OARS funding Math & Statistics

SPIE is an international society that works to advance an interdisciplinary approach to the science and application of light. As part of its educational outreach mission, SPIE awards grants in support of optics- and photonics-related educational outreach activities. The society offers two kinds of grants: SPIE Education Outreach grants and Sustaining grants. 1) SPIE Education Outreach grants: Recipients of these grants are required to submit an annual outreach grant report to the society on how the grant was used within ninety days of completing the funded activity. Grant applications should include activities that have not been funded by a previous award. 2) Sustaining Grants: If a program has received an Education Outreach Grant twice in a period of five years, it can only apply for further support, up to a maximum of $2,000, through a Sustaining grant. There is no limit to the number of times a program can apply for a Sustaining grant, but it will be competing with all other proposals every time it applies. To eligible, applicants must be a nonprofit organization or education institution (e.g., university, optics center, science center, primary or secondary school, youth club, industry association, or international optical societies).

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.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to provide opportunities for eligible small business concerns (SBCs) to submit STTR grant applications to develop interactive digital media science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) resources that address student career choice and health and medicine topics for: (1) pre-kindergarten to grade 12 (P-12) students and pre- and in-service teachers ("Teachers") or (2) Informal science education (ISE), i.e., outside the classroom, audiences. Interactive digital media (IDM) are defined as products and services on digital computer-based systems which respond to the user's actions by presenting content such as text, moving image, animation, video, audio, and video games. There is a large body of evidence that IDM technology has the potential to support learning in a variety of contexts from primary and secondary schools, to universities, adult education and workplace training. IDM is widely used to train, educate, and encourage behavioral changes in a virtual world format where progressive learning, feedback on success and user control are combined into an interactive and engaging experience. It is anticipated that this STTR FOA will facilitate the translation of new or existing health and medicine-based, P-12 STEM curricula and museum exhibits into educational Interactive Digital Media STEM (IDM STEM) resources that will provide a hands-on, inquiry-based and learning-by-doing experience for students, teachers and the community.

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics is inviting proposals from collaborative action research projects seeking to improve classroom teachers' understanding and teaching of mathematics in pre-K-8 classrooms. Priority will be given to collaborations consisting of university, elementary/middle school teachers, and pre-service teachers from the undergraduate ranks. The research should be designed and implemented with a focus on enhancing the teaching and/or learning of math from pre-K to grade 8. A single grant of up to $3,000 will be awarded. Grant funds should be used to support expenses incurred in planning and carrying out the research. Applicants must be a current full individual or e-member of NCTM or teach at a school with a current NCTM pre-K-8 school membership. The participating pre-service teacher(s) must be in an initial licensure/certification program at the undergraduate level and at some point during the term of the grant must be engaged in some form of practicum experience or student teaching.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) seeks unclassified proposals from educational institutions in the United States for a University Center of Excellence (UCoE) in Efficient and Robust Machine Learning (ERML). Proposals must not contain any proprietary information. This center is a joint project between AFOSR and the Air Force Research Laboratory, Information Directorate (AFRL/RI; http://www.wpafb.af.mil/afrl/ri.aspx). The center will extend the research capabilities of the Air Force Research Laboratory, and provide opportunities for a new generation of United States scientists and engineers to address the basic research needs of the Air Force. We will consider proposals for up to five (5) years with a three-year (3) base period and a two-year (2) option period. The total anticipated amount for the award is $4M. Each of the three (3) years base is anticipated to be funded at $1M each and $500K each for option years. All funding projections are based on availability of funds. We will evaluate proposals using peer review panels and the criteria specified in section F. Application Review Information. While AFOSR reserves the right to selected and fund all, some, or none of the proposals, we anticipate making one Corporative Agreement award under this competition.

