Modeling-Enhanced Innovations Trailblazing Nuclear Energy Reinvigoration (MEITNER) Agency Overview The Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), an organization within the Department of Energy (DOE), is chartered by Congress in the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69), as amended by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-358) to: "(A) to enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies that result in- (i) reductions of imports of energy from foreign sources; (ii) reductions of energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; and (iii) improvement in the energy efficiency of all economic sectors; and (B) to ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies."
The Rural Utilities Service (RUS), an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), announces the availability of up to $10 million in competitive grants to assist communities with extremely high energy costs. The grant funds may be used to acquire, construct, or improve energy generation, transmission, or distribution facilities serving communities where the average annual residential expenditure for home energy exceeds 275% of the national average. Eligible projects also include on-grid and off-grid renewable energy projects and the implementation of energy efficiency and energy conservation projects for eligible communities. Projects cannot be for the primary benefit of a single household or business. Grant funds may not be used for the preparation of the grant application, payment of utility bills, fuel purchases, routine maintenance or other routine operating costs, or for the purchase of any equipment, structures, or real estate not directly associated with the provision of community energy services.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative proposals in the area of global scale, multimodal geospatial data cloud platform and analytics development. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice.
GCA is a 24-month, three-phase program. At present, DARPA seeks innovative proposals covering the tasks in Phase 1 (6 month base effort) and Phase 2 (12 month costed option) of the program. Proposals must address both Phase 1 and Phase 2. Phase 3 will be the subject of a separate procurement.
For Phases 1 and 2, DARPA seeks proposals in two technical areas (TAs). TA-1 (Scalable Geospatial Data Platform) will provide access to geospatial data and an extensible computing platform on which TA-2 performers can efficiently access and process massive amounts of curated geospatial data. TA-2 (Analytical Applications and Competitions) will create software for use in one or more of the analytics competitions (predicting food shortages, locating fracking construction detection, illegal fishing detection, open call) using data and platforms provided by TA-1 proposers.
In Phase 1, DARPA anticipates making up to three awards for TA-1 and up to 16 awards for TA-2. A proposer may respond to one or both technical areas but a separate proposal is required for each TA. A TA-2 proposer can propose to one or more competition areas, using costed options if proposing to more than one competition.
This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) invites applications for P50 Research Center Grants for Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPOREs). The program will fund P50 SPORE grants to support state-of-the-art investigator-initiated translational research that will contribute to improved prevention, early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of an organ-specific cancer or a related group of cancers. For the purpose of this FOA, cancers derived from the same organ system (i.e., a group of organs that perform a common function) are considered related. Examples of such organ systems include gastrointestinal, endocrine and other biological systems. Other programmatically appropriate groups of cancers may include those centered around a common biological mechanism critical for promoting tumorigenesis and/or cancer progression in organ sites that belong to different organ systems. For example, a SPORE may focus on cancers caused by the same infectious agent or cancers sustained and promoted by dysregulation of a common signaling pathway. In addition, a SPORE may focus on cross-cutting themes such as pediatric cancers or cancer health disparities. The research supported through this program must be translational and must stem from research on human biology using cellular, molecular, structural, biochemical, and/or genetic experimental approaches. SPORE projects must have the goal of reaching a translational human endpoint within the project period of the grant.
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.
This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) seeks to develop and nurture a national innovation ecosystem that builds upon biomedical research to develop technologies, products, and services that benefit society. Toward meeting this objective, the I-Corps™ program is being offered. The I-Corps™ at NIH program is focused on educating researchers and technologists on how to translate technologies from the lab into the marketplace. Under this FOA, participating NIH and CDC Institutes and Centers will continue providing administrative supplement awards to currently-funded SBIR and STTR Phase I grantees.
