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Growing Convergence Research (GCR) at the National Science Foundation was identified as one of 10 Big Ideas. Convergence research is a means for solving vexing research problems, in particular, complex problems focusing on societal needs. It entails integrating knowledge, methods, and expertise from different disciplines and forming novel frameworks to catalyze scientific discovery and innovation. GCR identifies Convergence Research as having two primary characteristics: Research driven by a specific and compelling problem. Convergence Research is generally inspired by the need to address a specific challenge or opportunity, whether it arises from deep scientific questions or pressing societal needs. Deep integration across disciplines. As experts from different disciplines pursue common research challenges, their knowledge, theories, methods, data, research communities and languages become increasingly intermingled or integrated. New frameworks, paradigms or even disciplines can form sustained interactions across multiple communities. A distinct characteristic of convergence research, in contrast to other forms of multidisciplinary research, is that from the inception, the convergence paradigm intentionally brings together intellectually diverse researchers and stakeholders to frame the research questions, develop effective ways of communicating across disciplines and sectors, adopt common frameworks for their solution, and, when appropriate, develop a new scientific vocabulary. Research teams practicing convergence aim at developing sustainable relationships that may not only create solutions to the problem that engendered the collaboration, but also develop novel ways of framing related research questions and open new research vistas.

Research!America is pleased to announce an exciting new program to introduce and engage early-career scientists in research advocacy and science policy. The 2013 Research!America Advocacy Academy is a unique opportunity for postdoctoral fellows in the health and biomedical sciences to learn about how to best incorporate advocacy and effective communications into their role as a scientist. The 2013 class of up to 12 Research!America advocates will participate in a two-day Washington, DC, program from September 11-12, 2013. Participants will learn about the federal budget and appropriations process, tools for effective science communication and outreach as well as how to engage with elected representatives on scientific and research issues. The program includes visiting Capitol Hill to meet with policy makers and congressional staff members, providing participants with a first-hand experience advocating for health research. Rounding out this unique Washington experience, participants will attend Research!America's National Health Research Forum where top leaders in government, industry, academia and patient organizations engage in moderated conversations on issues of importance to the research ecosystem. Upon completion of the program, participants will become Science Advocates for Research!America. Advocates will remain engaged with Research!America staff, receive ongoing action alerts and learn about ways to involve their home institution's research community in effective science advocacy. All travel expenses (transportation, lodging and meals) will be provided and arranged by Research!America through an educational grant provided by Pfizer. This year's program is limited to 12 exceptional postdoctoral researchers with a dedicated interest in becoming active advocates for science.

NOTE: This is a limited submission opportunity. Please contact Research & Sponsored Programs for details about Miami's internal competition process. OARS@MiamiOH.edu or 9-3600. The Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program serves to increase access to multi-user scientific and engineering instrumentation for research and research training in our Nation's institutions of higher education and not-for-profit scientific/engineering research organizations. An MRI award supports the acquisition or development of a multi-user research instrument that is, in general, too costly and/or not appropriate for support through other NSF programs. MRI provides support to acquire critical research instrumentation without which advances in fundamental science and engineering research may not otherwise occur. MRI also provides support to develop next-generation research instruments that open new opportunities to advance the frontiers in science and engineering research. Additionally, an MRI award is expected to enhance research training of students who will become the next generation of instrument users, designers and builders. An MRI proposal may request up to $4 million for either acquisition or development of a research instrument. Beginning with the FY 2018 competition, each performing organization may submit in revised "Tracks" as defined below, with no more than two submissions in Track 1 and no more than one submission in Track 2. Track 1: Track 1 MRI proposals are those that request funds from NSF greater than or equal to $100,0001 and less than $1,000,000. Track 2: Track 2 MRI proposals are those that request funds from NSF greater than or equal to $1,000,000 up to and including $4,000,000.

