Group items tagged

The landscape of jobs and work is changing at unprecedented speed, driven by the development of new technologies that have moved from the factory floor to an expanding array of knowledge and service occupations. These changes promise benefits to the Nation in the creation of new industries and occupations, increased productivity, opportunity for innovation, and sustained global leadership. But there are risks as well. Technological advances scale back the need for some workers, and in some cases, eliminate job sectors, with consequences to displaced workers who must adapt to emerging new technologies and the changing economy through retraining and reskilling. The Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier (FW-HTF) is one of 10 new and far-sighted Big Ideas for Future Investments announced by NSF in 2016. NSF aims to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the changing landscape of jobs and work by supporting convergent research to: understand and develop the human-technology partnership; design new technologies to augment human performance; illuminate the emerging socio-technological landscape and understand the risks and benefits of new technologies; and foster lifelong and pervasive learning with technology. In order to be nimble and responsive to new opportunities and challenges as they are recognized, focus areas for the FW-HTF solicitation, the centerpiece of the FW-HTF Big Idea, may change from year to year.

The Chemical Measurement and Imaging Program supports research focusing on chemically-relevant measurement science and chemical imaging, targeting both improved understanding of new and existing methods and development of innovative approaches and instruments.  Research areas include but are not limited to sampling and separation science; electroanalytical chemistry; spectrometry; and frequency- and time-domain spectroscopy.  Development of new chemical imaging and measurement tools probing chemical properties and processes are supported.  Innovations enabling the monitoring and imaging of chemical and electronic processes across a wide range of time and length scales are also relevant.  New approaches to data analysis and interpretation (including chemometrics) are encouraged.  Proposals addressing established techniques must seek improved understanding and/or innovative approaches to substantially broaden applicability.  Sensor-related proposals should address new approaches to chemical sensing, with prospects for broad utility and significant enhancement of current capabilities.

The Chemical Measurement and Imaging Program supports research focusing on chemically-relevant measurement science and chemical imaging, targeting both improved understanding of new and existing methods and development of innovative approaches and instruments.  Research areas include but are not limited to sampling and separation science; electroanalytical chemistry; spectrometry; and frequency- and time-domain spectroscopy.  Development of new chemical imaging and measurement tools probing chemical properties and processes are supported.  Innovations enabling the monitoring and imaging of chemical and electronic processes across a wide range of time and length scales are also relevant.  New approaches to data analysis and interpretation (including chemometrics) are encouraged.  Proposals addressing established techniques must seek improved understanding and/or innovative approaches to substantially broaden applicability.  Sensor-related proposals should address new approaches to chemical sensing, with prospects for broad utility and significant enhancement of current capabilities.

The Exploiting Parallelism and Scalability (XPS) program aims to support groundbreaking research leading to a new era of parallel computing. Achieving the needed breakthroughs will require a collaborative effort among researchers representing all areas -- from services and applications down to the micro-architecture - and will be built on new concepts, theories, and foundational principles. New approaches to achieving scalable performance and usability need new abstract models and algorithms, new programming models and languages, and new hardware architectures, compilers, operating systems and run-time systems, and must exploit domain and application-specific knowledge. Research is also needed on energy efficiency, communication efficiency, and on enabling the division of effort between edge devices and clouds.

This FOA relates to one of the initiatives of the SPARC (Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions) Common Fund program titled: Use of Existing Market-Approved Technology for New Market Indications. By establishing effective public-private partnerships, this SPARC initiative allows supported investigators to have access to existing neuromodulation technology to explore new indications. A number of device manufacturers have entered into partnership agreements with the NIH to make their neuromodulation technology, consisting of implantable devices with recording and/or stimulation capabilities, available to SPARC's supported clinical investigators (see Device Portal for a list of companies and available technologies). The specific goal of this FOA is to promote the pre-clinical development of these technologies, in support of a new market indication, towards enabling an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) submission for a future pilot clinical study. Awarded projects of this FOA that fully reach their pre-clinical testing milestones will be eligible for further support, subject to a subsequent FOA, to conduct a pilot clinical study. The expectation is that these pilot clinical studies will provide the initial proof-of-principle demonstrations in humans that will motivate the additional studies needed in pursuing FDA approval as a labeled indication.

