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The world needs more effective, functional and affordable technology solutions to clinical medical problems. With the BMEidea competition, the nation's leading competition for biomedical and bioengineering students, we challenge students to pioneer a health-related technology that addresses a real clinical need. Competition entries are judged on: Technical, economic and regulatory feasibility Contribution to human health and quality of life Technological innovation Potential for commercialization Strong BMEidea submissions define a problem and demonstrate the development of a device, product, or technology designed to solve it. BMEidea awards are presented each year at the MD&M East Medical Device Trade Show and Convention. Competition winners will receive cash awards as well as access to resources to be used for further development and commercialization of their products. In addition, the first place institution will get to display the BMEidea trophy in their winning department for the year.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages applications for Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats (CounterACT) Research Centers of Excellence (U54s). The mission of the CounterACT program is to foster and support research and development of new and improved therapeutics for chemical threats. Chemical threats are toxic chemicals that could be used in a terrorist attack or accidentally released from industrial production, storage or shipping. They include traditional chemical warfare agents, toxic industrial chemicals, pharmaceutical-based agents, and pesticides. The scope of the research includes target and candidate identification and characterization, through candidate optimization and demonstration of in vivo efficacy consistent with the product's intended use in humans. For applicants submitting U54 renewal applications, research under this FOA should culminate in an optimized lead compound ready for advanced development. The Centers will contain at least three research projects supported by an administrative core, up to three optional scientific cores, and a research education core. Each research project must include milestones that create discrete go or no-go decision points in a progressive translational study plan.

The CZI Neurodegeneration Challenge Network has three goals: (1) to make fundamental advances toward understanding neurodegeneration; (2) to bring new ideas and talent to the field of neurodegeneration; and (3) to encourage a new type of interdisciplinary collaborative research involving scientists, clinicians and engineers. We invite applications to join the Neurodegeneration Challenge Network through two RFA mechanisms: CZI Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Awards: five-year investigator grants for early career academic investigators, with an emphasis on those who are new to the field of neurodegeneration. We seek to empower investigators to pursue bold ideas and to take risks within a supportive and collaborative environment. Awardees will benefit from mentorship support, as well as professional development, training and network opportunities, and practical career guidance to help them navigate this early stage of their careers. It is with great pleasure that we name this Award in memory of Dr. Ben Barres. Through his research career and his life and humanity, Ben embodied both the spirit and the scientific aims of this Award and the Challenge Network approach. CZI Collaborative Science Awards: three-year grants for small group interdisciplinary collaborations. At least one member of the collaboration should be a physician with active clinical engagement in an area relevant to the proposal. These grants are aimed to support innovative, bold, high risk/high impact projects at the interface of basic and disease biology. The scope of these collaborations should focus on foundational science (as opposed to translation and clinical application), aligned with clinical context.

CISE's Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) supports research and education projects that develop new knowledge in three core programs: The Cyber-Human Systems (CHS) program; The Information Integration and Informatics (III) program; and The Robust Intelligence (RI) program. Proposals in the area of computer graphics and visualization may be submitted to any of the three core programs described above.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) seeks applications for the design and development of technologies to monitor health or deliver care in a real-time, accessible, effective, and minimally obtrusive way for older adults with a chronic heart, lung, blood, or sleep (HLBS) condition. These technologies may be novel sensor or monitoring systems, home-use point-of-care devices, home or mobile therapy or rehabilitation tools, or information systems and should have the goal of fostering healthy and independent living for aging adults with HLBS conditions. The development of such technologies should incorporate specific human factors for aging adults including disabilities, mild impairments, as well as chronic HLBS conditions. Technology usability for these populations must be incorporated early in the development of the design. Usability considerations include but are not limited to patient-facing displays, hearing and visual impairments, tactile limitations, literacy, and design preferences between men and women. These improvements in technology design could yield more accurate and earlier detection of changes that may interfere with healthy and independent living for older adults.

A well-prepared, innovative science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce is crucial to the Nation's prosperity and security. Future generations of STEM professionals are a key sector of this workforce, especially in the critical scientific areas described in the Big Ideas for Future NSF Investments. To accelerate progress in these areas, the next generation of STEM professionals will need to master new knowledge and skills, collaborate across disciplines, and shape the future of the human-technology interface in the workplace. As a result, NSF recognizes the need to support development of and research on effective educational approaches that can position the future STEM workforce to make bold advances in these Big Ideas.

