Physical Sciences & Engineering

UArizona may submit one proposal as the lead organization for a Partnership Track. 
UArizona is not eligible for an IT, adaptation, or catalyst grant because of previous funding for an ADVANCE IT grant.

Due dates (all LOIs are accepted and can submit full proposal):

• LOI: 07/08/2023
• Full Proposal:11/01/2023
   

The NSF ADVANCE program goal is to broaden the implementation of evidence-based systemic change strategies that promote equity for STEM faculty in academic workplaces and the academic profession. The NSF ADVANCE program provides grants to enhance the systemic factors that support equity and inclusion and to mitigate the systemic factors that create inequities in the academic profession and workplaces.

Partnership Track 

The Partnership* track supports projects designed to result in the regional or national diffusion and/or scale-up of evidence-based systemic change strategies. Partnership projects are expected to involve two or more partners. Partnership projects must be designed to have a significant reach to individuals and/or organizations with evidence-based systemic change strategies to enhance equity for STEM faculty in academic workplaces and the academic profession. Individuals and organizations may include, but are not limited to, academic administrators, academic staff in relevant positions (such as human resource officers, institutional research directors, equal opportunity officers, and Title VII and Title IX officers), STEM faculty and leaders, editors and publishers, STEM professional societies, non-profit institutions of higher education, and STEM research funders. The proposer(s) must explain the significance of the reach in the proposal. Describe the intended reach of the project in numbers and percentages as well as the impact of the project in terms of the expected systemic, cultural and/or climatic change. This will be different depending on the systemic inequity issues that are being addressed, the population(s) of interest, and the proposed strategies.

*Opportunity for ADVANCE Adaptation and Partnership Proposers to Collaborate with other Projects Initiated with NSF Funds

ADVANCE Adaptation and Partnership projects are encouraged to propose a mutually beneficial collaboration with one or more projects initiated with NSF funds (NSF-initiated projects). These NSF-initiated projects can be within or outside the institution(s) participating in the proposed ADVANCE project and must fall into one of the following categories:

• Systemic and institutional transformation projects: the institutional change track in the Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) and the Institutional and Community Transformation track in the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE): EDU programs.
• NSF INCLUDES National Network: The NSF INCLUDES National Network includes the Coordination Hub, Alliances, Design and Development Launch Pilots, planning grants, and conference projects.
• STEM graduate education projects: such as Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP), Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE), CyberCorps (R): Scholarship for Service (SFS), and National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT).

ADVANCE Adaptation and Partnership projects that propose a collaboration may request up to an additional $250,000 over the life of the project. The additional funds are intended to support additional work to align systemic change and institutional transformation efforts particularly those impacting STEM faculty and to share equity and intersectional perspectives with other NSF projects. The funds are not intended for direct support to students, postdoctoral trainees, or faculty to do their STEM research or educational programs. The additional funds could cover costs such as travel and staff time, implementing collaborative activities, and the participation of additional individuals in ADVANCE project activities or the activities of the partner. NSF-initiated projects eligible for collaboration must be on-going: either currently funded by NSF or sustained with non-NSF funds. Letter(s) of collaboration from the NSF-initiated project representative(s) should be included in the supplementary documents.

No applicants // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

Duplicate or Multiple Submissions – duplicate or multiple submissions are not allowed. NIFA will disqualify both applications if an applicant submits multiple applications that are duplicative or substantially overlapping to NIFA programs within the same fiscal year.

The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) is America’s flagship competitive grants program that provides funding for fundamental and applied research, education, and extension projects in the food and agricultural sciences. In 2022, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) requests applications for the AFRI’s Education and Workforce Development program areas to support:
1. professional development opportunities for K-14 educational professionals;
2. non-formal education that cultivates food and agricultural interest in youth;
3. workforce training at community, junior, and technical colleges;
4. training of undergraduate students in research and extension;
5. fellowships for predoctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars; and
6. special workforce development topics


Food and Agricultural Non-Formal Education (FANE) - A7801
Program Area Priority: 
Major advances in agricultural productivity and rural prosperity in the past have resulted from transformative technologies such as breeding tools and strategies, mechanization, and prudent use of agrochemicals. There are several emerging technologies that hold a similar promise. This program area priority will support content development and activities for non-formal education to foster development of technology-savvy youth. Projects must develop activities that cultivate interest and competencies in STEM and in food and agricultural sciences supported by the six Farm Bill Priority areas of AFRI. Data science, including artificial intelligence, automation, and robotics as well as gene editing, and biotechnology will be supported in this program area priority.

