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The Environmental Chemical Sciences (ECS) Program supports basic research in chemistry that promotes the understanding of natural and anthropogenic chemical processes in our environment.  Projects supported by this program enable fundamentally new avenues of basic research and transformative technologies. The program is particularly interested in studying molecular phenomena on surfaces and interfaces in order to understand the inherently complex and heterogeneous environment.  Projects utilize advanced experimental, modeling and computational approaches, as well as developing new approaches.  Topics include studies of environmental surfaces and interfaces under laboratory conditions, the fundamental properties of water and water solutions important in environmental processes, dissolution, composition, origin and behavior of molecular scale systems under a variety of naturally occurring environmental conditions, chemical reactivity of synthetic nanoparticles and their molecular level interactions with the environment, and application of theoretical models and computational approaches to discover and predict environmental phenomena at the molecular scale.

The Environmental Chemical Sciences (ECS) Program supports basic research in chemistry that promotes the understanding of natural and anthropogenic chemical processes in our environment.  Projects supported by this program enable fundamentally new avenues of basic research and transformative technologies. The program is particularly interested in studying molecular phenomena on surfaces and interfaces in order to understand the inherently complex and heterogeneous environment.  Projects utilize advanced experimental, modeling and computational approaches, as well as developing new approaches.  Topics include studies of environmental surfaces and interfaces under laboratory conditions, the fundamental properties of water and water solutions important in environmental processes, dissolution, composition, origin and behavior of molecular scale systems under a variety of naturally occurring environmental conditions, chemical reactivity of synthetic nanoparticles and their molecular level interactions with the environment, and application of theoretical models and computational approaches to discover and predict environmental phenomena at the molecular scale.

The Understanding the Rules of Life: Microbiome Theory and Mechanisms (URoL:MTM) program is an integrative collaborationacross Directorates and Offices within the National Science Foundation. The objective of URoL:MTM is to understand and establish the theory and mechanisms that govern the structure and function of microbiomes, a collection of microbes in a specific habitat/environment. This may include but is not limited to host-associated microbiomes, such as those with humans and other organisms, where i) the microbiome impacts host physiology, behavior, development, and fitness; ii) the host influences the metabolic activity, dynamics and evolution of the microbiome, and iii) the environment (biological, chemical, physical, and social) influences and is influenced by both the host and the microbiome. Recent progress has transformed our ability to identify and catalogue the microbes present in a given environment and measure multiple aspects ofbiological, chemical, physical, and social environments that affect the interactions among the members of the microbiome, the host, and/or habitat. Much descriptive and correlative work has been performed on many microbiome systems, particularly those in the human, soil, aquatic, and built environments. This research has resulted in new hypotheses about the microbiome's contributions to potential system function or dysfunction. The current challenge is to integrate the wide range of accumulated data and information and build on them to develop new causal/mechanistic models or theories of interactions and interdependencies across scales and systems.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), through its Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, seeks applications for research on how pollution affects human health in the context of the total environment - built, natural, and social environments interacting together with inherent characteristics and interactions. Proposed research should develop and test innovative models or impact assessment approaches to examine causal relationships of chemical pollutants and health effects with modifying interactions among the variables representing all of the major stressors and factors involved in a person's life. Proposals that integrate a diverse field of disciplines (social science, economics, epidemiology, engineering, environmental science, biology, statistics, toxicology, chemistry, etc.) to address the complexity of the total environment research problem are highly recommended.

The Environmental Chemical Sciences (ECS) Program supports basic research in chemistry that promotes the understanding of natural and anthropogenic chemical processes in our environment. Projects supported by this program enable fundamentally new avenues of basic research and transformative technologies. The program is particularly interested in studying molecular phenomena on surfaces and interfaces in order to understand the inherently complex and heterogeneous environment. Projects utilize advanced experimental, modeling and computational approaches, as well as developing new approaches. Topics include studies of environmental surfaces and interfaces under laboratory conditions, the fundamental properties of water and water solutions important in environmental processes, dissolution, composition, origin and behavior of molecular scale systems under a variety of naturally occurring environmental conditions, chemical reactivity of synthetic nanoparticles and their molecular level interactions with the environment, and application of theoretical models and computational approaches to discover and predict environmental phenomena at the molecular scale.The ECS program supports research in basic chemical aspects of our environment. Programs in the Biological Sciences, Engineering and Geosciences Directorates as well as other federal agencies address other aspects such as field studies.

The Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET) will consider proposals for collaborative funding with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the Water Environment & Reuse Foundation (WE&RF) [formerly the Water Environment Research Foundation], and/or the Water Research Foundation (WRF). For a proposal to be considered for collaborative funding, the proposal must be submitted to the appropriate NSF-CBET program as an unsolicited proposal during the CBET unsolicited submission window, which is October 1, 2016 - October 20, 2016. The same dates will apply in future years. Proposals will be reviewed as part of the unsolicited program(s). Proposals must follow guidelines for the CBET program to which they are submitted. Proposals will be evaluated according to the NSF criteria of intellectual merit and broader impacts.

The Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET) will consider proposals for collaborative funding with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the Water Environment & Reuse Foundation (WE&RF) [formerly the Water Environment Research Foundation], and/or the Water Research Foundation (WRF). For a proposal to be considered for collaborative funding, the proposal must be submitted to the appropriate NSF-CBET program as an unsolicited proposal during the CBET unsolicited submission window, which is October 1, 2016 - October 20, 2016. The same dates will apply in future years. Proposals will be reviewed as part of the unsolicited program(s). Proposals must follow guidelines for the CBET program to which they are submitted. Proposals will be evaluated according to the NSF criteria of intellectual merit and broader impacts.

In 2010, NSF established the Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES)1 investment area to lay the research foundation for decision capabilities and technologies aimed at mitigating and adapting to environmental changes that threaten sustainability. Some SEES investments advanced a systems-based approach to understanding, predicting, and reacting to stress upon, and changes in, the linked natural, social, and built environments. In this context, the importance of understanding the interconnected and interdependent systems involving food, energy, and water (FEW) has emerged. The NSF aims to specifically focus on advancing knowledge of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; the production and use of fertilizers for food production; and the detection, separation, and reclamation/recycling of nitrogen- and phosphorus-containing species in and from complex aqueous environments.

In 2010, NSF established the Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES)1 investment area to lay the research foundation for decision capabilities and technologies aimed at mitigating and adapting to environmental changes that threaten sustainability. Some SEES investments advanced a systems-based approach to understanding, predicting, and reacting to stress upon, and changes in, the linked natural, social, and built environments. In this context, the importance of understanding the interconnected and interdependent systems involving food, energy, and water (FEW) has emerged. The NSF aims to specifically focus on advancing knowledge of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; the production and use of fertilizers for food production; and the detection, separation, and reclamation/recycling of nitrogen- and phosphorus-containing species in and from complex aqueous environments.

The Program is pleased to announce that it is seeking proposals for funding to support forensic and biometric research and its application. The requested proposals should focus on DFBA activities and needs of the Program's other customers (AFMES, DC3, JPAC-CIL). Forensic research proposals should focus on the creation of new and improved field or laboratory functional capabilities that result in faster, more robust, more informative, less costly, or less labor-intensive recognition, identification, collection, preservation, and/or analysis of forensic evidence. Biometric research proposals should contribute to biometric applications or operations, including military functions such as combat identification (friend, foe, or neutral), offensive operations (intelligence support to targeting), force protection (physical access control), detention operations, civil-military operations (track target members of a population), personnel recovery and identification, and recognition and recovery of human remains. Proposals that will assist the DoD in achieving these goals are solicited, particularly proposals involving the development of equipment that is portable, sustainable, and useful in an expeditionary or field environment. The expeditionary and field environments require systems that are lightweight, portable, inexpensive, fast, and capable of operating in extreme environments of temperature, dust, humidity, etc. The systems must also be capable of secure data communications.

The Hydrologic Sciences Program focuses on the fluxes of water in the environment that constitute the water cycle as well as the mass and energy transport function of the water cycle in the environment.  The Program supports studying processes from rainfall to runoff to infiltration and streamflow; evaporation and transpiration; as well as the flow of water in soils and aquifers and the transport of suspended, dissolved and colloidal components.  Water is seen as the mode of coupling among various components of the environment and emphasis is placed on how the coupling is enabled by the water cycle and how it functions as a process.  The Hydrologic Sciences Program retains a strong focus on linking the fluxes of water and the components carried by water across the boundaries between various interacting components of the terrestrial system and the mechanisms by which these fluxes co-organize over a variety of timescales and/or alter the fundamentals of the interacting components.  The Program is also interested in how water interacts with the solid phase, the landscape and the ecosystem as well as how such interactions and couplings are altered by land use and climate change.  Studies may address aqueous geochemistry and solid phase interactions as well as physical, chemical, and biological processes as coupled to water transport. These studies commonly involve expertise from basic sciences and mathematics, and proposals may require joint review with related programs.  The Hydrologic Sciences Program will also consider some synthesis activities.

