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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.

A well-educated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce is a significant contributor to maintaining the competitiveness of the U.S. in the global economy. The National Science Foundation (NSF) Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program addresses the need for a high quality STEM workforce in STEM disciplines supported by the program and for the increased success of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who are pursuing associate, baccalaureate, or graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) [6], [16]. Recognizing that financial aid alone cannot increase retention and graduation in STEM, the program provides awards to Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) to fund scholarships and to advance the adaptation, implementation, and study of effective evidence-based curricular and co-curricular activities that support recruitment, retention, transfer (if appropriate), student success, academic/career pathways, and graduation in STEM. The S-STEM program encourages collaborations among different types of participating groups, including but not limited to partnerships among different types of institutions; collaborations of STEM faculty and institutional, educational, and social science researchers; and partnerships among institutions of higher education and business, industry, local community organizations, national labs, or other federal or state government organizations, if appropriate.

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.

The Paralyzed Veterans of America Education Foundation, a grantmaking organization of Paralyzed Veterans of America, seeks to fund innovative educational projects that enhance the quality of life of individuals with spinal cord injury or disease (SCI/D) and/or that increase the knowledge and effectiveness of health professionals in the SCI/D community. The foundation generally supports five types of projects: 1) Consumer, caregiver, and community education demonstration projects that seek to improve the health, independence, and quality of life of individuals with spinal cord injury or disease; 2) Professional development and education programs that improve the knowledge and competencies of professionals providing health care and related services to the SCI/D community, or fellowship/traineeship programs for professionals providing health care and related services to the SCI/D community; 3) Research utilization and dissemination projects that translate research findings into practice; 4) Assistive technology demonstration projects that improve the identification, selection, and use of assistive devices by people with SCI/D; and 5) Conferences and symposia designed to provide education and opportunities for collaboration among members of the SCI/D community.

The Keck Futures Initiative - a program of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, with the support of the W.M. Keck Foundation - will award four $20,000 prizes in 2013 to individuals or teams (up to four individuals associated with the creation of the work being nominated) who have developed creative, original works that address issues and advances in science, engineering and/or medicine for the general public. Nominations were accepted in four categories: Book; Film/Radio/TV; Magazine/Newspaper; and Online. The winners will be honored in the Fall 2013 at an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C and are expected to attend in person. Eligibility To be considered for a 2013 Communication Award, the work should: -be accessible and appeal to a broad, public audience; -demonstrate clarity, creativity, originality, and accuracy; -address issues and/or advances in science, engineering, and/or medicine; -cover topics that have an impact on society; and -have been published, broadcast, or released in 2012, in the United States and in English. Material primarily intended for children, reference books, and textbooks are not eligible for consideration. Candidates may be individuals or teams of not more than four people. National Academies' employees are not eligible and posthumous awards are not permitted.  This award is not for lifetime achievement; the work for which a candidate or team is nominated must have been published or broadcast in 2012.

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) DEBUT Challenge is open to teams of undergraduate students working on projects that develop innovative solutions to unmet health and clinical problems. Entries are solicited in one of the following categories: *   Diagnostic Devices/Methods *   Therapeutic Devices/Methods *   Technology to Aid Underserved Populations and Individuals with Disabilities NIBIB's mission is to improve health by leading the development and accelerating the application of biomedical technologies.  The goals of the challenge are 1) to provide undergraduate students valuable experiences such as working in teams, identifying unmet clinical needs, and designing, building and debugging solutions for such open-ended problems; 2) to generate novel, innovative tools to improve healthcare, consistent with NIBIB's purpose to support research, training, the dissemination of health information, and other programs with respect to biomedical imaging and engineering and associated technologies and modalities with biomedical applications; and 3) to highlight and acknowledge the contributions and accomplishments of undergraduate students.

The objective of this research is to develop a guide for transportation practitioners to improve and integrate pedestrian and bicycle safety considerations at alternative intersections and interchanges (AII) through planning, design, and operational treatments that (1) identifies and evaluates current practices, and emerging technologies and trends, in the U.S. and internationally; (2) describes current best practices for measuring the effectiveness of such AII treatments; (3) evaluates the safety and operational outcomes of specific AII treatments; and (4) identifies and ranks treatments for typical types of projects. The primary focus of the research is roadway functional classifications of collector and above.

The MES program supports research on design, planning, and control of operations in manufacturing enterprises. Research is supported that is both grounded in an interesting and relevant application and requires the development of novel analytical and computational methodologies that may be of broader interest. Topics of interest include supply chain optimization and management; production planning and scheduling; monitoring and control of manufacturing processes; and maintenance and repair. Of particular interest are methods that incorporate increasingly rich enterprise process and product information and models, methods that address sustainability, and methods that incorporate characteristic uncertainty and risk.