A grand challenge in computing is the creation of machines that can proactively interpret and learn from data in real time, solve unfamiliar problems using what they have learned, and operate with the energy efficiency of the human brain. While complex machine-learning algorithms and advanced electronic hardware (henceforth referred to as 'hardware') that can support large-scale learning have been realized in recent years and support applications such as speech recognition and computer vision, emerging computing challenges require real-time learning, prediction, and automated decision-making in diverse domains such as autonomous vehicles, military applications, healthcare informatics and business analytics.

In today's increasingly networked, distributed, and asynchronous world, cybersecurity involves hardware, software, networks, data, people, and integration with the physical world. Society's overwhelming reliance on this complex cyberspace, however, has exposed its fragility and vulnerabilities that defy existing cyber-defense measures; corporations, agencies, national infrastructure and individuals continue to suffer cyber-attacks. Achieving a truly secure cyberspace requires addressing both challenging scientific and engineering problems involving many components of a system, and vulnerabilities that stem from human behaviors and choices. Examining the fundamentals of security and privacy as a multidisciplinary subject can lead to fundamentally new ways to design, build and operate cyber systems, protect existing infrastructure, and motivate and educate individuals about cybersecurity.

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, for the purposes of this solicitation, 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, for the purposes of this solicitation, 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. Initially the program will limit the field to these four areas that stand to directly benefit from a grounding in formal methods: computer networks, cyber-human systems, machine learning, and operating/distributed systems. However other field(s) may emerge as priority areas for the program in future years, subject to the availability of funds.

The Acquisition Research Program (ARP) conducts and supports research in academic disciplines that bear on public procurement policy and management. These include economics, finance, financial management, information systems, organization theory, operations management, human resources management, risk management, and marketing, as well as the traditional public procurement areas such as contracting, program/project management, logistics, test and evaluation and systems engineering management. The ARP is interested in innovative proposals that will provide unclassified and non-proprietary findings suitable for publication in open scholarly literature. Studies of government processes, systems, or policies should also expand the body of knowledge and theory of processes, systems, or policies outside the Government. Offerors bear prime responsibility for the design, management, direction and conduct of research. Researchers should exercise judgment and original thought toward attaining the goals within broad parameters of the research areas proposed and the resources provided. Offerors are encouraged to be creative in the selection of the technical and management processes and approaches and consider the greatest and broadest impact possible.

The Smart and Autonomous Systems (S&AS) program focuses on Intelligent Physical Systems (IPS) that are capable of robust, long-term autonomy requiring minimal or no human operator intervention in the face of uncertain, unanticipated, and dynamically changing situations. IPS are systems that combine perception, cognition, communication, and actuation to operate in the physical world. Examples include, but are not limited to, robotic platforms, self-driving vehicles, underwater exploration vehicles, and smart grids. Most current IPS operate in pre-programmed ways and in a limited variety of contexts. They are largely incapable of handling novel situations, or of even understanding when they are outside their areas of expertise. To achieve robust, long-term autonomy, however, future IPS need to be aware of their capabilities and limitations and to adapt their behaviors to compensate for limitations and/or changing conditions.

CIFAR invites exceptional early career researchers to join CIFAR's global network of 370 researchers from 18 countries who together are pursuing answers to some of the most complex challenges facing the world today. The CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars program provides funding, skills training, mentorship, and opportunities to collaborate with outstanding colleagues from diverse disciplines to position scholars as leaders and agents of change within academia and beyond. CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars receive: * $100,000 CDN in unrestricted research support * A two-year membership to a CIFAR research program, with outstanding research leaders from across disciplines. Learn what it's like to be a CIFAR Fellow * Specialized leadership and communication skills training Applicants can be from anywhere in the world, must hold a PhD (or equivalent) and be within the first five years of a full-time academic appointment. Please note that postdoctoral fellows are not eligible to apply to the program. Scholars' research interests must be aligned with the themes of an eligible CIFAR research program.  In 2018, the eligible programs are: * Azrieli Program in Brain, Mind & Consciousness * Bio-Inspired Solar Energy * Gravity & the Extreme Universe * Humans & the Microbiome * Molecular Architecture of Life

The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) announces an open competition for organizations interested in submitting applications for projects that develop and pilot the use of a blockchain solution to solve worker rights challenges.