This FOA relates to one of the initiatives of the SPARC (Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions) Common Fund program titled: Use of Existing Market-Approved Technology for New Market Indications. By establishing effective public-private partnerships, this SPARC initiative allows supported investigators to have access to existing neuromodulation technology to explore new indications. A number of device manufacturers have entered into partnership agreements with the NIH to make their neuromodulation technology, consisting of implantable devices with recording and/or stimulation capabilities, available to SPARC's supported clinical investigators (see Device Portal for a list of companies and available technologies). The specific goal of this FOA is to promote the pre-clinical development of these technologies, in support of a new market indication, towards enabling an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) submission for a future pilot clinical study. Awarded projects of this FOA that fully reach their pre-clinical testing milestones will be eligible for further support, subject to a subsequent FOA, to conduct a pilot clinical study. The expectation is that these pilot clinical studies will provide the initial proof-of-principle demonstrations in humans that will motivate the additional studies needed in pursuing FDA approval as a labeled indication.

New Connections: Increasing Diversity of RWJF Programming is celebrating its 10th year of supporting research grants and career development opportunities for a network of more than 830 researchers from diverse, underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds. The program aims to expand the diversity of perspectives that inform RWJF programming and introduce new researchers to the Foundation to help address research and evaluation needs. New Connections is a career development program for early career researchers. Through grantmaking, mentorship, career development and networking, New Connections enhances the research capacity of its grantees and network members. The researchers in this program transcend disciplines (health; health care; social sciences; business; urban planning; architecture and engineering); work to build the case for a Culture of Health with strong qualitative and quantitative research skills; and produce and translate timely research results.

The landscape of jobs and work is changing at unprecedented speed, driven by the development of new technologies that have moved from the factory floor to an expanding array of knowledge and service occupations. These changes promise benefits to the Nation in the creation of new industries and occupations, increased productivity, opportunity for innovation, and sustained global leadership. But there are risks as well. Technological advances scale back the need for some workers, and in some cases, eliminate job sectors, with consequences to displaced workers who must adapt to emerging new technologies and the changing economy through retraining and reskilling. The Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier (FW-HTF) is one of 10 new and far-sighted Big Ideas for Future Investments announced by NSF in 2016.

The U. S. Air Force is seeking to reinvigorate and expand its NC3 capabilities, updating the capabilities of legacy systems and incorporating new platforms and communication systems. Toward this goal the Information Directorate is working closely with the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center and the Air Force Global Strike Command to define the art of the possible for future NC3 architectures and survivable and enduring communication systems. Each new NC3 capability also brings with it the potential to introduce new cyber vulnerabilities. Understanding these risks and their potential consequences can help the Air Force shape future operating concepts for the NC3 architecture.

The U. S. Air Force is seeking to reinvigorate and expand its NC3 capabilities, updating the capabilities of legacy systems and incorporating new platforms and communication systems. Toward this goal the Information Directorate is working closely with the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center and the Air Force Global Strike Command to define the art of the possible for future NC3 architectures and survivable and enduring communication systems. Each new NC3 capability also brings with it the potential to introduce new cyber vulnerabilities. Understanding these risks and their potential consequences can help the Air Force shape future operating concepts for the NC3 architecture.

There is a consensus across the many industries touched by our ubiquitous computing infrastructure that future performance improvements across the board are now severely limited by the amount of energy it takes to manipulate, store, and critically, transport data. While the limits and tradeoffs for this performance-energy crisis vary across the full range of application platforms, they have all reached a point at which evolutionary approaches to addressing this challenge are no longer adequate. Truly disruptive breakthroughs are now required, and not just from any one segment of the technology stack. Rather, due to the complexity of the challenges, revolutionary new approaches are needed at each level in the hierarchy. Furthermore, simultaneous co-optimization across all levels is essential for the creation of new, sustainable computing platforms. These simultaneous technical and organizational challenges have never been as complex or as critically important as they are now. The urgency of solving the multi-disciplinary technical challenges will require new methods of collaboration and organization among researchers. Therefore, a comprehensive and collaborative approach must be undertaken to maximize the potential for successfully identifying and implementing revolutionary solutions to break through the bottleneck of energy-constrained computational performance. Programmers, system architects, circuit designers, chip processing engineers, material scientists, and computational chemists must all explore these new paths together to co-design an optimal solution path.

nationally designated and highly visible corporate, non-profit, and federal research and development centers or laboratory facilities (hereafter referred to as Center(s)) to Ohio. The Industrial Research and Development Center Program will achieve this goal by enhancing and supplementing Ohio organizations' proposals for such Centers by providing funding that serves as cost share or matching dollars, thereby improving the competitiveness of the proposal and enhancing the potential for a Center being located in Ohio.   The specific goals and objectives of the Industrial Research and Development Center Program are to: ·         Secure new-to-Ohio research and development funding and facilities with "center" designations by their primary sponsor; ·         Increase the reputation and visibility of Ohio within selected fields of research and development that are aligned with Ohio Third Frontier technology focus areas; ·         Provide support for Centers that will conduct applied research, commercialize new technologies and innovations, support Ohio companies and their efforts to launch new, innovative products, and address competitiveness issues of industries that are strategically significant to Ohio. ·         Attract exceptional senior talent from industry and outside Ohio with demonstrated entrepreneurial qualities and attributes that integrates and aligns well to Center-driven, and their own, commercial outcomes and extended talent development; and, ·         Create new, high-tech jobs.

The mission of the Biomedical Engineering (BME) program is to provide opportunities to develop novel ideas into discovery-level and transformative projects that integrate engineering and life science principles in solving biomedical problems that serve humanity in the long-term.  The Biomedical Engineering (BME) program supports fundamental research in the following BME themes: Neural engineering (brain science, computational neuroscience, brain-computer interface, neurotech, cognitive engineering) Cellular biomechanics (motion, deformation, and forces in biological systems; how mechanical forces alter cell growth, differentiation, movement, signal transduction, transport, cell adhesion, cell cytoskeleton dynamics, cell-cell and cell-ECM interactions; genetically engineered stem cell differentiation with long-term impact in tissue repair and regenerative medicine) The BME projects must be at the interface of engineering and life sciences, and advance both engineering and life sciences.  The projects should focus on high impact transforming methods and technologies. The project should include methods, models and tools of understanding and controlling of living systems; fundamental improvements in deriving information from cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems; new approaches to the design of structures and materials for eventual medical use in the long-term; and new novel methods of reducing health care costs through new technologies. The projects should emphasize the advancement of fundamental engineering knowledge, possibly leading to the development of new methods and technologies in the long-term; and highlight multi-disciplinary nature, integrating engineering and the sciences. The long-term impact of the projects can be related to disease diagnosis and/or treatment, improved health care delivery, or product development.

The goals of the Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Processes and Systems (RIPS) solicitation are (1) to foster an interdisciplinary research community that discovers new knowledge for the design and operation of infrastructures as processes and services  (2) to enhance the understanding and design of interdependent critical infrastructure systems (ICIs) and processes that provide essential goods and services despite disruptions and failures from any cause, natural, technological, or malicious, and (3) to create the knowledge for innovation in ICIs to advance society with new goods and services. The objectives of this solicitation are: Create theoretical frameworks and multidisciplinary computational models of interdependent infrastructure systems, processes and services, capable of analytical prediction of complex behaviors, in response to system and policy changes. Synthesize new approaches to increase resilience, interoperations, performance, and readiness in ICIs. Understand organizational, social, psychological, legal, political and economic obstacles to improving ICI's, and identifying strategies for overcoming those obstacles. The RIPS solicitation seeks proposals with transformative ideas that will ensure ICIs services are effective, efficient, dependable, adaptable, resilient, safe, and secure.  Successful proposals are expected to study multiple infrastructures focusing on them as interdependent systems that deliver services, enabling a new interdisciplinary paradigm in infrastructure research.  Proposals that do not broadly integrate across the cyber-physical, engineering and social, behavioral and economic (SBE) sciences may be returned without review. 

The Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) Program supports the generation of extended time series of data to address important questions in evolutionary biology, ecology, and ecosystem science. Research areas include, but are not limited to, the effects of natural selection or other evolutionary processes on populations, communities, or ecosystems; the effects of interspecific interactions that vary over time and space; population or community dynamics for organisms that have extended life spans and long turnover times; feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes; pools of materials such as nutrients in soils that turn over at intermediate to longer time scales; and external forcing functions such as climatic cycles that operate over long return intervals. The Program intends to support decadal projects. Funding for an initial, 5-year period requires submission of a preliminary proposal and, if invited, submission of a full proposal that includes a 15-page project description. Proposals for the second five years of support (renewal proposals) are limited to an eight-page project description and do not require a preliminary proposal. Continuation of an LTREB project beyond an initial ten year award will require submission of a new preliminary proposal that presents a new decadal research plan.?? Successful LTREB proposals address three essential components: A Decadal Research Plan that clearly articulates important questions that cannot be addressed with data that have already been collected, but could be answered if ten additional years of data were collected. This plan is not a research timeline or management plan. It is a concise justification for ten additional years of support in order to advance understanding of key concepts, questions, or theories in environmental biology.Core Data: LTREB proposals require that the author has studied a particular phenomenon or process for at least six years up to the present or for long enough to gene

SOFIA is a near‐space observatory that returns to base after every flight. Therefore, unlike most space missions, its scientific instruments can be exchanged periodically to accommodate changing science requirements and to incorporate new technologies, which is a tremendous advantage over space-based observatories. A key part of the SOFIA project has always been to include an instrumentation program that would periodically introduce new technologies in order to enable new scientific frontiers to be explored. NASA is soliciting proposals for compelling science investigations that are enabled by the development of one or more new Science Instruments (SI) and/or upgrades to existing science instruments.

The Human Cell Atlas (HCA) is a global effort to create a reference map of all cell types in the human body. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the Helmsley Charitable Trust are pleased to announce continued support for the Human Cell Atlas by collaborating on two new funding mechanisms that the community can access through a single application portal. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative seeks to continue the work of the HCA community with a focus on interdisciplinary work and collaboration through the formation of 3 year Seed Networks. The Helmsley Charitable Trust welcomes applications that will construct a detailed atlas of the human gut. Project Specifications This Request for Applications (RFA) seeks to support the continued growth of nascent projects and to incubate new networks. The Seed Networks should generate new tools, open source analysis methods, and significant contributions of diverse data types to the Human Cell Atlas Data Coordination Platform. Applications should have a primary focus on the healthy tissues that will contribute to a reference atlas. Seed Networks Seed Networks should consist of at least three principal investigators, including at least one computational biologist or software engineer, together with additional computational biologists, engineers, experimental biologists, and/or physicians. CZI Seed Networks aim to support foundational tools and resources for the HCA and will not require a gut component in the application. CZI Seed Network Grants have four overarching scientific goals: - Build and support networks of collaborating scientists and engineers; - Contribution of high-quality data to v1.0 of the HCA; - Development of new technologies and benchmark data sets, particularly those anchored in spatial as well as molecular information; - Support of computational biology within the Human Cell Atlas community.

n 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a set of "Big Ideas," 10 bold, long-term research and process ideas that identify areas for future investment at the frontiers of science and engineering (seehttps://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/big_ideas/index.jsp). The Big Ideas represent unique opportunities to position our Nation at the cutting edge of global science and engineering leadership by bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives to support convergence research. As such, when responding to this solicitation, even though proposals must be submitted to the Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences/Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (MPS/OMA),once received, the proposals will be managed by a cross-disciplinary team of NSF Program Directors. The Quantum Idea Incubator for Transformational Advances in Quantum Systems (QII - TAQS) program is designed to support interdisciplinary teams that will explore highly innovative, original, and potentially transformative ideas for developing and applying quantum science, quantum computing, and quantum engineering. Proposals with the potential to deliver new concepts, new platforms, and/or new approaches that will accelerate the science, computing, and engineering of quantum technologies are encouraged. Breakthroughs in quantum sensing, quantum communications, quantum simulations, or quantum computing systems are anticipated.

