase I recipients are eligible for Phase II.

DOE_Other
Other DOE Opportunities

IARPA
Proposers' Day Notification for Better Extraction from Text Towards Enhanced Retrieval (BETTER)
Registration Deadline: March 22, 2018
Proposors Day Date: March 29, 2018
 
IARPA will host a Proposers' Day Conference for the BETTER program on March 29, 2018 in anticipation of the release of a new solicitation. The Conference will be held from 8:00am to 4:00pm EST in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The purpose of the conference will be to provide information on BETTER 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. This announcement serves as a pre-solicitation notice and is issued solely for information and planning purposes. Candidates may register at https://eventmanagement.cvent.com/BETTERPD .
 
The BETTER program aims to develop enhanced methods for personalized, multilingual semantic extraction and retrieval from text. The goal is to provide a user with a system that quickly and accurately extracts complex semantic information, targeted for a specific user, from text. The system then uses this extracted information to discover and triage relevant documents from a large corpus. Towards this end, BETTER will focus on three research areas: 1) information extraction, 2) information retrieval, and 3) human-in-the-loop interaction.
IARPA_other

Other IARPA Opportunities
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

NASA_SPace
Space Technology - Research, Development, Demonstration, and Infusion 2018 (SpaceTech-REDDI-2018)
Early Career Faculty (ECF) Grants
OSP Deadline: March 21, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: March 28, 2018
Award Amount: Typical award amount is $200,000/year for up to 3 years
 
ECF is focused on supporting outstanding faculty researchers early in their careers as they conduct space technology research of high priority to NASA's Mission Directorates. It challenges early career faculty to examine the theoretical feasibility of new ideas and approaches that are critical to making science, space travel, and exploration more effective, affordable, and sustainable. Collaboration with NASA researchers should be expected while conducting space technology under these awards.
 
This Appendix exclusively seeks proposals that are responsive to one of the three topics:
  • Topic 1 - Batteries for Extreme Cold Environments
  • Topic 2 - MOF and Ionic Liquids/Membrane Technologies for Advanced CO2 Removal Applications
  • Topic 3 - Entry Guidance Methods for Precision Planetary Landers
The PI must be an untenured Assistant Professor on the tenure track at the sponsoring U.S. university at the time of award. The PI must be a U.S. citizen or have lawful status of permanent residency (i.e., holder of a U.S. Permanent Resident Card, also referred to as a Green Card) no later than August 1 following the proposal submission deadline. Co-Investigators are not permitted.
 
NASA plans to make approximately 6-8 awards.

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 (eg, 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)

NIH_Shared
National Institutes of Health
Shared Instrumentation Grant Program
OSP Deadline: May 24, 2018
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, interested applicants should contact Erin Hale at [email protected] .
 NIH_HighEnd  
National Institutes of Health
High End Instrumentation Grant Program
OSP Deadline: May 24, 2018
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, interested applicants should contact Erin Hale at [email protected].

NIH_SIFAR  
National Institutes of Health
Shared Instrumentation for Animal Research (SIFAR) Grant Program
OSP Deadline: May 24, 3018
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, interested applicants should contact Erin Hale at [email protected] .
 

OtherNIHOpps
Other NIH Opportunities
 
National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation: Dear Colleague Letters
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; and
  • Active engagement of U.S. students and postdoctoral researchers at the foreign site.
Signals in the Soil (SitS) 
OSP Deadline for Research Concept Outline: April 6, 2018 
Sponsor Deadline for Research Concept Outline: April 13, 2018 
Award Amount: Most requests to PIs to submit proposals will be restricted during FY 2018 to EAGER proposals, which are aimed at exploratory research with a maximum duration of 2 years and maximum budget of $300,000. For Research Concept Outlines that are invited as RAISE proposals, higher budgetary limits are allowed. 
 
