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This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages applications for developing and testing innovative theories and computational, mathematical, or engineering approaches to deepen our understanding of complex social behavior. This research will examine phenomena at multiple scales to address the emergence of collective behaviors that arise from individual elements or parts of a system working together. Emergence can also describe the functioning of a system within the context of its environment. Often properties we associate with a system itself are in actuality properties of the relationships and interactions between a system and its environment. This FOA will support research that explores the often complex and dynamic relationships among the parts of a system and between the system and its environment in order to understand the system as a whole.

The Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics (MMS) Program is an interdisciplinary program in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences that supports the development of innovative analytical and statistical methods and models for those sciences. MMS seeks proposals that are methodologically innovative, grounded in theory, and have potential utility for multiple fields within the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. As part of its larger portfolio, the MMS Program partners with a consortium of federal statistical agencies to support research proposals that further the production and use of official statistics.

Society's overwhelming reliance on this complex cyberspace, however, has exposed its fragility and vulnerabilities that defy existing cyber-defense measures; 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 Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program welcomes proposals that address cybersecurity and privacy, and draw on expertise in one or more of these areas: computing, communication and information sciences; engineering; economics; education; mathematics; statistics; and social and behavioral sciences. Proposals that advance the field of cybersecurity and privacy within a single discipline or interdisciplinary efforts that span multiple disciplines are both encouraged.

The Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics (MMS) Program is an interdisciplinary program in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences that supports the development of innovative analytical and statistical methods and models for those sciences. MMS seeks proposals that are methodologically innovative, grounded in theory, and have potential utility for multiple fields within the social, behavioral, and economicsciences. As part of its larger portfolio, the MMS Program partners with a consortium of federal statistical agencies to support research proposals that further the production and use of official statistics. The MMS Program provides support through a number of different funding mechanisms. The following mechanisms are addressed in this solicitation: Regular Research Awards Awards for conferences and community-development activities Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) Grants Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Supplements

The Science of Science & Innovation Policy (SciSIP) program supports research designed to advance the scientific basis of science and innovation policy. Research funded by the program thus develops, improves and expands models, analytical tools, data and metrics that can be applied in the science policy decision making process. For example, research proposals may develop behavioral and analytical conceptualizations, frameworks or models that have applications across a broad array of SciSIP challenges, including the relationship between broader participation and innovation or creativity. Proposals may also develop methodologies to analyze science and technology data, and to convey the information to a variety of audiences. Researchers are also encouraged to create or improve science and engineering data, metrics and indicators reflecting current discovery, particularly proposals that demonstrate the viability of collecting and analyzing data on knowledge generation and innovation in organizations. Among the many research topics supported are:examinations of the ways in which the contexts, structures and processes of science and engineering research are affected by policy decision, the evaluation of the tangible and intangible returns from investments in science and from investments in research and development, the study of structures and processes that facilitate the development of usable knowledge, theories of creative processes and their transformation into social and economic outcomes, the collection, analysis and visualization of new data describing the scientific and engineering enterprise. The SciSIP program invites the participation of researchers from all of the social, behavioral and economic sciences as well as those working in domain-specific applications such as chemistry, biology, physics, or nanotechnology. The program welcomes proposals for individual or multi-investigator research projects, doctoral dissertation improvement awards, conferences, wo

The Design of Engineering Material Systems (DEMS) program supports fundamental research intended to lead to new paradigms of design, development, and insertion of advanced engineering material systems. Fundamental research that develops and creatively integrates theory, processing/manufacturing, data/informatics, experimental, and/or computational approaches with rigorous engineering design principles, approaches, and tools to enable the accelerated design and development of materials is welcome. Research proposals are sought that strive to develop systematic scientific methodologies to tailor the behavior of material systems in ways that are driven by performance metrics and incorporate processing/manufacturing. While an emphasis on a specific material system may be appropriate to provide the necessary project focus, techniques developed should transcend materials systems. Ultimately it is expected that research outcomes will be methodologies to enable the discovery of materials systems with new properties and behavior, and enable their rapid insertion into engineering systems.Proposals that focus on modeling, simulation, and prediction of material performance (even when research is coupled with experiments for validation or guidance) without an intellectual emphasis on design are not appropriate for this program and should be submitted to other disciplinary programs.

The Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics (MMS) Program is an interdisciplinary program in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences that supports the development of innovative analytical and statistical methods and models for those sciences. MMS seeks proposals that are methodologically innovative, grounded in theory, and have potential utility for multiple fields within the social and behavioral sciences.  As part of its larger portfolio, the MMS Program partners with a consortium of federal statistical agencies to support research proposals that further the development of new and innovative approaches to surveys and to the analysis of survey data. The MMS Program supports a variety of different types of awards, including: 1) Regular Research Awards 2) Mid-Career Research Fellowships 3) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants 4) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Supplements

As part of NSF's Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR), the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) seeks to develop user-friendly large-scale next-generation data resources and relevant analytic techniques to advance fundamental research in SBE areas of study. Successful proposals will, within the financial resources provided by the award, construct such databases and/or relevant analytic techniques and produce a finished product that will enable new types of data-intensive research. The databases or techniques should have significant impacts, either across multiple fields or within broad disciplinary areas, by enabling new types of data-intensive research in the SBE sciences.