Food and Agricultural Non-formal Education (FANE) applications must address the following:

a. Develop content and activities to enhance youth’s understanding of gene editing, biotechnology, data science, artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, and other technologies that enhance the food and agricultural enterprise and prepares them to help meet the needs of the future workforce through enhanced non-formal education modules.

b. Develop outreach materials that clearly communicate the demonstrated benefits of agricultural technologies and biotechnology.

c. Should complement and build upon programs that have successfully demonstrated positive youth development strategies and outcomes (i.e., 4-H programming, Agriculture in the Classroom, FDA’s Agricultural Biotechnology Education and Outreach Initiative, etc.).

d. Involve youth in the design, execution, and evaluation of activities that lead to the development of consumer-friendly content that builds public confidence in the safe use of biotechnology in agriculture and the food system.

No applicants // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

The overarching goal of this R25 program is to support educational activities that complement and/or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs. To accomplish the stated over-arching goal, this FOA will support creative educational activities with a primary focus on:

• Courses for Skills Development: For example, courses and programs that use a team-based design approach which incorporates health equity, universal design (the purposeful design of products and environments to be useable by people of varying abilities and characteristics), design concepts early in educational activities, interaction between design students at different career/education levels, and state-of-the-art best practices (such as multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary education, the regulatory pathway and other issues related to the commercialization of medical devices), and further enhances these with novel creative and/or ground-breaking approaches and activities which will be implemented and evaluated with the goal of disseminating the outcomes for the benefit of the larger biomedical engineering education community. Programs may also include a clinical immersion experience that enhances skills and experiences in needs finding, communication across disciplines (including with healthcare providers, patients, caregivers, and/or communities), ideation coupled with frequent clinical/user feedback, and/or small projects to address minor, immediately solvable needs.
• NIBIB Statement of Interest: NIBIB interests include the development and integration of advanced bioengineering, sensing, imaging, and computational technologies for the improvement of human health and medical care. With this FOA, in addition to the goals described above NIBIB especially encourages courses and programs that incorporate the following topics: 1) Expanding the design perspective by designing for low resource settings; 2) Expanding the clinical immersion perspective by incorporating community-based engagement or emphasizing problem driven solutions; and, 3) Expanding the team perspective by including students from disciplines such as nursing, computer engineering, data science, and/or public health, as well as different education levels.

Applications are encouraged from institutions that propose to establish new or to enhance existing team-based design courses or programs in undergraduate biomedical engineering departments or other degree-granting programs with biomedical engineering tracks/minors. This FOA targets the education of undergraduate biomedical engineering/bioengineering students in a team-based environment. Health equity and universal design topics must be integrated throughout the educational activities. While current best practices such as multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary education, introduction to the regulatory pathway and other issues related to the commercialization of medical devices, and clinical immersion remain encouraged components of a strong BME program, this FOA also challenges institutions to propose other novel, innovative and/or ground-breaking activities that can form the basis of the next generation of biomedical engineering design education.

No applicants // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

NIFA requests applications for the Higher Education Challenge (HEC) Grants Program for FY 2022 to enable colleges and universities to provide the quality of education necessary to produce baccalaureate or higher degree level graduates capable of strengthening the nation’s food and agricultural scientific and professional workforce.Specifically, applications submitted to this grants program must state how the funded project will address the HEC Program Goals:

1. To strengthen institutional capacities, including curriculum, faculty, scientific instrumentation, instruction delivery systems, and student recruitment and retention, to respond to identified State, regional, national, or international educational needs in the food and agricultural sciences, or in rural economic, community, and business development;
2. To attract and support undergraduate and graduate students in order to educate the students in national need areas of the food and agricultural sciences, or in rural economic, community, and business development;
3. To facilitate cooperative initiatives between two or more eligible institutions, or between eligible institutions and units of State government or organizations in the private sector, to maximize the development and use of resources such as faculty, facilities, and equipment to improve food and agricultural sciences teaching programs, or teaching programs emphasizing rural economic, community, and business development;
4.  To design and implement food and agricultural programs, or programs emphasizing rural economic, community, and business development, to build teaching, research, and extension capacity at colleges and universities having significant minority enrollments;
5.  To conduct undergraduate scholarship programs to meet national and international needs for training food and agricultural scientists and professionals, or professionals in rural economic, community, and business development; and
6. To increase the number and diversity of students who will pursue and complete a postsecondary degree in the food and agricultural sciences.
7. To enhance the quality of instruction for baccalaureate degrees, master’s degrees, and first professional degrees in veterinary sciences, in order to help meet current and future workforce needs in the food and agricultural sciences.
8. To conduct graduate and postdoctoral fellowship programs to attract highly promising individuals to research or teaching careers in the food and agricultural sciences.

Grant Types

1. Planning Activity: Planning Activity Grants support meetings that bring together food and agricultural educators to identify education/teaching needs, update information, or advance an area of education/teaching. Support for a limited number of meetings covering subject matter encompassed by this solicitation will be considered for partial or, if modest, total support. Individual planning activity grants must not exceed $30,000 for up to three years and are not renewable. Indirect costs are not permitted on Planning Activity grant awards. Planning Activity Grants may be used to facilitate strategic planning session(s) required of faculty, industry, professional association, community leaders, or other necessary participants for the specific purpose of developing a formal plan leading to a subsequent submission of a Collaborative Grant as described herein. A Planning Activity grant application may not be submitted in the same year for which a Collaborative Grant application for the same project is also submitted.
    
2. Standard Grant: Standard Grants support targeted original education/teaching projects. An eligible, individual institution, independent branch campus, or branch institution of a State system may submit a grant application for project activities to be undertaken principally on behalf of its own students or faculty, and to be managed primarily by its own personnel. The applicant executes the project without the requirement of sharing grant funds with other project partners. Applicants may request up to $150,000 (total, not per year) for a Standard Grant application.
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3. Collaborative Grants: Collaborative Grants support projects with at least one additional partner or a multi-partner approach to enhance education/teaching programs. Collaborative Grants should build linkages to generate a critical mass of expertise, skill, and technology to address education/teaching programs related to the food and agricultural sciences. Grants can reduce duplication of efforts and/or build capacity and should be organized and led by a strong applicant with documented project management knowledge and skills to organize and carry out the initiative.

• Collaborative Grant Type 1 (CG1) (Applicant + One Partner): Applicants may request up to $300,000 (total, not per year) for a CG1 project. In this type of project, the applicant executes the project with assistance from one additional partner. The partners must share grant funds. Specifically, the applicant institution will transfer at least one- half of the awarded funds to the other institution participating in the project.
   
• Collaborative Grant Type 2 (CG2) (Applicant + Two or more Partners): Applicants may request up to $750,000 (total, not per year) for a CG2 project. The applicant executes the project with assistance from at least two additional partners. The additional partners must share grant funds. The applicant institution/organization submitting a CG2 proposal must retain at least 30 per cent, but not more than 70 percent of the awarded funds and no cooperating entity may receive less than 10 percent of awarded funds. A CG2 project differs from a CG1 in project scope and impact. CG2 projects must support a multi- partner approach to solving a major state or regional challenge in food and agricultural sciences education at the baccalaureate, masters or DVM level. CG2 projects are characterized by multiple partners (each providing a specific expertise) organized and led by a strong applicant with documented project management knowledge and skills to organize and carry out the initiative.

No applicants // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

Match Required – Applicants MUST provide matching contributions at minimum on a dollar-for-dollar basis for all Federal funds awarded under the MBT.

The primary goal and objective of the MBT program is to support the discovery and implementation of practical pest management alternatives to methyl bromide. The MBT program seeks to solve pest problems in key agricultural production and post-harvest management systems, processing facilities, and transport systems for which methyl bromide has been withdrawn or withdrawal is imminent.
 

Project Types:

1. Integrated projects focus on research for new alternatives and extension to encourage adoption and implementation of methyl bromide alternatives.
   