The Institute for Research on Innovation and Science is accepting applications for its 2018 IRIS Awards, an annual program that supports researchers who use IRIS data to address questions about the social and economic returns of investments in research. Through the program, IRIS seeks to enable fundamental research on the results of public and private investments that support discovery, innovation, and education on the campuses of U.S. universities. Up to $15,000 for dissertations awards and up to $30,000 for early career and established researcher awards will be awarded to the recipient's institution. Funds can be used for personnel (e.g., research assistance, salaries, or stipend if recipient is a student), equipment, supplies, travel (may include travel mandated by the award), and other expenses (e.g., professional development and training). Awards may include 15 percent overhead or indirect costs to be paid as a part of the award total. Proposals must emphasize the use of IRIS data in projects that address open issues in the study of science and technology and science policy. Topics of particular interest include but are not limited to new methods to estimate social and economic return on investment for funding from various sources (federal, philanthropic, industrial, and institutional); the relationship between research training, career outcomes, and the downstream productivity of employers; the relationship between different funding sources and mechanisms and the structure and outcomes of collaboration within and across campuses; the distinctive contribution university research makes to regional economic development and resilience; and the effects different funding sources and mechanisms have on research teams and the productivity and efficiency of the academic research enterprise as a whole

The DMR Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials Research (PREM) program aims to enable, build, and grow partnerships between minority-serving institutions and DMR-supported centers and/or facilities to increase recruitment, retention and degree attainment (which defines the PREM pathway) by members of those groups most underrepresented in materials research, and at the same time support excellent research and education endeavors that strengthen such partnerships.

Supports activities in conjunction with NSF-wide programs such as Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER), Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU), and programs aimed at women, minorities, and persons with disabilities. Further information about all of these programs and activities is available in the Crosscutting Investment Strategies section of the NSF Guide to Programs. The program also supports activities that seek to improve the education and training of physics students (both undergraduate and graduate), such as curriculum development or physics education research directed towards upper-level or graduate physics courses, and activities that are not included in specific programs elsewhere within NSF. The program supports research at the interface between physics and other disciplines and extending to emerging areas. Broadening activities related to research at the interface with other fields, possibly not normally associated with physics, also may be considered.

The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, and potentially transformative approaches to STEM graduate education training. The program seeks proposals that explore ways for graduate students in research-based master's and doctoral degree programs to develop the skills, knowledge, and competencies needed to pursue a range of STEM careers. IGE focuses on projects aimed at piloting, testing, and validating innovative and potentially transformative approaches to graduate education. IGE projects are intended to generate the knowledge required for their customization, implementation, and broader adoption. The program supports testing of novel models or activities with high potential to enrich and extend the knowledge base on effective graduate education approaches. The program addresses both workforce development, emphasizing broad participation, and institutional capacity building needs in graduate education. Strategic collaborations with the private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government agencies, national laboratories, field stations, teaching and learning centers, informal science centers, and academic partners are encouraged.

The Scalable Parallelism in the Extreme (SPX) program aims to support research addressing the challenges of increasing performance in this modern era of parallel computing. This will require a collaborative effort among researchers in multiple areas, from services and applications down to micro-architecture. Objectives, including supporting foundational research toward architecture and software approaches that drive performance improvements in the post-Moore’s Law era; development and deployment of programmable, scalable, and reusable platforms in the national HPC and scientific cyberinfrastructure ecosystem; increased coherence of data analytic computing and modeling and simulation; and capable extreme-scale computing.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages applications to develop valid markers to assess the activity of fundamental aging mechanisms in humans that may influence the risk and progression of multiple aging conditions. Projects are encouraged that focus on selected mechanism(s) that may regulate aging changes, assess multiple possible markers for these mechanisms, test methods to improve their measurement properties, characterize their variability among individuals of differing ages and within the same age cohort, and assess their relationships in humans to in vivo functions influenced by the mechanism(s) under study. It is strongly encouraged that each project includes an interdisciplinary research team with expertise, as needed, in the biology of their selected mechanism(s), biomedical aging research, clinical pathology including laboratory assays, imaging methods, human cohort studies, tissue banking, biorepository resources, and statistics. Though the principal focus of the initiative is on development of markers in humans, studies in laboratory animals may also be conducted when necessary for the development of human markers, and potential development of parallel laboratory animal markers of a given mechanism.

The purpose of the Cyberlearning for Work at the Human-Technology Frontier program is to fund exploratory and synergistic research in learning technologies to prepare learners to excel in work at the human-technology frontier. This program responds to the pressing societal need to educate and re-educate learners of all ages (students, teachers and workers) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content areas to ultimately function in highly technological environments, including in collaboration with intelligent systems. Innovative technologies can reshape learning processes, which in turn can influence new technology design. Learning technology research in this program should be informed by the convergence of multiple disciplines: education and learning sciences, computer and information science and engineering, and cognitive, behavioral and social sciences. This program funds learning technology research in STEM and other foundational areas that enable STEM learning.