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; 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 develop the appropriate multidisciplinary team, including for example, modelers, bioinformaticians, genomics researchers, social scientists, economists, epidemiologists, entomologists, parasitologists, microbiologists, bacteriologists, virologists, pathologists or veterinarians, with the goal of integrating knowledge across disciplines to enhance our ability to predict and control infectious diseases.

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; 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 develop the appropriate multidisciplinary team, including for example, modelers, bioinformaticians, genomics researchers, social scientists, economists, epidemiologists, entomologists, parasitologists, microbiologists, bacteriologists, virologists, pathologists or veterinarians, with the goal of integrating knowledge across disciplines to enhance our ability to predict and control infectious diseases.

The purposes of the NCIPC extramural violence prevention research program are to: 1. Build the scientific base for the prevention of violence by helping to expand and advance our understanding of the primary prevention of interpersonal violence. 2. Encourage professionals from a wide spectrum of disciplines of epidemiology, behavioral and social sciences, medicine, biostatistics, public health, health economics, law, and criminal justice to perform research in order to prevent violence more effectively. 3. Encourage investigators to propose research that involves the development and testing of primary prevention strategies, programs and policies designed to prevent interpersonal violence and reduce violence-related outcomes as well as dissemination, implementation, and translation research to enhance the adoption and maintenance of effective strategies among individuals, organizations, or communities.

Pathway supports innovative basic, clinical, translational, epidemiological, behavioral, or health services research relevant to any diabetes type, diabetes-related disease state, or diabetes complication. The Association seeks exceptional candidates from a broad range of disciplines, including medicine, biology, chemistry, computing, physics, mathematics and engineering.

In today's increasingly networked, distributed, and asynchronous world, cybersecurity involves hardware, software, networks, data, people, and integration with the physical world. Society's overwhelming reliance on this complex cyberspace, however, has exposed its fragility and vulnerabilities that defy existing cyber-defense measures; 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 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 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 NIH Research Education Program (R25) supports research education activities in the mission areas of the NIH.  The over-arching goal of this Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) R25 program is to support educational activities that complement and/or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation's biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs.  To accomplish the stated over-arching goal, this FOA will support creative educational activities with a primary focus on Courses for Skills Development for biomedical researchers who need the requisite knowledge and skills to extract knowledge from biomedical Big Data.  To extend the reach of the course, each educational activity is required to develop open educational resources (OERs) that adhere to FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) principles. Ideally, OERs should be useful to individuals at all career levels, from predoctoral students to established investigators. 

The goal of the CPS program is to develop the core system science needed to engineer complex cyber-physical systems that people can use or interact with and depend upon. Some of these may require high-confidence or provable behaviors. 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 seeks to reveal cross-cutting fundamental scientific and engineering principles that underpin the integration of cyber and physical elements across all application sectors.

Mathematical Physics develops and applies advanced mathematical methods to enable the solution of difficult problems in physics.  It often is the work of mathematicians with a strong physics interest and intuition, or of physicists who are also highly regarded in mathematics.  Very advanced mathematical methods are applied (by individuals or collaborators) to important but difficult physics concepts to rigorously establish the behavior of theoretical systems,  resolve conundrums or find new directions.  The PHY Mathematical Physics program is dedicated to supporting such research.

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.

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) encourages Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant applications from small business concerns (SBCs) that propose development of a broad base of innovative technologies in biomedical computing, informatics, and Big Data Science that will support rapid progress in areas of scientific opportunity in biomedical research. It is expected that this research and development is conducted in the context of important biomedical and behavioral research problems. As such, applications are intended to develop enabling technologies that could apply to the interests of most NIH Institutes and Centers and range from basic biomedicine to research in all relevant organ systems and diseases. Major themes of research include collaborative environments; data integration; analysis and modeling methodologies; and novel computer science and statistical approaches. New opportunities are also emerging as large and complex data sets are becoming increasingly available to the research community.

The NIH is interested in promoting a broad base of research and development of technologies in biomedical computing, informatics, and Big Data Science that will support rapid progress in areas of scientific opportunity in biomedical research. It is expected that this research and development is conducted in the context of important biomedical and behavioral research problems. As such, applications are intended to develop enabling technologies that could apply to the interests of most NIH Institutes and Centers and range from basic biomedicine and including research to all relevant organ systems and diseases. Major themes of research include collaborative environments; data integration; analysis and modeling methodologies; and novel computer science and statistical approaches. New opportunities are also emerging as large and complex data sets are becoming increasingly available to the research community. This initiative aims to address biomedical research areas in biomedical computing, informatics, and Big Data science through the early stage development of new software, tools and related resources, as well as the fundamental research (e.g., methodologies and approaches) leading up to that development.