The goal of this Dear Colleague Letter is to encourage submission of Early-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research ( EAGER ) proposals for early-stage, high-risk, high-reward research on technologies, models, and methods to better understand dynamic soil processes, including interactions of the macro- and microbiomes with soil nutrients, the rhizosphere, and various abiotic and biotic processes within the soil. In addition, for proposals that include topics relevant to both this DCL and the  NSF "Rules of Life " Big Idea, submissions of Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering ( RAISE ) proposals are encouraged. Researchers who are interested in submitting a SitS EAGER or RAISE proposal must first submit a SitS Research Concept Outline that should not exceed 2 pages. Selected submitters of these Outlines will be invited to submit full EAGER or RAISE proposals for funding consideration.


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.


DCL_QLC
Enabling Quantum Leap in Chemistry (QLC)
OSP Deadline: April 24, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: May 1, 2018
Award Amount: Up to $80,000 for up to 12 months for supplemental funding requests; up to $300,000 for up to two years for EAGER proposals.
 
Quantum Leap aims to exploit quantum mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to develop next-generation technologies for sensing, computing, modeling, and communication. This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) emphasizes molecular approaches towards problems in quantum computing, sensing, communicating, etc. and invites submission of supplemental funding requests and EAGER (EArly-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research) (EAGER) proposals on Quantum Leap. Suitable topics include (but are not limited to):
  • quantum algorithms for the simulation of chemical systems, including hybrid quantum-classical algorithms;
  • identification and exploration of the boundaries between classical and quantum computation in relation to chemical applications;
  • quantum machine learning for chemistry;
  • quantum optical tools for chemistry;
  • bottom-up design, synthesis, and application of chemical qubits;
  • quantum control of chemical processes;
  • advanced quantum readout techniques for molecular quantum systems;
  • topologically-protected molecular excitations that control and probe molecular energy transfer pathways via strong-coupling;
  • control and monitoring of chemical reactions using optical cavities and single-molecule polaritons; and
  • multidimensional optical spectroscopy for quantum information processing.
The most competitive proposals and supplemental funding requests will harness existing expertise in the chemistry community to explore innovative approaches and novel phenomena in order to break new ground in quantum chemical and molecular science. Supplemental funding requests must enhance existing projects by incorporating or exploring the concepts described in this DCL. Proposals or supplemental funding requests with a focus on solid state materials are outside the scope of this DCL.

Rules of Life (RoL): Forecasting and Emergence in Living Systems (FELS)
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to sponsor deadline
Sponsor Deadline: 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. Open competitions supported by this DCL include Conferences. 

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; and
  • 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.
Stimulating Educational Neuroscientific Research through the Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems (NCS) Program
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of a full proposal
Sponsor Deadline: Rolling
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. While the application period for the foundational component of this award has passed,
NSF continues to accept applications on a rolling basis for capacity-building proposals through conference proposals and Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals.

DCL_NNA 
Stimulating Research Related to Navigating the New Arctic (NNA), One of NSF's 10 Big Ideas
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of a full proposal
Sponsor Deadline: Varies; please see details below
Award Amount: Varies by award type; please see details below
 
This Dear Colleague Letter invites proposals in FY 2018 that will advance Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) research through convergent approaches to emerging scientific, engineering, societal, and education challenges, and builds upon the  NNA awards   resulting from the FY 2017 
DCL on Growing Convergence Research at NSF. A systems-based approach is strongly encouraged, including research that both contributes to, and leverages, large data sets from enhanced observational technology and networks. Knowledge co-production with local and indigenous communities, advancing public participation in research, and international partnerships are also strongly encouraged as possible means to achieve NNA objectives. This is not a special competition or a new program; proposals in response to this DCL must meet the requirements and deadlines of the program to which they are submitted. Organizations submitting proposals to programs and funding vehicles without deadlines are encouraged to submit proposals by May 1, 2018, to be considered for FY 2018 funding.
 

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. 