The program is designed to provide three-member project teams with access to instruction and mentoring in order to accelerate the translation of technologies currently being developed with NIH and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) SBIR and STTR funding. It is anticipated that outcomes for the I-Corps™ teams participating in this program will include significantly refined commercialization plans and well-informed pivots in their overall commercialization strategies. Prospective applicants are strongly encouraged to contact NIH or CDC Scientific/Research staff for more information about the program before applying.
This solicitation extends the Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience program for three years. Proposals for collaborations involving Japan are now supported through a new partnership with the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology. Please see the proposal preparation instructions and country-specific instructions and limitations in Sections V and VIII of this solicitation, and the companion documents published by CRCNS partner agencies referenced in Section VIII.
The description of scientific topics and approaches has been updated in Section II of this solicitation.
Agency contacts have been updated in Section VIII.
Results from prior NSF, NIH, and/or CRCNS support must be included in the Project Description if any PI or co-PI identified on the project has received NSF funding, NIH funding, or CRCNS funding from another participating agency, with a start date in the past five years.
This Other Transaction Solicitation (OTS) Call (70RSAT18R00000002) - Land Border Biometric Exit Facial Recognition Verification Technologies - is issued against Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Science & Technology (S&T), Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP), 5-Year Innovation Other Transaction Solicitation (OTS), HSHQDC-16-R-B0005 (current issue). The OTS describes the overarching program details whereas the call describes the specific problem set.
The implementation of a biometric exit system at U.S. Ports of Entry (POEs) along land borders remains a challenge for several reasons including, but not limited to: environmental conditions, speed of travel, and lack of infrastructure. At land-based POEs, infrastructure is a key inhibitor to track the exit of travelers using biographic or biometric data. In addition, the need for uninhibited vehicle traffic flow at land borders is perhaps the greatest challenge for land-border POEs. To avoid having travelers in vehicles stop at border crossings, which could create significant traffic delays, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is working to implement a face biometric entry-exit system in a way that poses the least impact on travel and trade. This call is looking for innovative solutions to capture facial recognition quality photos from travelers in order to facilitate identity checks without requiring occupants to leave the vehicle.
Run-off-road (ROR) traffic crashes account for almost one-third of the deaths and serious injuries each year on U.S. highways. The effective design of roadsides, including the placement of roadside safety devices, can reduce the frequency and/or severity of these crashes but requires an understanding of the nature and frequency of roadside encroachments. Unfortunately, the best quality encroachment data currently available were collected in the 1960s and 1970s. The age of these datasets means they are likely no longer representative of the current vehicle fleet or highway conditions. Further, each of these datasets has significant limitations, including specific exclusion of heavy vehicles and motorcycles and a very limited range of traffic volumes (i.e., less than 20,000 vehicles per day); such limitations have fostered much debate over the value of findings from these studies.
The Biological and Environmental Research (BER) of the SC, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) hereby announces its interest in receiving applications to support fundamental research towards enabling new bioimaging capabilities for the study of plant and microbial systems relevant to bioenergy research. New imaging instrumentation is needed to observe and characterize multiple metabolic processes occurring within the living plant and microbial systems relevant to bioenergy and bioproduct production from renewable biomass. These processes include, but are not limited to real-time dynamic imaging of metabolic pathways, the transport of materials within and among cellular organelles including plant-root and organismal interactions, enzyme function and cellular structures. Of interest is the development of multimodal imaging devices constructed by merging new, innovative and/or transformational improvements to existing capabilities which will enable simultaneous observations in synergistic combination with correlated structural and/or chemical imaging to interpret biological function in and among whole microbial or plant cells.