   Integrated project applications must identify and incorporate both research and extension goals into the proposed project. As a general guideline, no more than two thirds of the project’s budget should be devoted to either function. Extension efforts, such as field demonstrations, grower trials, workshops, and distributed information, should result in commercial awareness, understanding, and adoption of new technology and alternatives to methyl bromide fumigation. Economic analysis of the proposed new strategy must be an integral part of the project.
   
    
2. Extension-Only projects increase levels of adoption and implementation of pest management strategies by producers and growers.
   
   Extension-only projects facilitate the adoption and implementation of practices that will result in effective management of pests without the use of methyl bromide and will lead to measurable behavior changes in the identified audience or stakeholder group. Project proposals may include development of extension materials and information delivery systems for outreach efforts, conducting field-scale or on-farm demonstrations, or delivery of IPM extension outreach, and training.
   
   
   Recurrence of Opportunity: This call is repeated once a year.

H. Wilson


NIFA requests applications for the FSOP for fiscal year (FY) 2023 to develop and implement food safety training, education, extension, outreach and technical assistance projects that address the needs of owners and operators of small to mid-sized farms, beginning farmers, socially-disadvantaged farmers (7 CFR § 760.107) small processors, veteran farmers or ranchers, or small fresh fruit and vegetable merchant wholesalers.

This RFA will solicit proposals for three project types:

1) Community Outreach Projects (award request: $80,000 - $150,000) - An additional $150,000 may be requested for Collaborative Engagement Supplements, for a total budget request of up to $300,000.

2) Collaborative Education and Training Projects (award request: $200,000 - $400,000) - An additional $150,000 may be requested for Collaborative Engagement Supplements, for a total budget request of up to $550,000.

3) Technical Assistance – Grant Writing Skills Projects (award request: $75,000 - $150,000) – An additional $150,000 may be requested for Collaborative Engagement Supplement, for a total budget request of up to $300,000.

No applicants // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

An entity may only submit one Concept Paper and one Full Application for each topic area of this FOA. UofA is only eligible for Topic Area 2: Smart Grid Grants

The BIL is a once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure, designed to modernize and upgrade American infrastructure to enhance U.S. competitiveness, driving the creation of good-paying union jobs, tackling the climate crisis, and ensuring stronger access to economic, environmental, and other benefits for disadvantaged communities (DACs). 

This FOA seeks applications to address these three goals:
1. Transform community, regional, interregional, and national resilience, including in consideration of future shifts in generation and load
2. Catalyze and leverage private sector and non-federal public capital for impactful technology and infrastructure deployment
3. Advance community benefits

Topic Area 2: Smart Grid Grants (40107)
Objectives Topic Area 2 seeks to deploy and catalyze technology solutions that increase the flexibility, efficiency, reliability, and resilience of the electric power system, with particular focus on enhancing the system’s capabilities to meet the following objectives:

• increase the capacity of transmission facilities or the capability of the transmission system to reliably transfer increased amounts of electric energy; 
• prevent faults that may lead to wildfires or other system disturbances;
• integrate variable renewable energy resources at the transmission and distribution levels; and, 
• facilitate the aggregation and integration (edge-computing) of electric vehicles and other grid-edge devices or electrified loads.

E. Corral
E. Madenci
A. Craig

P. Satam (Systems and Industrial Engineering)

This solicitation is a reissue of NSF 22-574 with a new external deadline. NSF has an institutional limit of one full proposal per institution.

The overarching goal of this solicitation is to democratize access to NSF’s advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) ecosystem and ensure fair and equitable access to resources, services, and expertise by strengthening how Cyberinfrastructure Professionals (CIP) function in this ecosystem. It aims to achieve this by (1) deepening the integration of CIPs into the research enterprise, and (2) fostering innovative and scalable education, training, and development of instructional materials, to address emerging needs and unresolved bottlenecks in CIP workforce development. Specifically, this solicitation seeks to nurture, grow and recognize the national CIP [1] workforce that is essential for creating, utilizing and supporting advanced CI to enable and potentially transform fundamental science and engineering (S&E) research and education and contribute to the Nation's overall economic competitiveness and security. Together, the principal investigators (PIs), technology platforms, tools, and expert CIP workforce supported by this solicitation operate as an interdependent ecosystem wherein S&E research and education thrive. This solicitation will support NSF’s advanced CI ecosystem with a scalable, agile, diverse, and sustainable network of CIPs that can ensure broad adoption of advanced CI resources and expert services including platforms, tools, methods, software, data, and networks for research communities, to catalyze major research advances, and to enhance researchers' abilities to lead the development of new CI.