Computer Science for All (CSforAll: RPP)
OSP Deadline: May 2, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: May 9, 2018
Award Amount: up to $2,000,000 for up to 4 years (Large Proposals); up to $1,000,000 for up to 3 years (Medium Proposals); up to $300,000 for up to 2 years (Small Proposals)
This program aims to provide all U.S. students the opportunity to participate in computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT) education in their schools at the preK-12 levels. With this solicitation, the National Science Foundation (NSF) focuses on researcher-practitioner partnerships (RPPs) that foster the research and development needed to bring CS and CT to all schools. Specifically, this solicitation aims to provide high school teachers with the preparation, professional development (PD) and ongoing support that they need to teach rigorous computer science courses; preK-8 teachers with the instructional materials and preparation they need to integrate CS and CT into their teaching; and schools and districts the resources needed to define and evaluate multi-grade pathways in CS and CT. 

CISE_VMware 
NSF: CISE
NSF/VMware Partnership on Edge Computing Data Infrastructure (ECDI)
OSP Deadline: May 15, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: May 22, 2018
Award Amount: up to $3,000,000 for 3 years  
This solicitation seeks to advance the state of the art in end-to-end networked systems architecture that includes edge infrastructures. The central challenge is to design and develop data-centric edge architectures, programming paradigms, runtime environments, and data sharing frameworks that will enable compelling new applications and fully realize the opportunity of big data in tomorrow's mobile and IoT device environments. Researchers are expected to carefully consider the implications of edge computing's multi-stakeholder context, and the need for security and privacy as first order design and operational considerations.
 CISE_CICI 
NSF: CISE
Cybersecurity Innovation for Cybersecurity (CICI)
OSP Deadline: May 25, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: June 4, 2018
Award Amount: up to $1,000,000 for up to 3 years (Secure Scientific Cyberinfrastructure and Research Data Protection); up to $5,000,000 for up to 3 years (Collaborative Security Response Center)
The objective of the Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure (CICI) program is to develop, deploy and integrate security solutions that benefit the scientific community by ensuring the integrity, resilience and reliability of the end-to-end scientific workflow. CICI seeks three categories of projects:
  1. Secure Scientific Cyberinfrastructure: These awards seek to secure the scientific workflow by encouraging novel and trustworthy architectural and design approaches, models and frameworks for the creation of a holistic, integrated security environment that spans the entire scientific CI ecosystem;
  2. Collaborative Security Response Center: This single award targets the development of a community resource to provide security monitoring, analysis, expertise, and resources Research & Education (R&E) cyberinfrastructure staff, regardless of physical location or organization; and
  3. Research Data Protection: These awards provide solutions that both ensure the provenance of research data and reduce the complexity of protecting research data sets regardless of funding source.
 
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)
 
ENG_ERC
NSF: ENG
Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers (ERC) 
OSP Deadline: May 30, 2018 
Sponsor Deadline: June 6, 2018 
Award Amount: up to $100,000 over one year
 
The Engineering Research Centers program is placing greater emphasis on research that leads to societal impact, including convergent approaches, engaging stakeholder communities, and strengthening team formation, in response to the NASEM study recommendations. The ERC program intends to support planning activities leading to convergent research team formation and capacity-building within the engineering community. This planning grant pilot initiative is designed to foster and facilitate the engineering community's thinking about how to form convergent research collaborations. To participate in the upcoming ERC competition, one is not required to submit a planning grant proposal nor to receive a planning grant.
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: Core+ Supplements
OSP Deadline: April 10, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: April 17, 2018
Award Amount: S upplemental 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.
 
CI_Future
NSF: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary
Future of Work at the Human - Technology Frontier: Advancing Cognitive and Physical Capabilities (FW-HTF) 
Letter of Intent Deadline: April 16, 2018 
OSP Deadline: May 25, 2018 
Sponsor Deadline: June 4, 2018 
Award Amount: $750,000 to $1,500,000 over 3 to 5 years (Small Projects); $1,500,001 - $3,000,000 over 3 to 5 years (Large Projects)

The Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier (FW-HTF) is one of 10 new and far-sighted  Big Ideas   for Future Investments announced by NSF in 2016. NSF aims to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the changing landscape of jobs and work by supporting convergent research to: understand and develop the human-technology partnership; design new technologies to augment human performance; illuminate the emerging socio-technological landscape and understand the risks and benefits of new technologies; and foster lifelong and pervasive learning with technology. In order to be nimble and responsive to new opportunities and challenges as they are recognized, focus areas for the FW-HTF solicitation, the centerpiece of the FW-HTF Big Idea, may change from year to year.
This solicitation focuses on advancing cognitive and physical capabilities in the context of human-technology interactions. The solicitation will support two themes: Theme 1 will focus on Foundations for Augmenting Human Cognition and Theme 2 will focus on Embodied Intelligent Cognitive Assistants. In shaping projects responsive to these two themes, PIs consider the importance of understanding, anticipating, and shaping the larger implications at the individual, institutional, corporate, and national levels, including issues arising from the needs or consequences for training and education. In addition, projects should be framed in terms of their focus on the potential contribution toward (a) transforming the frontiers of science and technology for human performance augmentation and workplace skill acquisition; (b) improving both worker quality of life and employer financial metrics; (c) enhancing the economic and social well-being of the country; and (d) addressing societal needs through research on learning and instruction in the context of augmentation. Projects must include a Collaboration Plan which outlines the way in which the project will leverage and integrate multiple disciplinary perspectives.
 

CI_CyberPhys
NSF: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary
Cyber-Physical Systems
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of a full proposal
Sponsor Deadline: April 27 - May 8, 2018 (submission window)
Award Amount: up to $500,000 for up to 3 years (Small Projects); $500,001 to $1,000,000 for up to 3 years (Medium Projects); $1,000,001 to $7,000,000 for 4 to 5 years
 
The CPS program aims to develop the core research needed to engineer these complex CPS, some of which may also require dependable, high-confidence, or provable behaviors. Core research areas of the program include control, data analytics, autonomy, design, information management, internet of things (IoT), mixed initiatives including human-in- or on-the-loop, networking, privacy, real-time systems, safety, security, and verification. By abstracting from the particulars of specific systems and application domains, the CPS program seeks to reveal cross-cutting, fundamental scientific and engineering principles that underpin the integration of cyber and physical elements across all application domains. The program additionally supports the development of methods, tools, and hardware and software components based upon these cross-cutting principles, along with validation of the principles via prototypes and testbeds. This program also fosters a research community that is committed to advancing education and outreach in CPS and accelerating the transition of CPS research into the real world. Please note: The Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) program solicitation has been revised for FY 2018, and prospective Principal Investigators are encouraged to read the solicitation carefully. 
 CI_Critical
Critical Techniques, Technologies and Methodologies for Advancing Foundations and Applications of Big Data Sciences and Engineering (BIGDATA) 
OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission of a full proposal 
Sponsor Deadline: May 7 - May 14, 2018 (submission window) 
Award Amount: $200,000 to $500,000 per year for 3 to 4 years

The BIGDATA program seeks novel approaches in computer science, statistics, computational science, and mathematics leading towards the further development of the interdisciplinary field of data science. The program also seeks innovative applications in domain science, including social and behavioral sciences, education, physical sciences, and engineering, where data science and the availability of big data are creating new opportunities for research and insights not previously possible.
The solicitation invites two categories of proposals:
  • Foundations (BIGDATA: F): those developing or studying fundamental theories, techniques, methodologies, and technologies of broad applicability to big data problems, motivated by specific data challenges and requirements; and
  • Innovative Applications (BIGDATA: IA): those engaged in translational activities that employ new big data techniques, methodologies, and technologies to address and solve problems in specific application domains. Projects in this category must be collaborative, involving researchers from domain disciplines and one or more methodological disciplines, e.g., computer science, statistics, mathematics, simulation and modeling, etc.
Proposals are expected to be well motivated by specific big data problems in one or more science and engineering research domains. All proposals are expected to clearly articulate the big data aspect(s) that motivate the research. Innovative Applications proposals must provide clear examples of the impacts of the big data techniques, technologies and methodologies on applications in one or more domains.
 CI_Smart
Smart and Connected Health: Connecting Data, People and Systems 
OSP Deadline: May 15, 2018 
Sponsor Deadline: May 22, 2018 
Award Amount: totals per proposal unspecified; $11,000,000 to $20,000,000 will be invested in proposals submitted to this solicitation in FY 2018, subject to the availability of funds and the quality of the proposals received; 8 to 16 awards will be made