This could include, but is not limited to:
(a) alternative and clean energy sources;
(b) environmental and social issues as related to specific or broader energy and resource management issues;
(c) economic, environmental, and social costs/benefits of energy development (alternative and fossil fuel);
(d) hazard and risk assessment of different methods of energy production on various endpoints/receptors;
(e) development of frameworks for managing energy development; and
(f) restoration/reclamation of lands damaged by energy extraction
The objective of the ALAS program is to conduct research and development (R&D) of innovative technological solutions to enhance radio frequency (RF), electro-optical (EO), and multi-spectral (MS) system technologies and sensors along with advancing test measurement techniques and methods necessary to meet cutting edge and emerging warfighter needs. Enhanced RF sensing technologies and systems include; improved radar systems, exploration of RF waveforms, signal processing and algorithm exploration, sensor resource management (SRM), and improved EO-RF systems. Advancing test measurement techniques and methods includes; clutter characterization and mitigation, bistatic and multi-static measurement, distributed/multispectral sensing measurement, and improved antenna and radar cross section (RCS) measurement.
The NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Earth Science Division's Earth Venture (EV) activity is an important component of the Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) Program. Earth Venture consists of a series of regularly solicited, competitively selected Earth Science investigations as recommended by the National Research Council's first decadal survey in Earth science, Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond (The National Academies Press, 2007, available at https://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11820).
Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson announced in September 2017 inception of the "S&T Strategy 2030" study. The study's objective is to update the Air Force methods for conducting research and development (R&D) to meet the projected national security challenges of 2030. Secretary Wilson appointed the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to lead this strategy development.The Air Force's goals for the study are: 1. Evaluate technical approaches and focus areas to advance the Air Force's mission through R&D; and 2. Improve Air Force processes and organizational structures to manage early stage research.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative proposals in the following technical areas: radio architectures and technology and network architectures and technology that maintain network reliability through periods of data channel degradation.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has advanced tremendously and today promises personalized healthcare; enhanced national security; improved transportation; and more effective education, to name just a few benefits. Increased computing power, the availability of large datasets and streaming data, and algorithmic advances in machine learning (ML) have made it possible for AI development to create new sectors of the economy and revitalize industries. Continued advancement, enabled by sustained federal investment and channeled toward issues of national importance, holds the potential for further economic impact and quality-of-life improvements.
The Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB) has developed a new opportunity to enable researchers with a strong track record of prior accomplishment to pursue a new avenue of research or inquiry. This funding mechanism is designed to facilitate and promote a PI's ability to effective adopt empowering technologies that might not be readily accessible in the PI's current research environment or collaboration network. Transformative research likely spans disciplines and minimizing the practical barriers to doing so will strengthen research programs poised to make significant contributions. The award is intended to allow mid-career or later-stage researchers (Associate or Full Professor, or equivalent) to expand or make a transition in their research programs via a sabbatical leave or similar mechanism of professional development and then develop that research program in their own lab. This award will also enable the PI to acquire new scientific or technical expertise, facilitate the investigator's competitiveness, and potentially lead to transformational impacts in molecular and cellular bioscience.
The Understanding the Rules of Life: Microbiome Theory and Mechanisms (URoL:MTM) program is an integrative collaborationacross Directorates and Offices within the National Science Foundation. The objective of URoL:MTM is to understand and establish the theory and mechanisms that govern the structure and function of microbiomes, a collection of microbes in a specific habitat/environment. This may include but is not limited to host-associated microbiomes, such as those with humans and other organisms, where i) the microbiome impacts host physiology, behavior, development, and fitness; ii) the host influences the metabolic activity, dynamics and evolution of the microbiome, and iii) the environment (biological, chemical, physical, and social) influences and is influenced by both the host and the microbiome. Recent progress has transformed our ability to identify and catalogue the microbes present in a given environment and measure multiple aspects ofbiological, chemical, physical, and social environments that affect the interactions among the members of the microbiome, the host, and/or habitat. Much descriptive and correlative work has been performed on many microbiome systems, particularly those in the human, soil, aquatic, and built environments. This research has resulted in new hypotheses about the microbiome's contributions to potential system function or dysfunction. The current challenge is to integrate the wide range of accumulated data and information and build on them to develop new causal/mechanistic models or theories of interactions and interdependencies across scales and systems.
The PMGP is seeking applications from eligible applicants to support significant research in the field of fundamental measurement or the determination of fundamental constants.
