Group items tagged

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.

The mission of BTO is to foster, demonstrate, and transition breakthrough fundamental research, discoveries, and applications that integrate biology, engineering, computer science, mathematics, and the physical sciences. BTO's investment portfolio goes far beyond life sciences applications in medicine to include areas of research such as human-machine interfaces, microbes as production platforms, and deep exploration of the impact of evolving ecologies and environments on U.S. readiness and capabilities. BTO's programs operate across a wide range of scales, from individual cells to the warfighter to global ecosystems. BTO responds to the urgent and long-term needs of the Department of Defense (DoD) and addresses national security priorities.

Research may be supported that is directed toward the characterization, restoration, rehabilitation, and/or substitution of human functional ability or cognition, or to the interaction between persons with disabilities and their environment. Areas of particular interest are neuroengineering and rehabilitation robotics. The program will also consider research in the areas of: new engineering approaches to understand normal or pathological motion, both as a target for rehabilitation and as a means to characterize motion related to disability or injury; or understanding injury at the tissue or system-level such that interventions may be developed to reduce the impact of trauma and subsequent disability. Emphasis is placed on significant advancement of fundamental engineering knowledge that facilitates transformative outcomes. We discourage applications that propose incremental improvements. Innovative proposals outside of the above specific interest areas may be considered. However, prior to submission, it is recommended that the PI contact the Program Director to avoid the possibility of the proposal being returned without review.

The Engineering Design and Systems Engineering (EDSE) program supports fundamental research into the basic processes and phenomena of engineering design and systems engineering. The program seeks proposals leading to improved understanding about how processes, organizational structure, social interactions, strategic decision making, and other factors impact success in the planning and execution of engineering design and systems engineering projects. It also supports advances pertaining to engineering design and systems engineering in areas that include, but are not limited to, decision making under uncertainty, including preference and demand modeling; problem decomposition and decision delegation; applications of reverse game theory (mechanism design); computer-aided design; design representation; system performance modeling and prediction; design optimization; uncertainty quantification; domain- or concern-specific design methods; and advanced computational techniques for supporting effective human cognition, decision making, and collaboration. Competitive proposals for novel methods will include a plan to evaluate rigorously the effectiveness and performance of the proposed approach. The EDSE program encourages multidisciplinary collaborations of experts in design and systems engineering with experts in other domains. Of particular interest is research on the design of engineering material systems that leverages the unique aspects of a particular material system to realize advanced design methods that are driven by performance metrics and incorporate processing/manufacturing considerations. The EDSE program does not support the development of ad-hoc approaches that lack grounding in theory, nor does it support design activities that do not advance scientific knowledge about engineering design or systems engineering. Prospective investigators are encouraged to discuss research ideas and project scope with the Program Director in advance of proposal preparation and

The Engineering for Civil Infrastructure (ECI) program supports fundamental research that will shape the future of our nation's constructed civil infrastructure, subjected to and interacting with the natural environment, to meet the needs of humans. In this context, research driven by radical rethinking of traditional civil infrastructure in response to emerging technological innovations, changing population demographics, and evolving societal needs is encouraged. The ECI program focuses on the physical infrastructure, such as the soil-foundation-structure-envelope-nonstructural building system; geostructures; and underground facilities. It seeks proposals that advance knowledge and methodologies within geotechnical, structural, architectural, materials, coastal, and construction engineering, especially that include collaboration with researchers from other fields, including, for example, biomimetics, bioinspired design, advanced computation, data science, materials science, additive manufacturing, robotics, and control theory.

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. This solicitation limits the field to the following areas that stand to directly benefit from a grounding in formal methods: computer networks, cyber-human systems, distributed /operating systems, embedded systems, and machine learning. Other field(s) may emerge as priority areas for the program in future years, subject to the availability of funds.

TheEngineering of Biomedical Systems program is part of the Engineering Biology and Health cluster, which also includes: 1) the Biophotonics program; 2) the Biosensing program; 3) the Cellular and Biochemical Engineering program; and 4) the Disability and Rehabilitation Engineering program. The goal of theEngineering of Biomedical Systems (EBMS) program is to provide opportunities for creating fundamental and transformative research projects that integrate engineering and life sciences to solve biomedical problems and serve humanity in the long term. Projects are expected to use an engineering framework (for example, design or modeling) that supports increased understanding of physiological or pathophysiological processes. Projects must include objectives that advance both engineering and biomedical sciences. 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.

