Program Description: The worldwide growth of wireless communication, navigation, and telemetry has provided immense societal benefits including mobile broadband data, Internet of Things (IoT), mobile healthcare, and intelligent transportation systems. These and other applications call for innovations that can circumvent the challenges of radio spectrum scarcity and interference, and foster the growth of ubiquitous, high speed, low latency connectivity. Commercial applications like the above must operate in harmony with scientific uses of spectrum (e.g., radio astronomy, Earth and atmospheric sciences, and polar research) and other nationally vital spectrum-dependent services (e.g., weather prediction). The National Science Foundation (NSF) continues to support wireless spectrum research and the scientific uses of the electromagnetic spectrum through multiple programs that enable fast, accurate, dynamic coordination and usage of the limited spectrum resource. These programs have created an opportune ground to build and create a large center-based ecosystem for spectrum research, which is the target of this SII-Center program.

NSF’s goal is to promote transformative use and management of the electromagnetic spectrum, resulting in profound benefits for science and engineering, industry, and other national interests. The focus of a spectrum research SII-Center must chart out a trajectory to ensure United States leadership in future wireless technologies, systems, and applications in science and engineering through the efficient use and sharing of the radio spectrum. The SII-Center should also seek to foster scientific and technical collaboration. The establishment of an SII-Center will have a transformational impact on wireless spectrum research by serving as a connecting point for the biggest and most challenging questions in spectrum management that the nation is facing. The SII-Center is expected to educate and develop an agile workforce needed to support industries of the future which will rely heavily on wireless technologies.

Project Description: The CRI Irvington Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is CRI's longest-standing continuous program. Postdoctoral fellowships provide support to fund and train young immunologists and cancer immunologists at top universities and research centers around the world. Fellows work and continue their training under the guidance of a world-renowned immunologist, who mentors the fellow and prepares him or her for a productive and successful career in cancer immunology. Fellows receive up to $175,500 over three years to cover the cost of salary, insurance, and other research-related expenses, such as travel to conferences and meetings.

Project Description: The NSF Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (ECCS) supports enabling and transformative research at the nano, micro, and macro scales that fuels progress in engineering system applications with high societal impacts.

ECCS programs encompass novel electronic, photonic, and magnetic devices — and the integration of these devices into circuit and system environments, intelligent systems, control, and networks — for applications spanning communications and cyber technologies, energy and power, healthcare, environment, transportation, manufacturing, and other systems-related areas.

ECCS strongly emphasizes the integration of education into its research programs to ensure the preparation of a diverse and professionally skilled workforce. ECCS also strengthens its programs through links to other areas of engineering, science, industry, government, and international collaborations.

Division Programs

The Division has three program clusters, managed by teams of program directors, that reflect the increasing convergence of traditional disciplinary topics and the need for interdisciplinary approaches to emerging technological challenges.

• Electronics, Photonics and Magnetic Devices (EPMD)
• Communications, Circuits, and Sensing-Systems (CCSS)
• Energy, Power, Control and Networks (EPCN) (formerly EPAS)

Project Description: A new funding track, Partnerships for Documentary Linguistics Education (PADLE), is offered collaboratively by this program and the Documenting Endangered Languages program (DEL) in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE). The strand provides support for collaborations that will improve TCUP institutions' instructional capacity in documentary linguistics (descriptive linguistics, computational methodology, archiving and preservation); attract, retain and support TCUP students in internships and research endeavors deemed to be necessary for a complete curriculum offering; and engage partner universities to provide an academic grounding and a successful transition for students who wish to study or attain degrees in documentary linguistics.

Project Description: The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas.

Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. We recognize that earlycareer researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as a supportive academic community.

Awards are based on applicants’ potential to become influential researchers, as well as their plans to expand their expertise in new and significant ways. The application should make a cohesive argument for how the applicant will expand his or her expertise. The research plan should evolve in conjunction with the development of new expertise, and the mentoring plan should describe how the proposed mentors will support applicants in acquiring that expertise. Proposed research plans must address questions that are relevant to policy and practice in the Foundation’s focus areas.

Program Description: The Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) is designed to fulfill the mandate of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to promote scientific progress nationwide. EPSCoR jurisdictions that are eligible for RII competitions are listed in the RII Eligibility table, which can be found here. Through this program, NSF establishes partnerships with government, higher education, and industry that are designed to effect sustainable improvements in a jurisdiction's research infrastructure, Research and Development (R&D) capacity, and hence, its R&D competitiveness. One of the strategic goals of the EPSCoR program is to establish sustainable Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) professional development pathways that advance STEM workforce development.

RII Track-4 provides awards to build research capacity in institutions and transform the career trajectories of non-tenured investigators and to further develop their individual research potential through extended collaborative visits to the nation's premier private, governmental, or academic research centers. Through collaborative research visits at the host site, fellowship awardees will be able to learn new techniques, develop new collaborations or advance existing partnerships, benefit from access to unique equipment and facilities, and/or shift their research toward potentially transformative new directions The experiences gained through the fellowships are intended to have lasting impacts that will enhance the Fellows' research trajectories well beyond the award period. These benefits to the Fellows are also expected to in turn improve the research capacity of their institutions and jurisdictions more broadly. Those submitting proposals must either hold a non-tenured faculty appointment at an institution of higher education or an early-career career-track appointment at an eligible non-degree-granting institution.

Project Description: Fostering the growth of a globally competitive and diverse research workforce and advancing the scientific and innovation skills of the Nation is a strategic objective of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The Nation's global competitiveness depends critically on the readiness of the Nation's Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workforce and NSF seeks to continue to invest in programs that directly advance this workforce. As part of this effort, a supplemental funding opportunity is available in fiscal year FY 2020 to provide support for non-academic research internships for graduate students to support career opportunities in any sector of the U.S. economy. NSF currently invests in a number of graduate student preparedness activities and has historically encouraged principal investigators (PIs) to include such activities in research proposals to NSF. This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) describes new funding opportunities at NSF to ensure graduate students are well prepared for the 21st-century STEM workforce.

Program Description: The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to invite applications to participate in the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program which supports high quality translational science and clinical research locally, regionally and nationally and fosters innovation in research methods, training, and career development.

Project Description: Candidates must be faculty members who are eligible to serve as principal investigators engaged in research in the natural and physical sciences or engineering and must be within the first three years of their faculty careers. Disciplines that will be considered include physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, astronomy, computer science, earth science, ocean science, and all branches of engineering. Candidates engaged in research in the social sciences will not be considered. The Fellowship Program provides support for highly creative researchers early in their careers; faculty members who are well established and well-funded are less likely to receive the award. Packard Fellows are inquisitive, passionate scientists and engineers who take a creative approach to their research, dare to think big, and follow new ideas wherever they lead. The Foundation emphasizes support for innovative individual research that involves the Fellows, their students, and junior colleagues, rather than extensions or components of large-scale, ongoing research programs.

Project Description: This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is designed to support highly integrated research teams of three to six PD/PIs to address ambitious and challenging research questions that are important for the mission of NIGMS and are beyond the scope of one or two investigators. Collaborative program teams are expected to accomplish goals that require considerable synergy and managed team interactions. Project goals should not be achievable with a collection of individual efforts or projects. Teams are encouraged to consider far-reaching objectives that will produce major advances in their fields.

Applications that are mainly focused on the creation, expansion, and/or maintenance of community resources, creation of new technologies or infrastructure development are not appropriate for this FOA.