All projects are expected to clearly articulate how they address essential community needs, will provide resources that will be widely available to and usable by the research community, and will broaden participation from underrepresented groups. Prospective PIs are strongly encouraged to contact the Cognizant Program Officers in CISE/OAC and in the participating directorate/division relevant to the proposal to ascertain whether the focus and budget of their proposed activities are appropriate for this solicitation. Such consultations should be completed at least one month before the submission deadline. PIs should include the names of the Cognizant Program Officers consulted in a Single Copy Document as described in Section V.A. Proposal Preparation Instructions. The intent of the SCIPE program is to encourage collaboration between CI and S&E domain disciplines. (For this purpose, units of CISE other than OAC are considered domain disciplines.) To ensure relevance to community needs and to facilitate adoption, those proposals of interest to one or more domain divisions must include at least one PI/co-PI with expertise relevant to the targeted research discipline. All proposals shall include at least one PI/co-PI with expertise pertinent to OAC.

The project description should explicitly address the following additional items with emphasis suitable to the proposed work and goal(s) of the solicitation (note that this information will also be employed as additional solicitation-specific review criteria; see Section VI.A. for details):

1. Broadening Adoption of Advanced CI infrastructure and methods;
2. Integration with the Computational Science Support Network (CSSN);
3. Challenges recognizing and democratizing research CIP workforce development;
4. Building scalable and sustainable communities of CIP;
5. Recruitment and evaluation; and
6. "Collective Impact" Strategy: Coordination network and Backbone organization (or an alternative strategy).

No applicants // Limit: 1* // Tickets Available: 1 

*UA may submit one proposal under the Research Partnerships track. There is no institutional limitation on the Technology Translation track.

If you don’t have a demonstrated and substantial industry relationship as required for a PFI submission, please reach out to Brian Adair or Lindsay Ridpath, to help develop those connections so that your proposal is competitive. PFI proposals are accepted three times per year and you may be better served by strengthening your industry relationship and waiting for the next cycle.


The Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) Program within the Division of Translational Impacts (TI) offers researchers from all disciplines of science and engineering funded by NSF the opportunity to perform translational research and technology development, catalyze partnerships and accelerate the transition of discoveries from the laboratory to the marketplace for societal benefit.

The Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) track seeks to achieve the same goals as the PFI-TT track by supporting instead complex, multi-faceted technology development projects that are typically beyond the scope of a single researcher or institution and require a multi-organizational, interdisciplinary, synergistic collaboration. A PFI-RP project requires the creation of partnerships between academic researchers and third-party organizations such as industry, non-academic research organizations, federal laboratories, public or non-profit technology transfer organizations or other universities. Such partnerships are needed to conduct use-inspired research on a stand-alone larger project toward commercialization and societal impact. In the absence of such synergistic partnership, the project’s likelihood for success would be minimal.

The intended outcomes of both PFI-TT and PFI-RP tracks are: a) the commercialization of new intellectual property derived from NSF-funded research outputs; b) the creation of new or broader collaborations with industry (including increased corporate sponsored research); c) the licensing of NSF-funded research outputs to third party corporations or to start-up companies funded by a PFI team; and d) the training of future innovation and entrepreneurship leaders.


 

The please be aware of important revisions in the PFI program recently announced in solicitation NSF 23-538, as outlined below:

NSF Lineage Requirement
Innovation Corps (NSF I-CorpsTM) Teams awards no longer convey the lineage required to submit a PFI proposal.
All proposals submitted to the PFI program must meet a lineage requirement by having NSF-supported research results in any field of science and engineering: Principal Investigator (PI) or a co-PI must have had an NSF award that ended no more than seven (7) years prior to the full proposal deadline date or be a current NSF award recipient. The proposed technology development project must be derived from the research results and/or discoveries from this underlying NSF award.

Award Information
The funding amounts in both tracks of the PFI program have significantly increased. Specifically:

• PFI-Technology Translation (PFI-TT) projects will be funded for up to $550,000 for 18-24 months per award; and

• PFI-Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) projects will be funded for up to $1,000,000 for 36 months.