Humanity depends upon the Earth's physical resources and natural systems for food, energy, and water (FEW). However, both the physical resources and the FEW systems are under increasing stress. It is becoming imperative that we determine how society can best integrate social, ecological, physical and built environments to provide for growing demand for food, energy and water in the short term while also maintaining appropriate ecosystem services for the future. Known stressors in FEW systems include governance challenges, population growth and migration, land use change, climate variability, and uneven resource distribution.The interconnections and interdependencies associated with the FEW Nexus pose research grand challenges. To meet these grand challenges, there is a critical need for research that enables new means of adapting societal use of FEW systems. The INFEWS program seeks to support research that conceptualizes FEW systems broadly and inclusively, incorporating social and behavioral processes (such as decision making and governance), physical processes (such as built infrastructure and new technologies for more efficient resource utilization), natural processes (such as biogeochemical and hydrologic cycles), biological processes (such as agroecosystem structure and productivity), and cyber-components (such as sensing, networking, computation and visualization for decision-making and assessment).

CISE’s Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) supports research and education projects that develop new knowledge in three core programs: The Cyber-Human Systems(CHS) program; The Information Integration and Informatics (III)program; and The Robust Intelligence (RI) program. Proposals in the area of computer graphics and visualization may be submitted to anyof the three core programs described above. Proposers are invited to submit proposals in three project classes, which are defined as follows: Small Projects - up to $500,000 total budget with durations up to three years; Medium Projects - $500,001 to $1,200,000 total budget with durations up to four years; and Large Projects - $1,200,001 to $3,000,000 total budget with durations up to five years. A more complete description of the three project classes can be found in Section II. Program Description of this document.

Field corn production makes incredible contributions to human nutrition as a primary source of feed for cattle, hogs, and poultry; to cleaner air and reduced greenhouse gases as the source of ethanol fuel; and to the economy.

In today's increasingly networked, distributed, and asynchronous world, cybersecurity involves hardware, software, networks, data, people, and integration with the physical world. However, society's overwhelming reliance on this complex cyberspace has exposed its fragility and vulnerabilities: corporations, agencies, national infrastructure and individuals have been victims of cyber-attacks. Achieving a truly secure cyberspace requires addressing both challenging scientific and engineering problems involving many components of a system, and vulnerabilities that arise from human behaviors and choices. Examining the fundamentals of security and privacy as a multidisciplinary subject can lead to fundamentally new ways to design, build and operate cyber systems, protect existing infrastructure, and motivate and educate individuals about cybersecurity.

The English Speaking Union of the United States each year sponsors a travel grant for study or research providing a stipend of up to $2,000. This competition is open to qualified under-graduate and post-graduate students, faculty, and others involved in academic pursuits that are in accord with the goal of the English Speaking Union of promoting education and understanding among the English speaking peoples of the world. The grant is designed to assist worthy individuals who are active in the fields of Business, the Humanities, Science and Engineering, Liberal, Fine or Applied Arts and who wish to study or conduct research either in the United States or in one of the countries of the British Commonwealth.

) multiplex biosensing platforms that exceed the performance of current state-of-the-art devices; 2) novel transduction principles, mechanisms and sensor designs suitable for measurement in practical matrix and sample-preparation-free approaches, including error-free detection of pathogens and toxins in food matrices, waterborne pathogens, parasites, toxins, biomarkers in body fluids, neuron chemicals, and others that improve human condition; 3) biosensors that enable measurement of biomolecular interactions in their native states, transmembrane transport, intracellular transport and reactions, and other biological phenomena; 4) biosensing performance optimization for specific health applications such as point-of-care testing and personalized health monitoring; and 5) miniaturization of biosensors for lab-on-a-chip and cell/organ-on-a-chip applications to enable measurement of biological properties and functions of cell/tissues in vitro. The Biosensors Program does not encourage proposals addressing surface functionalization and modulation of bio-recognition molecules, development of basic chemical mechanisms for biosensing applications, circuit design for signal processing and amplification, computational modeling, and microfluidics for sample separation and filtration.

The Engineering of Biomedical Systems (EBMS)program is part of the Engineering Biology and Health cluster, which also includes 1) Biophotonics; 2) Biosensing; 3) Cellular and Biochemical Engineering; and 4) Disability and Rehabilitation Engineering. The goal of theEBMS program is to provide research opportunities for creating discovery-level and transformative projects that integrate engineering and life sciences to solve biomedical problems and serve humanity in the long term.EBMS projects must be at the interface of engineering and biomedical sciences. They are expected to use an engineering framework (for example, design or modeling) that supports increased understanding of physiological or pathophysiological processes. The project must include objectives that advance both engineering and biomedical sciences. EMBS projects should focus on high-impact, transformative methods and technologies -- especially those that potentially will have a broad impact on biomedical challenges. Projects may include: methods, models, and enabling tools applied to understand or control living systems; fundamental improvements in deriving information from cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems; or new approaches to the design of systems that include both living and non-living components for eventual medical use in the long term. TheEBMS programsupports fundamental and transformative research in the following areas of biomedical engineering: