The GEOMM program supports fundamental research on the mechanical and engineering properties of geologic materials including natural, mechanically stabilized, and biologically or chemically modified soil and rock.  The program also addresses hydraulic, biological, chemical and thermal processes that affect the behavior of geologic materials.  Research at the micro-scale on soil-structure interaction and liquefaction are included in the scope of this program.  Support is provided for theoretical studies, constitutive and numerical modeling, laboratory, centrifuge, and field testing.  Cross-disciplinary and international collaborations are encouraged.

The GTE program supports fundamental research on geotechnical engineering aspects of civil infrastructure, such as site characterization, foundations, earth retaining systems, underground construction, excavations, tunneling, and drilling.  Also included in the program scope is research on geoenvironmental engineering; geotechnical engineering aspects of geothermal energy; life-cycle analysis of geostructures; geotechnical earthquake engineering that does not involve the use of George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) facilities; scour and erosion; and geohazards such as tsunamis, landslides, mudslides and debris flows.  The program does not support research related to natural resource exploration or recovery.  Emphasis is on issues of sustainability and resilience of civil infrastructure.  Cross-disciplinary and international collaborations are encouraged.

The MME program supports fundamental research leading to improved manufacturing machines and equipment, and their application in manufacturing processes.  Key goals of the program are to advance the transition of manufacturing from skill-based to knowledge-based activities, and to advance technologies that will enable the manufacturing sector to reduce its environmental and societal impacts.  A focus is on the advancement of manufacturing machines and related systems engineering that will enable energy manufacturing on a large scale.  The program also supports research on additive manufacturing machines and processes encompassing feature scales from microns to meters (nanometer scale additive manufacturing is supported under the Nanomanufacturing program).

The Engineering and Systems Design (ESD) program supports research leading to design theory and to tools and methods that enable implementation of the principles of design theory in the practice of design across the full spectrum of engineered products and systems. The program focus is on gaining an understanding of the basic processes and phenomena underlying a holistic, life-cycle view of design where the total system life-cycle context recognizes the need for advanced understanding of the identification and definition of preferences, analysis of alternatives, effective accommodation of uncertainty in decision-making, and the relationship between data and knowledge in a digitally-supported process and environment. The program funds advances in basic design theory, tools, and software to implement design theory and new design methods that span multiple domains, such as design for the environment, for manufacturability, and for systems. 28 28

The Sensors and Sensing System (SSS) program funds fundamental research on sensors and sensing systems.  Such fundamental research includes the discovery and characterization of new sensing modalities, fundamental theories for aggregation and analysis of sensed data, fundamentally new approaches for data transmission, and approaches for addressing uncertain and/or partial sensor data.  Innovative research in nonlinear prediction, filtering and estimation in the context of sensing systems is also considered in this program. 28 28

The SMM program supports fundamental research on the behavior of civil infrastructure materials and the mechanics of structural components in the built environment.  Of particular interest is research on structural components consisting of natural and synthetic materials, their response to mechanical, hydrothermal, and time-dependent loads, and their impact on life-cycle performance and sustainable development of the civil infrastructure.

The National Science Foundation's Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS), Division of Social and Economic Sciences (SES), National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), and the SBE Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (SMA) award grants to doctoral students to improve the quality of dissertation research. These grants provide funds for items not normally available through the student's university. Additionally, these grants allow doctoral students to undertake significant data-gathering projects and to conduct field research in settings away from their campus that would not otherwise be possible. Proposals are judged on the basis of their scientific merit, including the theoretical importance of the research question and the appropriateness of the proposed data and methodology to be used in addressing the question. In an effort to improve the quality of dissertation research, many programs in both BCS and SES, the Research on Science and Technology Surveys and Statistics program within NCSES, and the Science of Science and Innovation Policy program in SMA accept doctoral dissertation improvement grant proposals. Requirements vary across programs, so proposers are advised to consult the relevant program's webpage for specific information and contact the program director if necessary.

Available to undergraduate students enrolled full-time in any school in the United States and its territories, Canada and Mexico, provided: (1) the school's industrial engineering program or equivalent is accredited by an agency or organization recognized by IIE; and (2) the student is pursuing a course of study in industrial engineering and operations research with a definite interest in the area of healthcare. The amount of the scholarship is $1,000. Recipient will also receive complimentary registration to the SHS annual conference ($145 value) and a travel stipend ($350).

The Directorate for Engineering at the National Science Foundation has established the Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) to serve a critical role in focusing on important emerging areas in a timely manner. This solicitation is a funding opportunity for interdisciplinary teams of researchers to embark on rapidly advancing frontiers of fundamental engineering research.  For this solicitation, we will consider proposals that aim to investigate emerging frontiers in the following three specific research areas: (1) Flexible Bioelectronics Systems (BioFlex), (2) Origami Design for Integration of Self-assembling Systems for Engineering Innovation (ODISSEI), and (3) Photosynthetic Biorefineries (PSBR).

Computational approaches play a central role in understanding and advancing sustainability.  CyberSEES supports research on all sustainability topics that depend on advances in computational areas including optimization, modeling, simulation, prediction, and inference; large-scale data management and analytics; advanced sensing techniques; human computer interaction and social computing; infrastructure design, control and management; and intelligent systems and decision-making. Additionally, the widespread, intensive use of computing technologies also introduces sustainability challenges and motivates new approaches across the lifecycle of technology design and use.

Hazards SEES seeks research projects that will productively cross the boundaries of the atmospheric and geospace, earth, and ocean sciences; computer and information science; cyberinfrastructure; engineering; mathematics and statistics; and social, economic, and behavioral sciences. Successful proposals will integrate across these multiple disciplines to promote research that advances new paradigms that contribute to creating a society resilient to hazards. Hazards SEES intends to transform hazards and disaster research by fostering the development of interdisciplinary research that allows for appropriately targeted data collection, integration, and management; modeling (including predictive models for real-time decision making); visualization and simulation; data analytics and data-driven discovery; real-time sensing; cross-cutting knowledge development; and synthesis of applicable models and theory. 

Eligible applicants are postdoctoral fellows and faculty at degree-granting institutes in the United States or Canada. Applicants must hold a Ph.D. in mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science, statistics, or engineering and be interested in investigating research opportunities in the biological sciences. Biologists holding a doctorate degree at the time of application who are interested in working with physical scientists, mathematicians, engineers, chemists, statisticians, or computer scientists to incorporate their ideas and approaches to answering biological questions are eligible to apply.

The Sensors and Sensing System (SSS) program funds fundamental research on sensors and sensing systems. Such fundamental research includes the discovery and characterization of new sensing modalities, fundamental theories for aggregation and analysis of sensed data, fundamentally new approaches for data transmission, and approaches for addressing uncertain and/or partial sensor data. Innovative research in nonlinear prediction, filtering and estimation in the context of sensing systems is also considered in this program.

The United States-Israel Collaboration in Computer Science (USICCS) program is a joint program of NSF and the United States - Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF).  The program supports research projects that develop new knowledge in the areas of theory of computing; algorithm design and analysis; design, verification, and evaluation of software systems; and revolutionary computing models based on emerging scientific ideas.

STS considers proposals for scientific research into the interface between science (including engineering) or technology, and society. STS researchers use diverse methods including social science, historical, and philosophical methods. Successful proposals will be transferrable (i.e., generate results that provide insights for other scientific contexts that are suitably similar). They will produce outcomes that address pertinent problems and issues at the interface of science, technology and society, such as those having to do with practices and assumptions, ethics, values, governance, and policy.

The Broadening Participation in Engineering (BPE) Program is a Directorate-wide activity to support the development of a diverse and well-prepared workforce of engineering graduates, particularly those with advanced degrees. A central theme of the program's activities is enhancing the ability of early career faculty members, particularly those from underrepresented groups, to succeed in their careers as researchers and educators. The Broadening Participation in Engineering Program supports projects to engage and develop diverse teams that can offer unique perspectives and insights to challenges in engineering research and education.

The goal of the CPS program is to develop the core system science needed to engineer complex cyber-physical systems upon which people can depend with high confidence. The program aims to foster a research community committed to advancing research and education in CPS and to transitioning CPS science and technology into engineering practice. By abstracting from the particulars of specific systems and application domains, the CPS program aims to reveal cross-cutting fundamental scientific and engineering principles that underpin the integration of cyber and physical elements across all application sectors.  To expedite and accelerate the realization of cyber-physical systems in a wide range of applications, the CPS program also supports the development of methods, tools, and hardware and software components based upon these cross-cutting principles, along with validation of the principles via prototypes and test beds.

The NSF's vision for Advanced Computing Infrastructure (ACI), which is part of its Cyberinfrastructure for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21), focuses specifically on ensuring that the science and engineering community has ready access to the advanced computational and data-driven capabilities required to tackle the most complex problems and issues facing today's scientific and educational communities. To accomplish these goals requires advanced computational capabilities within the context of a multilevel comprehensive and innovative infrastructure that benefits all fields of science and engineering. Previous solicitations have concentrated on enabling petascale capability through the deployment and support of a world-class High Performance Computing (HPC) environment. In the past decade the NSF has provided the open science and engineering community with a number of state-of-the art HPC assets ranging from loosely coupled clusters, to large scale instruments with many thousands of computing cores communicating via fast interconnects, and more recently with diverse heterogeneous architectures. Recent developments in computational science have begun to focus on complex, dynamic and diverse workflows. Some of these involve applications that are extremely data intensive and may not be dominated by floating point operation speed. While a number of the earlier acquisitions have addressed a subset of these issues, the current solicitation emphasizes this even further.

The goal of the National Robotics Initiative is to accelerate the development and use of robots in the United States that work beside, or cooperatively with, people. Innovative robotics research and applications emphasizing the realization of such co-robots acting in direct support of and in a symbiotic relationship with human partners is supported by multiple agencies of the federal government including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The purpose of this program is the development of this next generation of robotics, to advance the capability and usability of such systems and artifacts, and to encourage existing and new communities to focus on innovative application areas. It will address the entire life cycle from fundamental research and development to manufacturing and deployment. 

The Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC) supports creation of a more agile engineering education ecosystem, equally open and available to all members of society, that dynamically and rapidly adapts to meet the changing needs of society and the nation's economy.  Research is sought that will inform systemic change across all parts of the ecosystem