This NOFO will support achievement of national targets for 2018 antiretroviral therapy (ART) scale-up towards the UNAIDS Fast Track Targets in Ukraine. The recipient will implement innovative and effective recruitment and case management models for persons who inject drugs (PWID) and men who have sex with men (MSM) at the community level. These innovative changes will increase uptake of HIV community based testing and increase ART initiation for these populations. The recipient will pilot risk network-based testing using point-of-care recency assays to link recently infected PWID to care. The project will focus on the six regions with the highest HIV burden (Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolayiv, Odesa, government controlled areas (GCA) of Donetsk, Kyiv City, and Kherson) and continue to work in six additional medium burden oblasts (Cherkasy, Poltava, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhya, Kirovohrad, and Kyiv). The recipient will also increase the capacity of the Government of Ukraine’s Center for Public Health (CPH) and regional monitoring and evaluation (M&E) centers specialists to conduct data analysis using statistical software and build institutional capacity to conduct economic evaluations of HIV interventions. Illustrative strategic information (SI) activities include development of trainings to support the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the newly established CPH in using statistical software, routine analysis of surveillance data, study design, and research protocol development.

The goal of the program is to support the "mathematical marketplace" by substantially increasing collaborative contacts between mathematicians. The foundation will make a large number of collaboration grants to accomplished, active researchers in the United States who do not otherwise have access to funding that allows support for travel and visitors. Awards will be based on the quality and significance of the applicant's previous research, as outlined in the Statement of Recent Work requirement below, and on the likely impact the collaboration grant will have on future research, both for the applicant and the applicant's graduate students and/or postdoctoral fellows. Other criteria include publication in high-quality journals, the applicant's current and recent Ph.D. students and the applicant's travel goals and general research activity.

The Combinatorics program supports research on discrete structures and includes algebraic, enumerative, existential, extremal, geometric, and probabilistic combinatorics, including graph theory.

The Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) plan to support research in mathematics and statistics on questions in the biological and biomedical sciences. Both agencies recognize the need for promoting research at the interface between the mathematical sciences and the life sciences. This program is designed to encourage new collaborations, as well as to support existing ones.

The purpose of the Focused Research Group activity is to support collaborative groups employing innovative methods to solve specific, major research challenges in the mathematical sciences. A major challenge is an outstanding problem of significant importance that requires the focused and synergistic efforts of a collaborative group to solve, and whose solution will have wide impacts in the mathematical sciences and potentially in other areas. Groups may include, in addition to statisticians and mathematicians, researchers from other science and engineering disciplines appropriate for the proposed research. Risky projects are welcome. Interdisciplinary projects are welcome. Projects should be timely, limited in duration to up to three years, and substantial in their scope and impact for the mathematical sciences. Funded projects that show substantial progress in their first two years may be recommended for a creativity extension for up to an additional two years.

Grants of up to $2 million a year for up to four years will be awarded to collaborative projects that address a mathematical or theoretical topic of fundamental scientific importance and where a significant new development creates a novel area for exploration or provides a new direction for progress in an established field. The question addressed by the collaboration may be concrete or conceptual, but there should be little doubt that answering it would constitute a major scientific milestone.

A Simons Collaboration in MPS should address a mathematical or theoretical topic of fundamental scientific importance, where a significant new development creates a novel area for exploration or provides a new direction for progress in an established field. The questions addressed by the collaboration may be concrete or conceptual, but there should be little doubt that answering them would constitute a major scientific milestone. The project should have clearly defined initial activities and goals by which their progress and success can be measured. The support from the foundation should be seen as critical for the objectives of the project.

Through the two programs, the foundation will award grants of up to $100,000 to university faculty members for up to a semester-long research leave from classroom teaching and administrative obligations in order to refresh their creativity and/or stimulate them intellectually. The goal of the program is to make it easier for a faculty member to take such a leave, or to extend a sabbatical leave by an extra half year.