The MES program supports research on design, planning, and control of operations in manufacturing enterprises. Research is supported that is both grounded in an interesting and relevant application and requires the development of novel analytical and computational methodologies that may be of broader interest. Topics of interest include supply chain optimization and management; production planning and scheduling; monitoring and control of manufacturing processes; and maintenance and repair. Of particular interest are methods that incorporate increasingly rich enterprise process and product information and models, methods that address sustainability, and methods that incorporate characteristic uncertainty and risk.

The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) is a program designed to fulfill the National Science Foundation's (NSF) mandate to promote scientific progress nationwide. The EPSCoR program is directed at jurisdictions that have historically received lesser amounts of NSF Research and Development (R&D) funding. Thirty-one jurisdictions including twenty-eight states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the U. S. Virgin Islands, and Guam currently are eligible to participate. Through this program, NSF establishes partnerships with government, higher education, and industry that are designed to effect lasting improvements in a state's or region's research infrastructure, R&D capacity and hence, its national R&D competitiveness.Research Infrastructure Improvement Program: Track-2 (RII Track-2) awards provide funds in the range of $1.5 to 2.0 million per year for up to 3 years to consortia of EPSCoR jurisdictions. The awards promote opportunities for collaborations among EPSCoR jurisdictions in all areas of science, engineering, and education supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). RII Track-2 proposals must describe a clear, comprehensive, and integrated vision to drive discovery, and train a skilled workforce capable of solving science and engineering challenges of regional, thematic, and national relevance. Proposals should also include a strong rationale for the establishment of the consortium and clearly demonstrate that the consortium is well-positioned to produce results that cannot be obtained by any single partner working independently. The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) research and education activities should broaden participation by different types of institutions, individuals, and sectors in the project.

The nuclear theory program encompasses the structure and reactions of nuclei, and of hadrons in few-nucleon and nuclear environments, and the quark/gluon substructure expressed by QCD.  Supported research includes contributions to broad theoretical advances as well as model building and applications to experimental programs at facilities such as NSCL, RHIC and Jefferson Laboratory, and to astrophysical phenomena. This includes formulating new approaches for theoretical, computational, and experimental research that explore the fundamental laws of physics and the behavior of physical systems; formulating quantitative hypotheses; exploring and analyzing the implications of such hypotheses analytically and computationally; and, in some cases, interpreting the results of experiments. Some awards are co-funded with other programs in the Physics Division and in other divisions.

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.

Cyberspace has transformed the daily lives of people. Society's overwhelming reliance on cyberspace, however, has exposed its fragility and vulnerabilities: 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 Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014,as amended by the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2018, authorizes the National Science Foundation, in coordination with the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Homeland Security, to offer a scholarship program to recruit and train the next generation of information technology professionals, industry control system security professionals and security managers to meet the needs of the cybersecurity mission for federal, state, local, and tribal governments. The goals of the CyberCorps(R): Scholarship for Service (SFS) program are aligned with the U.S. National Cyber Strategy to develop a superior cybersecurity workforce. The SFS program welcomes proposals to establish or to continue scholarship programs in cybersecurity. All scholarship recipients must work after graduation for a federal, state, local, or tribal Government organization in a position related to cybersecurity for a period equal to the length of the scholarship. A proposing institution must provide clearly documented evidence of a strong existing academic program in cybersecurity.

CubeSat constellations and swarms have been identified as a new paradigm for space-based measurements to address high-priority science questions in multiple disciplines. However, the full potential of CubeSat constellations and swarms for scientific studies has not yet been realized because of: i) the limitations of some of the existing key CubeSat technology, ii) knowledge gaps in the design and optimization of CubeSat technology for swarms and constellations, and iii) the increasing cost of more sophisticated CubeSat technology. The technology challenges include high bandwidth communications in CubeSat-to-CubeSat and CubeSat-to-ground scenarios, circuits and sensors miniaturization, on-board signal processing, and power generation. The vision of a satellite mission consisting of 10-100 CubeSats will require focused investment and development in a myriad of CubeSat-related technologies to build a cost-effective constellation or swarm of CubeSats. This will require transformative approaches for designing and building CubeSat subsystems and sensors, and innovative production approaches that will reduce the cost of implementing large-scale constellation missions. Spectrum allocations for data transmission and possible electromagnetic interference between or within constellations of CubeSats are issues that also will need to be considered.

The Advanced Manufacturing (AM) program supports the fundamental research needed to revitalize American manufacturing to grow the national prosperity and workforce, and to reshape our strategic industries. The AM program accelerates advances in manufacturing technologies with emphasis on multidisciplinary research that fundamentally alters and transforms manufacturing capabilities, methods and practices. Advanced manufacturing research proposals should address issues related to national prosperity and security, and advancing knowledge to sustain global leadership. Areas of research, for example, include manufacturing systems; materials processing; manufacturing machines; methodologies; and manufacturing across the length scales. Researchers working in the areas of cybermanufacturing systems, manufacturing machines and equipment, materials engineering and processing, and nanomanufacturing are encouraged to transcend and cross domain boundaries. Interdisciplinary, convergent proposals are welcome that bring manufacturing to new application areas, and that incorporate challenges and approaches outside the customary manufacturing portfolio to broaden the impact of America's advanced manufacturing research. Proposals of all sizes will therefore be considered as justified by the project description. Investigators are encouraged to discuss their ideas with AM program directors well in advance of submission at AdvancedManufacturing@nsf.gov.

The Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) supports translational research and education activities in all aspects of advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) that lead to deployable, scalable, and sustainable systems capable of transforming science and engineering research. Advanced CI includes the spectrum of computational, data, software, networking, and security resources, tools, and services, along with the computational and data skills and expertise, that individually and collectively can transform science and engineering. OAC supports advanced CI research to address new CI frontiers for discovery leading to major innovations, and supports the development and deployment processes, as well as expert services, necessary for realizing the research CI that is critical to the advancement of all areas of science and engineering research and education.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Geothermal Technology Office(GTO) Zonal Isolation for Manmade Geothermal Reservoirs funding opportunity announcement (FOA) supports early-stage development of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) tools and technologies, and will seek to improve the performance and economics of EGS systems by funding research in zonal isolation. Zonal isolation technologies can radically improve the performance and economics of EGS, or manmade geothermal reservoirs. These technologies provide the ability to target specific zones for stimulation activities, which can enable the command and control of fracture location and the economy of resources. In turn, this reduces development costs and operational risks associated with EGS development and promotes more power from fewer wellbores. Under this funding opportunity, GTO is interested in two topic areas: Topic 1 - Invention and Innovative Design of Zonal Isolation Technologies and Techniques for EGS Stimulation; and, Topic 2 - Adaption of Existing Zonal Isolation Technologies for EGS Stimulation. The projects selected from this FOA will aim to develop reliable zonal isolation tools and technologies that: * Present low risk to wellbore integrity or the conductivity of fractures; * Can operate at high-temperatures in corrosive, hard rock environments for extended periods of time; and * Withstand large pressure differentials.

The NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research is a collaborative framework through which 14 NIH Institutes, Centers and Offices jointly support neuroscience-related research, with the aim of accelerating discoveries and reducing the burden of nervous system disorders. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) will solicit research projects to facilitate the development and translation of tools and technology for non-invasive imaging and profiling of human central nervous system (CNS, including retina) small blood and lymphatic vessels; to investigate their role in CNS physiology, disease, repair processes, and responses to therapy using novel approaches. Applications can be focused on the development of new technology and tools, novel target or biomarker identification and validation studies, or a combination of mechanistic and technology development studies specific to human CNS small blood and lymphatic vessels in health and disease, across the life span.

The Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship Program provides support for master's and doctoral degrees in oceanography, marine biology, maritime archaeology, and all other science, engineering, social science, and resource management disciplines involving ocean and coastal areas, and particularly encourages women and members of minority groups to apply. Individuals who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, or citizens of U.S. territories, and are applying to or have been accepted to a graduate program at a U.S. accredited institution, may apply. Prospective scholars do not need to be enrolled in a graduate program at the time of application, but must be admitted to a graduate level program in order to be awarded this scholarship. Scholarship selections are based on academic excellence, letters of recommendations, research and career goals, and financial need. Applicants must have a cumulative 3.30 grade point average to be eligible to apply and maintain a minimum cumulative and term grade point average of 3.30 for every term and for the duration of their award. Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarships may provide, subject to appropriations, yearly support of up to $42,000 per student (a 12-month stipend of $30,000 in addition to an education allowance of up to $12,000) and up to $10,000 of support for a 4-6 week program collaboration at a NOAA facility. Based on available funding, completion of one (1) program collaboration may be required for every doctoral scholarship award, with a second recommended, but not required. For master's degree level scholars, completion of a program collaboration is strongly recommended but is not required. The Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship funds cannot be used toward research costs.

CubeSat constellations and swarms have been identified as a new paradigm for space-based measurements to address high-priority science questions in multiple disciplines. However, the full potential of CubeSat constellations and swarms for scientific studies has not yet been realized because of: i) the limitations of some of the existing key CubeSat technology, ii) knowledge gaps in the design and optimization of CubeSat technology for swarms and constellations, and iii) the increasing cost of more sophisticated CubeSat technology. The technology challenges include high bandwidth communications in CubeSat-to-CubeSat and CubeSat-to-ground scenarios, circuits and sensors miniaturization, on-board signal processing, and power generation. The vision of a satellite mission consisting of 10-100 CubeSats will require focused investment and development in a myriad of CubeSat-related technologies to build a cost-effective constellation or swarm of CubeSats. This will require transformative approaches for designing and building CubeSat subsystems and sensors, and innovative production approaches that will reduce the cost of implementing large-scale constellation missions. Spectrum allocations for data transmission and possible electromagnetic interference between or within constellations of CubeSats are issues that also will need to be considered.