The goal of the Environmental Engineering program is to support transformative research which applies scientific and engineering principles to avoid or minimize solid, liquid, and gaseous discharges, resulting from human activities on land, inland and coastal waters, and air, while promoting resource and energy conservation and recovery.  The program also fosters cutting-edge scientific research for identifying, evaluating, and monitoring the waste assimilative capacity of the natural environment and for removing or reducing contaminants from polluted air, water, and soils. Any proposal investigating sensors, materials or devices that does not integrate these products with an environmental engineering activity or area of research may be returned without review.

The goal of the Environmental Engineering program is to support transformative research which applies scientific and engineering principles to avoid or minimize solid, liquid, and gaseous discharges, resulting from human activities on land, inland and coastal waters, and air, while promoting resource and energy conservation and recovery.  The program also fosters cutting-edge scientific research for identifying, evaluating, and monitoring the waste assimilative capacity of the natural environment and for removing or reducing contaminants from polluted air, water, and soils. Any proposal investigating sensors, materials or devices that does not integrate these products with an environmental engineering activity or area of research may be returned without review.

The goal of the Combustion and Fire Systems program is to generate cleaner global and local environments, enhance public safety, improve energy and homeland security, and enable more efficient energy conversion and manufacturing.  The program endeavors to create fundamental scientific knowledge and engineering solutions that are needed to develop useful combustion applications and for mitigating the effects of fire.  The program aims to identify and understand the controlling basic principles and use that knowledge to create predictive capabilities for designing and optimizing practical combustion devices. Additional outcomes of interest for this program include: broad-based tools - experimental, theoretical, and computational - which can be applied to a variety of problems in combustion and fire systems; science and technology for clean and efficient generation of power, both stationary and mobile; combustion science and technology for energy-efficient manufacturing; research that enables clean global and local environments (reduction in combustion generated pollutants); enhanced public safety and homeland security through research on fire growth, inhibition and suppression; and education and training of an innovative workforce for power, transportation, and manufacturing industries.

The Biotechnology, Biochemical, and Biomass Engineering (BBBE) program supports fundamental engineering research that advances the understanding of cellular and biomolecular processes (in vivo, in vitro, and/or ex vivo) and eventually leads to the development of enabling technology and/or applications in support of the biopharmaceutical, biotechnology, and bioenergy industries, or with applications in health or the environment.  Quantitative assessments of bioprocesses are considered vital to successful research projects in the BBBE program.  Fundamental to many research projects in this area is the understanding of how biomolecules and cells interact in their environment, and how those molecular level interactions lead to changes in structure, function, phenotype, and/or behavior.  The program encourages proposals that address emerging research areas and technologies that effectively integrate knowledge and practices from different disciplines, and effectively incorporate ongoing research into educational activities. Research projects of particular interest in BBBE include, but are not limited to: Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology Quantitative systems biotechnology Tissue engineering and stem cell culture technologies Protein engineering/protein design Development of novel "omics" tools for biotechnology applications

The Biotechnology, Biochemical, and Biomass Engineering (BBBE) program supports fundamental engineering research that advances the understanding of cellular and biomolecular processes (in vivo, in vitro, and/or ex vivo) and eventually leads to the development of enabling technology and/or applications in support of the biopharmaceutical, biotechnology, and bioenergy industries, or with applications in health or the environment.  Quantitative assessments of bioprocesses are considered vital to successful research projects in the BBBE program.  Fundamental to many research projects in this area is the understanding of how biomolecules and cells interact in their environment, and how those molecular level interactions lead to changes in structure, function, phenotype, and/or behavior.  The program encourages proposals that address emerging research areas and technologies that effectively integrate knowledge and practices from different disciplines, and effectively incorporate ongoing research into educational activities. Research projects of particular interest in BBBE include, but are not limited to: Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology Quantitative systems biotechnology Tissue engineering and stem cell culture technologies Protein engineering/protein design Development of novel "omics" tools for biotechnology applications

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) invites qualified investigators from domestic institutions of higher education to apply to the Superfund Research Program (SRP) R01 Individual Research Project grant program. The mission of the NIEHS is to discover how the environment affects people in order to promote healthier lives. The NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP) (http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/srp/) was established under the Superfund Amendment Reauthorization Act (SARA) Section 311(a), which authorizes NIEHS to implement a university-based program of basic research for the development of: 1) advanced techniques for the detection, assessment, and evaluation of the effect of hazardous substances on human health; 2) methods to assess the risks to human health presented by hazardous substances; 3) methods and technologies to detect hazardous substances in the environment; and 4) basic biological, chemical, and physical methods to reduce the amount and/or toxicity of hazardous substances. SRP's broad scope, as dictated by the SARA mandates, allows NIEHS to support scientific research to address the wide array of scientific uncertainties facing the national Superfund program utilizing biomedical as well as environmental science and engineering approaches. Research supported by the SRP uses mechanistic science as a foundation and, in keeping with the broad research themes of the program mandates, the SRP promotes an interdisciplinary approach to develop solutions for the safe management of hazardous substances with the ultimate goal of improving public health.

The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation is inviting applications for its Postdoctoral Program in Environmental Chemistry, which provides a principal investigator with an award of $120,000 over two years to appoint a postdoctoral fellow in environmental chemistry. The program aims to support innovative fundamental research in the chemical sciences or engineering related to the environment. Examples include but are not limited to the chemistry associated with the climate, the atmosphere, aquatic or marine settings, toxicology, soil, or groundwater. Also of interest are chemistry-related energy research (renewable sources, sequestration, etc.), and new or green approaches to chemical synthesis and processing, both with a clearly stated relation to the environment.

NASA and the Sloan Foundation have agreed through a Space Act Agreement to work in parallel for a common purpose: to sponsor studies designed to provide insight into the microbiome of the built environment of the ISS that will advance our knowledge and understanding of human-built habitats on Earth, to enhance ISS utilization, and to inform the development of future space exploration vehicles that are occupied by humans. NASA is soliciting, through this Appendix, research applications for Postdoctoral Fellowships from early career scientists to design experiments that utilize a NASA collection of ISS microbial isolates collected over a decade or more to help understand better how microbial communities colonize, adapt, and evolve on the ISS. All proposals must propose experiments that utilize these microbial isolates collected from the ISS that have been archived at the Johnson Space Center.

The Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering (BBE) program supports fundamental engineering research that advances the understanding of cellular and biomolecular processes in engineering biology and eventually leads to the development of enabling technology for advanced manufacturing and/or applications in support of the biopharmaceutical, biotechnology, and bioenergy industries, or with applications in health or the environment.  A quantitative treatment of biological and engineering problems of biological processes is considered vital to successful research projects in the BBE program.

The Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering (BBE) program supports fundamental engineering research that advances the understanding of cellular and biomolecular processes in engineering biology and eventually leads to the development of enabling technology for advanced manufacturing and/or applications in support of the biopharmaceutical, biotechnology, and bioenergy industries, or with applications in health or the environment.  A quantitative treatment of biological and engineering problems of biological processes is considered vital to successful research projects in the BBE program.

The new National Ocean Policy calls for actions to improve understanding of and capacity to respond to ocean acidification, recognizing the potential adverse impacts of an acidifying sea upon marine ecosystems. The effects of ocean acidification could significantly affect strategies for developing practices towards the sustainability of ocean resources. Basic research concerning the nature, extent and impact of ocean acidification on oceanic environments in the past, present and future is required. Research challenges include: Understanding the geochemistry and biogeochemistry of ocean acidification; Understanding how ocean acidification interacts with biological, chemical and physical processes at the organismal level, and how such interactions impact the structure and function of ecosystems, e.g. through life histories, adaptive evolution, food webs, biogeochemical cycling, and interactions with other changes in the ocean (e.g., temperature, stratification, circulation patterns); and Understanding how the earth system history informs our understanding of the effects of ocean acidification on the present day and future ocean. The Ocean Acidification program is in its fifth and anticipated last year of competition. We expect this to be the last solicitation specifically targeting Ocean Acidification.

The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) announced today that it plans to award up to $105 million to support research consortia investigating the effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill mitigation, oil detection, characterization, and remediation technologies.  The funding under this program, known as RFP-IV, will support research in the Gulf of Mexico conducted by consortia of four or more institutions between 2015 and 2017.  It is anticipated that each team will be funded at levels between $1 million and $7.5 million per year. 

Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) is an NSF-wide program that supports international activities across all NSF supported disciplines. The primary goal of PIRE is to support high quality projects in which advances in research and education could not occur without international collaboration. PIRE seeks to catalyze a higher level of international engagement in the U.S. science and engineering community. International partnerships are essential to addressing critical science and engineering problems. In the global context, U.S. researchers and educators must be able to operate effectively in teams with partners from different national environments and cultural backgrounds. PIRE promotes excellence in science and engineering through international collaboration and facilitates development of a diverse, globally-engaged, U.S. science and engineering workforce.

As "The Army's Sensor Developer," NVESD researches and develops cutting edge technology, with the goal of exceeding U.S. Soldier requirements, and allowing an asymmetrical advantage in changing battlefield environments. This BAA solicits proposals against a broad range of night vision technologies which support the Warfighter and challenges of Asymmetric Warfare. The technologies have been divided into three (3) sections: Science and Technology; Ground Combat Systems; and Modeling and Simulation.