OARS funding Environmental Sustainability

The Leading Edge in Basic Science Award is presented to a scientist who, based on his/her research, has made a recent (within the last 5 years), seminal scientific contribution/advance to understanding fundamental mechanisms of toxicity. The recipient should be a respected basic scientist whose research findings are likely to have a pervasive impact on the field of toxicology.

The Merit Award is presented to a member of the Society of Toxicology in recognition of distinguished contributions to toxicology throughout an entire career in areas such as research, teaching, regulatory activities, consulting and service to the Society.

The Public Communications Award is presented by the Society of Toxicology to recognize an individual who has made a major contribution to broadening the awareness of the general public on toxicological issues through any aspect of public communications. The award should reflect accomplishments over a significant period of time. Examples of qualifying media in which the nominated communication may appear include books, brochures, continuing education courses, data bases, extension bulletins, magazines, newspapers (local or national), public presentations, public forums, radio and television scripts, and workshops.

The long term objective of the CSTAR Program is to improve the overall forecast and warning capabilities of the operational hydrometeorological community

The United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF) announces an open competition for the support of projects through the Obama - Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative (OSI). Announced by the US and Indian governments, OSI aims to strengthen collaboration and build partnerships between American and Indian institutions of higher education. Accredited US post-secondary educational institutions meeting the provisions described in Internal Revenue Code section 26 U.S.C. 501c(3) may submit proposals to support the program's goals of encouraging mutual understanding, facilitating educational reform, fostering economic development, and engaging civil society through academic cooperation with Indian post-secondary educational institutions.   Exchange activities may include but are not limited to curriculum design, research collaboration, team teaching, focused series of exchanges, seminars, among other activities. Activities should be designed to develop expertise, advance scholarship and teaching, and promote long-term ties between partner institutions.   Proposals in the following fields are eligible: Energy, Climate Change & Environmental Studies; Education & Educational Reform; Public Health; and Sustainable Development & Community Development.

Through the SEES Fellows Program, NSF seeks to advance science, engineering, and education to inform the societal actions needed for environmental and economic sustainability and human well-being while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. The Program's emphasis is to facilitate investigations that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries and address issues of sustainability through a systems approach, building bridges between academic inquiry, economic growth, and societal needs. The Fellow's proposed investigation must be interdisciplinary and allow him/her to obtain research experiences beyond his/her current core disciplinary expertise. Fellows are required to develop a research partnership(s) that will advance and broaden the impact/scope of the proposed research, and present a plan for their own professional development in the area of sustainability science and engineering.

The National Science Foundation awards Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants in selected areas of the biological sciences. Proposals must fall within the scope of any of the clusters in the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) or the Behavioral Systems Cluster in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS). These grants provide partial support of doctoral dissertation research for improvement beyond the already existing project. Allowed are costs for doctoral candidates to participate in scientific meetings, to conduct research in specialized facilities or field settings, and to expand an existing body of dissertation research.

The Division of Ocean Sciences (OCE) offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for scientists early in their careers to work within and across traditional disciplinary lines, develop partnerships, and avail themselves of unique resources, sites and facilities. The fellowship program is intended to recognize beginning investigators of significant potential, and provide them with experience that will establish them in positions of leadership in the scientific community. During tenure, fellows will affiliate with an appropriate research institution(s) and conduct research on topics supported by OCE. The OCE fellowship program has two tracks: 1) Traick 1 (Broadening Participation) and 2) Track 2 (International). Fellowships are awards to individuals, not organizations, and are administered by the fellows.

The goal of research funded under the interdisciplinary P2C2 solicitation is to utilize key geological, chemical, atmospheric (gas in ice cores), and biological records of climate system variability to provide insights into the mechanisms and rate of change that characterized Earth's past climate variability, the sensitivity of Earth's climate system to changes in forcing, and the response of key components of the Earth system to these changes.  Important scientific objectives of P2C2 are to: 1) provide comprehensive paleoclimate data sets that can serve as model test data sets analogous to instrumental observations; and 2) enable transformative syntheses of paleoclimate data and modeling outcomes to understand the response of the longer-term and higher magnitude variability of the climate system that is observed in the geological and cryospheric records. 

The overarching purpose of the program is to help create and train the next generation of leading researchers needed for climate studies. Anticipating the large amounts of data that was gathered from NOAA efforts, such as TOGA and TOGA COARE field programs, the research community required the attention of an enlarged workforce here and abroad. In a larger context, it was necessary to attract new PhD's to the community in order to establish the seeds of scientific leadership needed in the field of climate and global change research.  The fellowship program has developed an outstanding reputation of attracting the best and the brightest PhDs in the sciences relevant to the NOAA Climate Program Office Appointed fellows are hosted with mentoring scientists at U.S. universities and research institutions to work in an area of mutual interest. The program focuses on observing, understanding, modeling, and predicting climate variability and change on seasonal and longer time scales.

One approach to grow the pool of climate scientists who can work effectively at the climate-society boundary is to encourage talented recent PhDs with expertise in climate science to work directly with institutions engaged in climate-related risk management and decision-making.  This developing body of professionals will simultaneously be scientifically and technically capable in climate sciences and possess an understanding of the needs and issues that affect climate-related sectoral decisions. All participants will inevitably gain new perspectives on the opportunities and limitations of incorporating climate information into decisions. This program offers a process for recruiting and training individuals with a focus on practical experience, and offers the prestige that comes from participation in a nationally recognized and coordinated program.

OER is seeking pre-proposals and, ultimately, full proposals to support its mission, consistent with NOAA's Next Generation Strategic Plan (http://www.ppi.noaa.gov/wp-acontent/uploads/noaa), to search, investigate, and document poorly-known and unknown ocean areas through interdisciplinary exploration, and to advance and disseminate knowledge of the ocean environment and its physical, chemical, archaeological, and biological resources. The office priorities for this opportunity support NOAA's mission goals of: Healthy Oceans, Climate Adaptation and Mitigation, and Resilient Coastal Communities and Economies, as well as many of the elements of the President's National Ocean Policy. Competitive ocean exploration proposals will be bold, innovative and interdisciplinary in their approach. NOAA OER anticipates a total of approximately $3,000,000 including costs for ship and submersible assets will be available through this announcement. Only exploration proposals will be considered for funding, any other type of proposed project will not be reviewed. 

The consequences of climate variability and change are becoming more immediate and profound than previously anticipated. Over recent decades, the world has witnessed the onset of prolonged droughts on several continents, increased frequency of floods, loss of agricultural and forest productivity, degraded ocean and permafrost ecosystems, global sea level rise and the rapid retreat of ice sheets and glaciers, loss of arctic sea ice, and changes in ocean currents. These important impacts highlight that climate variability and change can have significant effects on decadal and shorter time scales, with significant consequences for plant, animal, human, and physical systems. The EaSM funding opportunity enables interagency cooperation on one of the most pressing problems of the millennium: climate change and??how it is likely to affect our world. It allows the partner agencies -- National Science Foundation (NSF) and??U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) -- to combine resources to identify and fund the most meritorious and highest-impact projects that support their respective missions, while??avoiding duplication of effort and fostering collaboration between agencies and the investigators they support.This interdisciplinary scientific challenge calls for the development and application of next-generation Earth System Models that include coupled and interactive representations of such??components as ocean and atmospheric currents, agricultural working lands and forests,?? biogeochemistry, atmospheric chemistry,?? the water cycle and land ice.?? This solicitation seeks to attract scientists from the disciplines of geosciences, agricultural sciences, mathematics and statistics. Successful proposals will develop intellectual excitement in the participating disciplinary communities and engage diverse interdisciplinary teams with sufficient breadth to achieve the scientific objectives. 

The Board of Regents is seeking high quality, focused cooperative education and internship program proposals from Ohio institutions of higher education and their partners. This program has been funded  through one-time casino licensing fees; it is expected that the funds will be awarded to build systems to sustain co-ops and internships beyond the direct investment from the State and to ensure these workbased learning opportunities are relevant to the needs of students and businesses. Funds will be awarded to build the capability and capacity of programs to engage more students, more businesses,  and more faculty members in co-op and internship programs. The programs should address the talent needs of JobsOhio key industries.

Under this announcement, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is soliciting proposals from eligible applicants for projects that will advance EPA's water quality and environmental justice goals. Note that, for this grant cycle, projects proposed for funding must take place entirely within and focus on one of 18 specific Eligible Geographic Areas, as listed in Section I.A and illustrated on the Urban Waters Small Grants program mapping website (http://www2.epa.gov/urbanwaters/urban-waters-small-grants-mapping).

The Chemical and Biological Separations (CBS) program supports fundamental research on novel methods and materials for separation processes.  These processes are central to the chemical, biochemical, materials, energy, and pharmaceutical industries.  A fundamental understanding of the interfacial, transport, and thermodynamic behavior of multiphase chemical systems as well as quantitative descriptions of processing characteristics in the process-oriented industries is critical for efficient resource management and effective environmental protection.  The program encourages proposals that address emerging research areas and technologies, have a high degree of interdisciplinary thought coupled with knowledge creation, and integrate education and research. Research topics OF PARTICULAR INTEREST in CBS include fundamental molecular-level work on: Nanostructured materials for separations Biorenewable resource separation processes Purification of drinking water Field (flow, magnetic, electrical) induced separations Separation of molecular constituents from blood The duration of unsolicited awards is generally one to three years.  The average annual award size for the program is $80,000.  Proposals requesting a substantially higher amount than this, without prior consultation with the Program Director, may be returned without review.  Small equipment proposals of less than $100,000 will also be considered and may be submitted during the annual submission window. 

The Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases program supports research on the ecological, evolutionary, and socio-ecological principles and processes that influence the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases. The central theme of submitted projects must be quantitative or computational understanding of pathogen transmission dynamics. The intent is discovery of principles of infectious disease transmission and testing mathematical or computational models that elucidate infectious disease systems. Projects should be broad, interdisciplinary efforts that go beyond the scope of typical studies. They should focus on the determinants and interactions of transmission among humans, non-human animals, and/or plants. This includes, for example, the spread of pathogens; the influence of environmental factors such as climate; the population dynamics and genetics of reservoir species or hosts; or the cultural, social, behavioral, and economic dimensions of disease transmission. Research may be on zoonotic, environmentally-borne, vector-borne, or enteric diseases of either terrestrial or freshwater systems and organisms, including diseases of animals and plants, at any scale from specific pathogens to inclusive environmental systems. Proposals for research on disease systems of public health concern to developing countries are strongly encouraged, as are disease systems of concern in agricultural systems. Investigators are encouraged to involve the public health research community, including for example, epidemiologists, physicians, veterinarians, food scientists, social scientists, entomologists, pathologists, virologists, or parasitologists with the goal of integrating knowledge across disciplines to enhance our ability to predict and control infectious diseases.

The following programs have due dates that fall between October 1 - 25, 2013, and these dates are being revised due to the Federal  government shutdown. These revised dates apply whether the proposal is being submitted via the NSF FastLane System or  Grants.gov. Due to compressed proposal deadlines resulting from the shutdown, proposers are advised that they may experience a  delay when contacting IT Help Central with technical support questions. Frequently asked questions regarding these date changes  are available on the Resumption of Operations page on the NSF website at: http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/postshutdown.jsp. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as part of its Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, is seeking applications proposing research to improve understanding of the effects of climate change on indoor air quality and the resulting health effects. EPA is interested in supporting research that will explore the anticipated effects of climate change on indoor air quality directly through a variety of mechanisms, and indirectly through adaptations in building use and design. This solicitation provides the opportunity for the submission of applications for projects that may involve human subjects research.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as part of its Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, is seeking applications proposing research to improve understanding of the effects of climate change on indoor air quality and the resulting health effects. EPA is interested in supporting research that will explore the anticipated effects of climate change on indoor air quality directly through a variety of mechanisms, and indirectly through adaptations in building use and design. This solicitation provides the opportunity for the submission of applications for projects that may involve human subjects research.