NSF-supported science and engineering research increasingly relies on cutting-edge infrastructure. With its Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program and Major Multi-user Facilities (Major Facilities) projects, NSF supports infrastructure projects at the lower and higher ends of infrastructure scales across science and engineering research disciplines. The Mid-scale Research Infrastructure Big Idea is intended to provide NSF with an agile, Foundation-wide process to fund experimental research capabilities in the mid-scale range between the MRI and Major Facilities thresholds. NSF defines Research Infrastructure (RI) as any combination of facilities, equipment, instrumentation, or computational hardware or software, and the necessary human capital in support of the same. Major facilities and mid-scale projects are subsets of research infrastructure. The NSF Mid-scale Research Infrastructure-1 Program (Mid-scale RI-1) supports the design or implementation of unique and compelling RI projects. Mid-scale RI-1 implementation projects may include any combination of equipment, instrumentation, cyberinfrastructure, broadly used large-scale datasets, and the commissioning and/or personnel needed to successfully complete the project, or the design efforts intended to lead to eventual implementation of a mid-scale class project. Mid-scale RI-1 design projects will include the design efforts intended to lead to eventual implementation of a mid-scale class RI project. Mid-scale RI-1 projects should fill a research community-defined scientific need or enable a national research priority to be met. Mid-scale RI-projects should also enable US researchers to remain competitive in a global research environment and involve the training of a diverse workforce engaged in the design and implementation of STEM infrastructure.

The DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI), one element of the University Research Initiative (URI), is sponsored by the DoD research offices: the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) (hereafter collectively referred to as "DoD agencies").The MURI program supports basic research in science and engineering at U.S. institutions of higher education (hereafter referred to as "universities") that is of potential interest to DoD. The program is focused on multidisciplinary research efforts where more than one traditional discipline interacts to provide rapid advances in scientific areas of interest to the DoD. As defined by the DoD, "basic research is systematic study directed toward greater knowledge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of phenomena and of observable facts without specific applications towards processes or products in mind. It includes all scientific study and experimentation directed toward increasing fundamental knowledge and understanding in those fields of the physical, engineering, environmental, and life sciences related to long-term national security needs. It is farsighted high payoff research that provides the basis for technological progress." (DoD 7000.14.R, vol. 2B, chap.5). DoD's basic research program invests broadly in many specific fields to ensure that it has early cognizance of new scientific knowledge.

To continue to strengthen the innovation ecosystem, NSF is revising NSF 12-511 to promote two choices under the Partnerships for Innovation (PFI): Accelerating Innovation Research (AIR) subprogram.  The first choice, Technology Translation, encourages the translation of technologically-promising research discoveries made by prior and/or current NSF-funded investigators toward a path of commercialization; while the second choice, Research Alliance, promotes synergistic collaborations between an existing NSF-funded research alliance (including consortia such as Engineering Research Centers, Industry University Cooperative Research Centers, Science and Technology Centers, Nanoscale Science and Engineering Centers, Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers, Centers for Chemical Innovation, and Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation grantees) and other public and private entities to motivate the translation and transfer of research discoveries into innovative technologies and commercial reality.  Both of these choices are designed to accelerate innovation that results in the creation of new wealth and the building of strong local, regional, and national economies.

The Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program supports active research participation by undergraduate students in any of the areas of research funded by the National Science Foundation. REU projects involve students in meaningful ways in ongoing research programs or in research projects specifically designed for the REU program. This solicitation features two mechanisms for support of student research: (1) REU Sites are based on independent proposals to initiate and conduct projects that engage a number of students in research. REU Sites may be based in a single discipline or academic department or may offer interdisciplinary or multi-department research opportunities with a coherent intellectual theme. Proposals with an international dimension are welcome. (2) REU Supplements may be included as a component of proposals for new or renewal NSF grants or cooperative agreements or may be requested for ongoing NSF-funded research projects.

The Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program supports active research participation by undergraduate students in any of the areas of research funded by the National Science Foundation. REU projects involve students in meaningful ways in ongoing research programs or in research projects specifically designed for the REU program. This solicitation features two mechanisms for support of student research: (1) REU Sites are based on independent proposals to initiate and conduct projects that engage a number of students in research. REU Sites may be based in a single discipline or academic department or may offer interdisciplinary or multi-department research opportunities with a coherent intellectual theme. Proposals with an international dimension are welcome. (2) REU Supplements may be included as a component of proposals for new or renewal NSF grants or cooperative agreements or may be requested for ongoing NSF-funded research projects.