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are engineered systems that are built from, and depend upon, the seamless integration of computation and physical components. Advances in CPS will enable capability, adaptability, scalability, resiliency, safety, security, and usability that will expand the horizons of these critical systems. CPS technologies are transforming the way people interact with engineered systems, just as the Internet has transformed the way people interact with information. New, smart CPS drive innovation and competition in a range of application domains including agriculture, aeronautics, building design, civil infrastructure, energy, environmental quality, healthcare and personalized medicine, manufacturing, and transportation. CPS are becoming data-rich enabling new and higher degrees of automation and autonomy. Traditional ideas in CPS research are being challenged by new concepts emerging from artificial intelligence and machine learning. The integration of artificial intelligence with CPS especially for real-time operation creates new research opportunities with major societal implications.

This FOA solicits new theories, computational models, and statistical tools to derive understanding of brain function from complex neuroscience data. Proposed tools could include the creation of new theories, ideas, and conceptual frameworks to organize/unify data and infer general principles of brain function; new computational models to develop testable hypotheses and design/drive experiments; and new mathematical and statistical methods to support or refute a stated hypothesis about brain function, and/or assist in detecting dynamical features and patterns in complex brain data. It is expected that the tools developed under this FOA will be made widely available to the neuroscience research community for their use and modification. Investigative studies should be limited to validity testing of the tools being developed.

The EBRC (Energetics Basic Research Center) is a basic research program initiated by the Combat Capabilities Development Command/Army Research Laboratory/ARO. It focuses on areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security. It seeks to increase the Army's intellectual capital in energetic materials (EM) and improve its ability to address future challenges. EBRC brings together universities, research institutions, companies, and individual scholars and supports multidisciplinary and cross-institutional projects addressing specific topic areas determined by the Department of the Army (DA). The EBRC aims to promote research in specific areas of EMs and to promote a candid and constructive relationship between DA and the energetics research community. The future Army is projected to be unable to achieve dominance in range and lethality due to inadequate energetic formulations and form factor limitations associated with current weapon systems. Basic research generates new knowledge that may be exploited to develop and deliver new materials and technologies that contribute to enhanced lethal effects at the system level as well as increased range and a smaller payload. These, in turn, enable space for larger, mission-critical systems, and shorter time-to-target ensuring Army battlefield dominance in Multi-Domain Operations. Army research must encompass new ways to expedite the discovery, design, and scale-up of new materials and concepts which when integrated into newly designed weapons components (e.g. additively manufactured high strength steels with pre-formed fragmentation patterns, and structural reactive materials) developed at ARL and across the Army and DoD communities, will deliver decisive weapons overmatch.

In September, Miami received notice from the government that our new F&A rates are: 44.5% for On Campus Organized Research 44.0% On Campus Sponsored Instruction 39.0% On Campus Other Sponsored Activities 26.0% Off Campus All Programs These rates are effective beginning September 1, 2014. Awards received beginning in September and all proposal submissions going forward will be required to use the new rates.

This Notice supersedes NOT-OD-15-024 about the NIH and AHRQ requirement for use of a new biosketch format and provides some latitude in the transition for those who have already been compiling biosketches for their large grant applications with deadlines in early in 2015. NIH and AHRQ encourages applicants to use the newly published biosketch format for all grant and cooperative agreement applications submitted for due dates on or after January 25, 2015, and will require use of the new format for applications submitted for due dates on or after May 25, 2015. Applicants may submit using the new biosketch format for due dates before January 25, 2015, if they wish.