The goal of the interagency Smart and Connected Health (SCH): Connecting Data, People and Systems program is to accelerate the development and integration of innovative computer and information science and engineering approaches to support the transformation of health and medicine. Approaches that partner technology-based solutions with biomedical and biobehavioral research are supported by multiple agencies of the federal government including the NSF and the NIH. The purpose of this program is to develop next-generation multidisciplinary science that encourages existing and new research communities to focus on breakthrough ideas in a variety of areas of value to health, such as networking, pervasive computing, advanced analytics, sensor integration, privacy and security, modeling of socio-behavioral and cognitive processes and system and process modeling. Effective solutions must satisfy a multitude of constraints arising from clinical/medical needs, barriers to change, heterogeneity of data, semantic mismatch and limitations of current cyberphysical systems and an aging population. Such solutions demand multidisciplinary teams ready to address issues ranging from fundamental science and engineering to medical and public health practice.
The SCH program:
  • Takes a coordinated approach that balances theory with evidenced-based analysis and systematic advances with revolutionary breakthroughs;
  • Seeks cross-disciplinary collaborative research that will lead to new fundamental insights; and
  • Encourages empirical validation of new concepts through research prototypes, ranging from specific components to entire systems.
 CI_TRIPODS
NSF: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary
Partnerships between Science and Engineering Fields and the NSF TRIPODS Institutes (TRIPODS + X)
OSP Deadline: May 21, 2018
Sponsor Deadline: May 29, 2018
Award Amount: Proposers may request up to $600,000 total for Research Track awards; $200,000 total for Visioning Track awards; or $200,000 total for Education Track awards. For each track, the duration may be up to three years. Approximately 6-12 awards in each of three tracks are anticipated.

NSF's Directorates for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) and Mathematical & Physical Sciences (MPS) recently launched the Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science (TRIPODS) Phase I program with the goal of promoting long-term, interdisciplinary research and training activities that engage theoretical computer scientists, statisticians, and mathematicians in developing the theoretical foundations of data science.  Twelve TRIPODS Phase I Institutes were established in FY17. The Partnerships between Science and Engineering Fields and the NSF TRIPODS Institutes (TRIPODS + X) solicitation seeks to expand the scope of the TRIPODS program beyond the foundations community by engaging researchers across other NSF disciplines and the TRIPODS research teams in collaborative activities. TRIPODS + X projects will foster relationships between researchers in science & engineering domains and foundational data scientists by leveraging existing NSF investments in the TRIPODS organizations. Working in concert with a TRIPODS organization, a TRIPODS + X project would focus on data-driven research challenges motivated by applications in one or more science and engineering domains or other activities aimed at building robust data science communities. PIs are encouraged to submit proposals in response to three tracks: 1) Research Track: research activities motivated by applications in one or more science & engineering domains; 2) Visioning Track: workshops and conferences, innovation labs, and other community-building and direction-setting activities; and 3) Education Track: curriculum development and other education- and training-related activities.  

To be eligible, at least one PI or co-PI must represent a discipline other than mathematics, statistics, and theoretical computer science, and at least one PI or co-PI must be a PI, co-PI, or Senior Personnel of one of the 12 TRIPODS Phase I Institute projects initiated in FY 2017. Participation of PIs and co-PIs at institutions other than the TRIPODS awardee organizations is particularly encouraged and will receive priority consideration. Each TRIPODS Phase I organization may participate in at most five proposals. Each TRIPODS Phase I organization may participate in at most three proposals in any of the three tracks.

 
OtherNSFCross2 
Other NSF: Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary Opportunities

_________________________________________

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