Materials Innovation Platforms (MIP) is a mid-scale infrastructure program in the Division of Materials Research (DMR) designed to accelerate advances in materials research. MIPs respond to the increasing complexity of materials research that requires close collaboration of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams and access to cutting edge tools. These tools in a user facility benefit both a user program and in-house research, which focus on addressing grand challenges of fundamental science and meet national needs. MIPs embrace the paradigm set forth by the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), which strives to "discover, manufacture, and deploy advanced materials twice as fast, at a fraction of the cost," and conduct research through iterative "closed-loop" efforts among the areas of materials synthesis/processing, materials characterization, and theory/modeling/simulation. In addition, they are expected to engage the emerging field of data science in materials research. Each MIP is a scientific ecosystem, which includes in-house research scientists, external users and other contributors who, collectively, form a community of practitioners and share tools, codes, samples, data and know-how. The knowledge sharing is designed to strengthen collaborations among scientists and enable them to work in new ways, fostering new modalities of research and education/training, for the purpose of accelerating discovery and development of new materials and novel materials phenomena/properties, as well as fostering their eventual deployment. The scientific focus of the MIP program is subject to change from competition to competition. The first MIP competition in 2015 focused on developing new bulk and thin-film crystalline hard materials. The second MIP competition, in 2019, focuses on the convergence of materials research with biological sciences for developing new materials.

Research proposals are sought from educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and commercial organizations for research in materials sciences; ballistics and aeromechanics sciences; information sciences; human sciences; survivability, lethality, and vulnerability analysis and assessment; chemistry; electronics; physics; environmental sciences; life sciences; mechanical sciences, mathematical sciences, computing sciences and network sciences. Proposals will be evaluated only if they are for scientific study and experimentation directed toward advancing the state of the art or increasing knowledge and understanding. ARO has primary responsibility for ARL's extramural basic research programs, with specific research interests as described in Part II.A.2. The ARL Directorates, while having primary responsibility for ARL's in-house research programs, also manage select extramural basic research programs. The research interests of the Directorates are described in Part II.A.1. Although ARL Directorates will consider funding proposals for extramural research programs, they can fund only a modest number of proposals in a single fiscal year.

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSECs) program provides sustained support of interdisciplinary materials research and education of the highest quality while addressing fundamental problems in science and engineering. Each MRSEC addresses research of a scope and complexity requiring the scale, synergy, and multidisciplinarity provided by a campus-based research center. The MRSECs support materials research infrastructure in the United States, promote active collaboration between universities and other sectors, including industry and international organizations, and contribute to the development of a national network of university-based centers in materials research, education, and facilities. A MRSEC may be located at a single institution, or may involve multiple institutions in partnership, and is composed of up to three Interdisciplinary Research Groups, IRGs, each addressing a fundamental materials science topic aligned with the Division of Materials Research, DMR.

Materials Innovation Platforms (MIP) is a mid-scale infrastructure program in the Division of Materials Research (DMR) designed to accelerate advances in materials research. MIPs respond to the increasing complexity of materials research that requires close collaboration of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams and access to cutting edge tools. These tools in a user facility benefit both a user program and in-house research, which focus on addressing grand challenges of fundamental science and meet national needs. MIPs embrace the paradigm set forth by the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), which strives to "discover, manufacture, and deploy advanced materials twice as fast, at a fraction of the cost," and conduct research through iterative "closed-loop" efforts among the areas of materials synthesis/processing, materials characterization, and theory/modeling/simulation. In addition, they are expected to engage the emerging field of data science in materials research. Each MIP is a scientific ecosystem, which includes in-house research scientists, external users and other contributors who, collectively, form a community of practitioners and share tools, codes, samples, data and know-how. The knowledge sharing is designed to strengthen collaborations among scientists and enable them to work in new ways, fostering new modalities of research and education/training, for the purpose of accelerating discovery and development of new materials and novel materials phenomena/properties, as well as fostering their eventual deployment.