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 goals of the SaTC program are aligned with theNational Science and Technology Council's (NSTC) Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Strategic Plan (RDSP) and National Privacy Research Strategy (NPRS) to protect and preserve the growing social and economic benefits of cyber systems while ensuring security and privacy.

Scientific machine learning is a core component of artificial intelligence and a computational technology that can be trained, with scientific data, to augment or automate human skills. Major research advances will be enabled by harnessing DOE investments in massive amounts of scientific data, software for predictive models and algorithms, high-performance computing (HPC) and networking platforms, and the national workforce. The crosscutting nature of machine learning and AI provides strong motivation for formulating a prioritized research agenda. Scientific Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (Scientific AI/ML) will have broad use and transformative effects across the research communities supported by DOE. Accordingly, a 2019 Basic Research Needs workshop report identified six Priority Research Directions. The first three PRDs describe foundational research themes that are common to the development of Scientific AI/ML methods and correspond to the need for domain-awareness, interpretability, and robustness. The other three PRDs describe capability research themes and correspond to the three major use cases of massive scientific data analysis (PRD #4), machine learning-enhanced

To that end, it is inviting concept papers for its grants program. Through the program, grants will be awarded in support of proposals and programs in which the chief purpose is to advance engineering for the welfare of humanity. Proposals must be consistent with the mission of UEF and its priorities for giving, which include programs focused on diversity in the profession, K-12 education, and engineering ethics, safety, security, and leadership. Preference will be given to proposals for programs that are innovative and aim to integrate multiple fields and subspecialties of engineering; proposals for programs that include outreach to the community; collaborative proposals submitted on behalf of a group; and proposals that specify that grant funds will not be used to offset existing staff salaries.

The mission of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is to identify and pursue high-risk, high-payoff research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines and to transform these initiatives into disruptive technologies for U.S. national security. In support of this mission, the DSO Office-wide BAA invites proposers to submit innovative basic or applied research concepts that explore Physical and Natural Systems, Human-Machine and Social Systems, and/or Math and Computational Systems through the lens of one or more of the following technical domains: Complexity Engineering, Science of Design, Noosphere, Fundamental Limits, and New Foundations. Each of these domains is described below and includes a list of example research topics that highlight several (but not all) potential areas of interest. Proposals must investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances. DSO is explicitly not interested in approaches or technologies that primarily result in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice.

The mission of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is to identify and pursue high-risk, high-payoff research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines and to transform these initiatives into disruptive technologies for U.S. national security. In support of this mission, the DSO Office-wide BAA invites proposers to submit innovative basic or applied research concepts that explore Physical and Natural Systems, Human-Machine and Social Systems, and/or Math and Computational Systems through the lens of one or more of the following technical domains: Complexity Engineering, Science of Design, Noosphere, Fundamental Limits, and New Foundations. Proposals must investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances. DSO is explicitly not interested in approaches or technologies that primarily result in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice.

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. 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.

The purpose of this Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is to encourage applications that will develop and validate tools and resources to facilitate the detailed analysis of brain microconnectivity. Novel and augmented techniques are sought that will ultimately be broadly accessible to the neuroscience community for the interrogation of microconnectivity in healthy and diseased brains of model organisms and humans. Development of technologies that will significantly drive down the cost of connectomics would enable routine mapping of the microconnectivity on the same individuals that have been analyzed physiologically, or to compare normal and pathological tissues in substantial numbers of multiple individuals to assess variability. Advancements in both electron microscopy (EM) and super resolution light microscopic approaches are sought. Applications that propose to develop approaches that break through existing technical barriers to substantially improve current capabilities are highly encouraged. Proof-of-principle demonstrations and/or reference datasets enabling future development are welcome, as are improved approaches for automated segmentation and analysis strategies of neuronal structures in EM images.

This grant program supports: (1) training students for Master's and doctoral degrees in food, agricultural and natural resource sciences, and; (2) Special International Study or Thesis/Dissertation Research Travel Allowances (IRTA) for eligible USDA NNF beneficiaries. Awards are specifically intended to support traineeship programs that engage outstanding students to pursue and complete their degrees in USDA mission areas. Applicants provide clarity about the philosophy of their graduate training, and relevance to USDA mission sciences, NIFA priorities and national science education policies and statistics. Applications are being solicited from institutions that confer a graduate degree in at least one of the following Targeted Expertise Shortage Areas: 1) animal and plant production; 2) forest resources; 3) agricultural educators and communicators; 4) agricultural management and economics; 5) food science and human nutrition; 6) sciences for agricultural biosecurity; and 7) training in integrative biosciences for sustainable food and agricultural systems.

