OARS funding Engineering

With this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), the Department of Energy (DOE) SunShot Initiative is soliciting collaborative research teams to define and fabricate model systems that utilize a single p-n junction device structure and have the potential to approach Shockley-Queisser power conversion efficiency limits (for a chosen bandgap and absorber material). The emphasis of this FOA is assembling cohesive and highly diverse teams of experts within and outside the PV community who can achieve the goals of creating a model system concept and a subsequent device that can approach theoretical limits. DOE SunShot anticipates significant collaboration between experts in fundamental materials, characterization, device physics, ab-initio simulations, and PV device integration to adequately address these issues.

The Combustion, Fire, and Plasma Systems program supports fundamental research and education relevant to these subjects.  Among the broader societal impacts of the program are cleaner global and local environments, enhanced public safety, improved energy and homeland security, useful new materials, and more efficient manufacturing. This program is not an applied program, but rather it endeavors to provide basic knowledge that is needed to develop useful combustion and plasma applications and for mitigating the effects of fire.  Broad-based tools - experimental, diagnostic, and computational - that can be applied to a variety of problems in combustion, fires, and plasma systems are the major products of this program. 

The Thermal Transport Processes program supports engineering research aimed at gaining a basic understanding of the thermal transport phenomena at nano/micro and macro scales in (1) cooling and heating of equipment and devices, (2) energy conversion, power generation and thermal energy storage and conservation, (3) the synthesis and processing of materials including advanced manufacturing, (4) the propulsion of air and land-based vehicles, and (5) thermal phenomena in biological systems.  The program supports fundamental research and engineering education in transport processes that are driven by thermal gradients, and manipulation of these processes to achieve engineering goals.

Designed to help researchers with brilliant ideas see those ideas through to a finished product, the 2013 Sustainable Valley iGrant is a technology innovation grant to help researchers, entrepreneurs and engineers bring new technology or technology-based businesses to life. iGrant applications are open to researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs in the process of building technology start-up companies or designing new technology associated with the biotech or biomedical, MEMS and Nanotechnology fields.

The IMEE program focuses on the impact of large-scale hazards on civil infrastructure and society and on related issues of preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery.  The program supports research to integrate multiple issues from engineering, social, behavioral, political, and economic sciences.  It supports fundamental research on the interdependence of civil infrastructure and society, development of sustainable infrastructures, and civil infrastructure vulnerability and risk reduction.

The Civil Infrastructure Systems (CIS) program supports research leading to the engineering of infrastructure systems for resilience and sustainability without excluding other key performance issues.  Areas of interest include intra- and inter-physical, information and behavioral dependencies of infrastructure systems, infrastructure management, construction engineering, and transportation systems.  Special emphasis is on the design, construction, operation, and improvement of infrastructure networks with a focus on systems engineering and design, performance management, risk analysis, life-cycle analysis, modeling and simulation, behavioral and social considerations not excluding other methodological areas or the integration of methods. This program does not encourage research proposals primarily focused on structural engineering, materials or sensors that support infrastructure system design, extreme event modeling, hydrological engineering, and climate modeling, since they do not fall within the scope of the CIS program.

The Hazard Mitigation and Structural Engineering (HMSE) program supports fundamental research to mitigate impacts of natural and anthropogenic hazards on civil infrastructure and to advance the reliability, resiliency, and sustainability of buildings and other structures. Hazards considered within the program include earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, tornado and other loads, as well as explosive and impact loading. Resiliency of buildings and other structures include structural and non-structural systems that, in totality, permit continued occupation or operation in case of an impact by a hazard. Research is encouraged that integrates structural and architectural engineering advances with discoveries in other science and engineering fields, such as earth and atmospheric sciences, material science, mechanics of materials, sensor technology, high performance computational modeling and simulation, dynamic system and control, and economics. The program seeks to fund transformative and cost-effective innovations for hazard mitigation of both new and rehabilitated buildings and other structures. Research in structural and architectural engineering is encouraged that extends beyond mature or current construction materials into investigations of smart and sustainable materials and technologies, and considers the structures in their entirety. In addition, the program funds research on structural health monitoring that goes beyond data acquisition to include the holistic system, integrating condition assessment and decision making tools to improve structural performance.

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).

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