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSECs) program provides sustained support of interdisciplinary materials research and education of the highest quality while addressing fundamental problems in science and engineering. Each MRSEC addresses research of a scope and complexity requiring the scale, synergy, and multidisciplinarity provided by a campus-based research center. The MRSECs support materials research infrastructure in the United States, promote active collaboration between universities and other sectors, including industry and international organizations, and contribute to the development of a national network of university-based centers in materials research, education, and facilities. A MRSEC may be located at a single institution, or may involve multiple institutions in partnership, and is composedof up to three Interdisciplinary Research Groups, IRGs, each addressing a fundamental materials science topic aligned with the Division of Materials Research, DMR.

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSECs) program provides sustained support of interdisciplinary materials research and education of the highest quality while addressing fundamental problems in science and engineering. Each MRSEC addresses research of a scope and complexity requiring the scale, synergy, and multidisciplinarity provided by a campus-based research center. The MRSECs support materials research infrastructure in the United States, promote active collaboration between universities and other sectors, including industry and international organizations, and contribute to the development of a national network of university-based centers in materials research, education, and facilities. A MRSEC may be located at a single institution, or may involve multiple institutions in partnership, and is composed of up to three Interdisciplinary Research Groups, IRGs, each addressing a fundamental materials science topic aligned with the Division of Materials Research, DMR.

The EBRC (Energetics Basic Research Center) is a basic research program initiated by the Combat Capabilities Development Command/Army Research Laboratory/ARO. It focuses on areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security. It seeks to increase the Army's intellectual capital in energetic materials (EM) and improve its ability to address future challenges. EBRC brings together universities, research institutions, companies, and individual scholars and supports multidisciplinary and cross-institutional projects addressing specific topic areas determined by the Department of the Army (DA). The EBRC aims to promote research in specific areas of EMs and to promote a candid and constructive relationship between DA and the energetics research community. The future Army is projected to be unable to achieve dominance in range and lethality due to inadequate energetic formulations and form factor limitations associated with current weapon systems. Basic research generates new knowledge that may be exploited to develop and deliver new materials and technologies that contribute to enhanced lethal effects at the system level as well as increased range and a smaller payload. These, in turn, enable space for larger, mission-critical systems, and shorter time-to-target ensuring Army battlefield dominance in Multi-Domain Operations. Army research must encompass new ways to expedite the discovery, design, and scale-up of new materials and concepts which when integrated into newly designed weapons components (e.g. additively manufactured high strength steels with pre-formed fragmentation patterns, and structural reactive materials) developed at ARL and across the Army and DoD communities, will deliver decisive weapons overmatch.

The MPM program supports fundamental, hypothesis-driven research on the interrelationship of materials processing, structure, properties, performance and process control. Analytical, experimental, and numerical studies are supported, including novel processing methods for any materials system (metals, polymers, ceramics, hybrids, composites, etc.). Proposed research should include the consideration of cost, performance, and feasibility of scale-up, as appropriate. Research that address multi-scale and/or multi-functional materials systems is encouraged as is research in support of environmentally-benign manufacturing. Collaborative proposals with industry (GOALI) are encouraged. Research on micro-scale (and larger) processes is funded by the MPM program; research on processing at the submicron or nano scale is funded by the Nanomanufacturing (NM) program. Research on solid freeform fabrication processes is funded by the Manufacturing Machines and Equipment (MME) program, as are material removal process proposals such as cutting or grinding. Proposals that focus on research leading to new paradigms of material systems design should consider the Design of Engineering Material Systems (DEMS) program. Proposals that primarily focus on fundamental material composition-structure-property studies, where neither processing nor manufacturing plays a significant role in the proposed work, should be submitted to the Materials and Surface Engineering (MSE) program or to the appropriate program in the DMR division.Investigators wishing to serve on a proposal review panel should email the Program Director with a short biographical sketch, a list of areas of expertise and/or a link to their home page. REU/RET supplement requests should be submitted by March 31 each year.