Solicits applied research in support of HRP goals and objectives. This response area is Appendix A of the Human Exploration Research Opportunities (HERO) NRA (80JSC017N0001). Proposals are solicited by NASA in the area of Space Radiobiology Tissue Sharing: Research Proposing the Use of Archived Tissue Samples or Samples from Ongoing Experiments. Appendix A Step-1 proposals are due September 12, 2017. Invited Appendix A Step-2 proposals are due December 5, 2017. All categories of United States (U.S.) institutions are eligible to submit proposals in response to the NRA. Principal Investigators may collaborate with universities, Federal Government laboratories, the private sector, and state and local government laboratories. In all such arrangements, the applying entity is expected to be responsible for administering the project according to the management approach presented in the proposal. NASA's policy is to conduct research with non-U.S. organizations on a cooperative, no exchange-of-funds basis.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) seeks to develop and test the next generation of interventions delivered through mobile health (mHealth) technology to improve diagnosis, linkage to care, retention in care, and viral suppression among youth living with human immunodeficiency virus (YLWH). This FOA supports planning for a clinical trial and can include a small pilot clinical trial that a) incorporates emerging and cutting edge technologies to enhance outcomes along the HIV care continuum, b) supports real-time clinical decision making, and c) facilitates effective long-term management of HIV. Critical to this FOA, proposed research should identify specific patient outcomes along the HIV care continuum that are expected to improve from technological approaches.

The purpose of the BRAG Program is to support the generation of new information that will assist Federal regulatory agencies in making science-based decisions about the environmental effects of introducing organisms genetically engineered (GE) by recombinant nucleic acid techniques. Such organisms can include plants, microorganisms (including fungi, bacteria, and viruses), arthropods, fish, birds, mammals, and other animals excluding humans. Investigations of effects on both managed and natural environments are relevant. The BRAG program accomplishes its purpose by providing Federal regulatory agencies with relevant scientific information.

We are seeking proposals for new research that will support and enhance the activities of the Consortium for the Valuation of Applications Benefits Linked to Earth Science (VALUABLES), a new consortium at RFF made possible through a partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). VALUABLES is focused on advancing innovative uses of existing methods and developing new techniques for valuing the information provided by Earth observations, especially those derived from satellites and aircraft. Any area in which Earth observations play a role may be addressed, including applications relating to human health, air quality, water resources, ecosystem services, natural disasters, food security and agriculture, wildland fires, energy, urban development, and transportation and infrastructure. However, the use of remotely sensed data must be a key component of the analysis. In addition, we especially welcome proposals that focus on evaluating the socioeconomic impacts of applications of Earth observations for solving pressing societal problems and that quantify, in monetary terms, the value of Earth observations in specific applications. In so doing, proposals should clearly describe how information from Earth observations makes improvements to decision making and the value of those improvements. Applicants may propose to quantify the private and/or social benefits of applications of Earth observations, including nonmarket benefits. The Macauley Award is open to researchers at US-based universities and nonprofit research institutions. Interdisciplinary research teams are preferred, and teams that involve both economists and Earth scientists are particularly encouraged.

The Nano-Biosensing program is part of the Engineering Biology and Health cluster, which includes also 1) Cellular and Biochemical Engineering; 2) Engineering of Biomedical Systems; 3) Biophotonics; and 4) Disability and Rehabilitation Engineering. The Nano-Biosensing program supports fundamental engineering research on devices and methods for measurement and quantification of biological analytes. Proposals that incorporate emerging nanotechnology methods are especially encouraged. Areas of interest include: Multi-purpose sensor platforms that exceed the performance of current state-of-the-art devices. Novel transduction principles, mechanisms and sensor designs suitable for measurement in practical matrix and sample-preparation-free approaches. These include error-free detection of pathogens and toxins in food matrices, waterborne pathogens, parasites, toxins, biomarkers in body fluids, and others that improve human condition. Nano-biosensors that enable measurement of biomolecular interactions in their native states, transmembrane transport, intracellular transport and reactions, and other biological phenomena. Studies that examine intracellular measurements must include discussion on the significance of the measurement.