Materials Innovation Platforms (MIP) is a mid-scale infrastructure program in the Division of Materials Research (DMR) designed to accelerate advances in materials research. MIPs respond to the increasing complexity of materials research that requires close collaboration of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams and access to cutting edge tools. These tools in a user facility benefit both a user program and in-house research, which focus on addressing grand challenges of fundamental science and meet national needs. MIPs embrace the paradigm set forth by the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), which strives to "discover, manufacture, and deploy advanced materials twice as fast, at a fraction of the cost," and conduct research through iterative "closed-loop" efforts among the areas of materials synthesis/processing, materials characterization, and theory/modeling/simulation. In addition, they are expected to engage the emerging field of data science in materials research. Each MIP is a scientific ecosystem, which includes in-house research scientists, external users and other contributors who, collectively, form a community of practitioners and share tools, codes, samples, data and know-how. The knowledge sharing is designed to strengthen collaborations among scientists and enable them to work in new ways, fostering new modalities of research and education/training, for the purpose of accelerating discovery and development of new materials and novel materials phenomena/properties, as well as fostering their eventual deployment.

National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI) assists in the acquisition or development of major research instrumentation. This program seeks to improve the quality and expand the scope of research and research training in science and engineering, and to foster the integration of research and education by providing instrumentation for research-intensive learning environments. The MRI program also encourages the shared inter- and/or intra-organizational use of the acquired research instrumentation. For more information, please consult the program's guidelines. Miami University may submit up to three MRI proposals (up to two that request between $100,000 and $1 million and no more than one that requests between $1 million and $4 million) on which Miami is either the lead or a partner institution. To facilitate the selection of our submissions to NSF, we have set a deadline of October 28, 2019 to receive preliminary MRI proposals for internal review. You are required to provide a preliminary proposal regardless of whether you were selected as an institutional submission in previous years.

The Mechanics of Materials and Structures program supports fundamental research in mechanics as related to the behavior of deformable solid materials and respective structures under internal and external actions. A diverse and interdisciplinary spectrum of research is supported with emphasis on research that leads to advances in i) theory, experimental, and/or computational methods in mechanics, and/or ii) uses contemporary mechanics methods to address modern challenges in materials and structures. Proposed research can focus on existing or emerging materials and structural systems, across time and length scales. Proposals related to material response are welcome, and would propose, but not limited to, advances in fundamental understanding of deformation, fracture, fatigue, as well as on contact and friction through constitutive modeling, multi-scale (spatial or temporal) and multi-physics analysis, computational methods, or experimental techniques. Proposals that relate to structural response are welcome and would propose, but not limited to, advances in the understanding of nonlinear deformation, instability and collapse in the context of large deformation, wave propagation, multi-scale (spatial or temporal) and multi-physics analysis, computational methods, or experimental techniques. Proposals at the intersection or considerate of the integration of material and structure (such as, but not limited to, metamaterials, hierarchical, microarchitectured and low-dimensional materials) are especially welcome. Of particular interest are research questions that address the integration and combination of geometry, topology of material distributions, lengthscales and deformation/failure mechanics. Within this context, the challenge of the notion of what constitutes a ??material?? or a ??structure?? is expected to lead to unique opportunities in terms of analysis and experimentation of novel response characteristics. While the research results should contribute to ultimatel

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to invite exploratory/developmental research grant (R21) applications for the development of innovative methods and algorithms in biomedical computing, informatics, and data science addressing priority needs across the cancer research continuum, including cancer biology, cancer treatment and diagnosis, cancer prevention, cancer control and epidemiology, and/or cancer health disparities. As a component of the NCI's Informatics Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR) Initiative, this FOA encourages applications focused on the development of novel computational, mathematical, and statistical algorithms and methods that can considerably improve acquisition, management, analysis, and dissemination of relevant data and/or knowledge. The central mission of ITCR is to promote research-driven informatics technology across the development lifecycle to address priority needs in cancer research. In order to be successful, the proposed informatics method or algorithm must have a clear rationale on why it is novel and how it will benefit the cancer research field.