OARS funding Physics

The Anatrace Membrane Protein Award, funded by Anatrace Inc., was established to recognize an outstanding investigator who has made a significant contribution to the field of membrane protein research. The award is designed to promote membrane protein studies and recognize excellence in the field. This $3,000 award is distributed annually.

Avanti Polar Lipids, Incorporated has established an annual award to be given by the Biophysical Society. The award will be given to an investigator for outstanding contributions to our understanding of lipid biophysics. The winner receives an honorarium of $3,000.

The MURI program supports basic research in science and engineering at U.S. institutions of higher education 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. 

The Directorate for Geosciences announces a new Multilateral Research Funding Initiative between the Belmont Forum1 and Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI)2. This partnership will provide international collaborative research opportunities that address the Belmont Challenge: "To deliver knowledge needed for action to mitigate and adapt to detrimental environmental change and extreme hazardous events". This call of the International Opportunities Fund will focus on addressing issues "Food Security and Land Use Change that are best addressed through a coupled interdisciplinary and multinational approach. The Belmont Forum and FACCE-JPI will support on a competitive basis, collaborative, research projects co-designed by teams of researchers from at least three participating countries. These interdisciplinary teams will bring together natural scientists, social/economic scientists and research users, such as policy makers, regulators, NGOs and industry.  Proposals will be jointly reviewed by the participating funding organizations and successful projects are expected to demonstrate added value through multilateral collaboration. Support for U.S.-based researchers will be provided through awards made by the National Science Foundation.

The Interfacial Processes and Thermodynamics (IPT) program supports fundamental research in engineering areas related to: Interfacial phenomena Mass transport phenomena Molecular thermodynamics Currently, emphasis is placed on molecular engineering approaches at interfaces, especially as applied to the nano-processing of soft materials.  Molecules at interfaces with functional interfacial properties are of special interest and have uses in many new technologies, based on nano-fabrication.  These interfacial molecules may have biomolecular functions at the micro- and nano-scale.  Interfacial materials are generally formed through molecular self-directed, -templated, and/or -assembly, and they are driven primarily by thermodynamic intermolecular forces, although may be influenced by flow and electrical forces.  In some cases, these interfacial processes may also be supplemented by weak chemical reactions.

The Biophysical Society's Minority Affairs Committee has limited travel support available for minority students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior investigators in the field of biophysics to attend the 2014 Biophysical Society Annual Meeting. Each award will be made to assist in travel expenses to and lodging expenses for the Meeting. Awards will not exceed $1000. Selection of awardees will be based on scientific merit.

The Michael and Kate Bárány Award for Young Investigators recognizes an outstanding contribution to biophysics by a person who has not achieved the rank of full professor at the time of nomination. This award was established by the Biophysical Society. In recognition of the endowment gift from Michael and Kate Bárány, the award was renamed in 1998. The Award recipient receives an honorarium of $2,000.

The Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award is given to a woman who holds very high promise or has achieved prominence while developing the early stages of a career in biophysical research within the purview and interest of the Biophysical Society. Achievement means that the candidate has already published substantial contributions to science; promise means that the candidate shows indications of leadership in ideas, organization, or other ways manifest for her colleagues within the scientific community. A candidate who has already received university tenure by the due date on nomination is not eligible. A candidate having a PhD or equivalent degree shall be eligible until she has completed 10 years of full-time work following the degree. A candidate with a Baccalaureate degree but without a PhD shall have 12 years of eligibility. Time taken off for child-rearing will not be counted in this total. Part-time work and other special circumstances will be evaluated at the discretion of the Committee. Candidates who work in non-academic environments are eligible if their work is published, meets academic standards, and they do not have tenure equivalency.

The Founders Award, established by the Society, is given to scientists for outstanding achievement in any area of biophysics. These achievements are often reflected in the acceptance of and use by others in the field, either promptly or over a period of years. This award of $1,000 is granted annually.

The AAAS Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science, established in 2010, recognizes early-career scientists and engineers who demonstrate excellence in their contribution to public engagement with science activities. A monetary prize of $5,000, a commemorative plaque, complimentary registration to the AAAS Annual Meeting, and reimbursement for reasonable hotel and travel expenses to attend the AAAS Annual Meeting to receive the prize are given to the recipient. Nominee must be an early-career scientist or engineer in academia, government or industry actively conducting research in any scientific discipline (including social sciences and medicine).  "Early career" is defined as an individual who has been in his/her current field for less than seven years and pre-tenure or job equivalent. Post-doctoral students are eligible for this award. Nominee will have demonstrated excellence in his/her contribution to public engagement with science activities, with a focus on interactive dialogue between the individual and a non-scientific, public audience(s). Types of public engagement activities might include: informal science education, public outreach, public policy, and/or science communication activities, such as mass media, public dialogue, radio, TV and film, science café, science exhibit, science fair, and social and online media.

The mission of the High Energy Physics (HEP) program is to understand how the universe works at its most fundamental level, which is done by discovering the elementary constituents of matter and energy, probing the interactions between them, and exploring the basic nature of space and time. This Funding Opportunity Announcement invites applications in six specific areas: 1. Experimental Research at the Energy Frontier, 2. Experimental Research at the Intensity Frontier, 3. Experimental Research at the Cosmic Frontier, 4. Theoretical Research, 5. Accelerator Science and Technology Research and Development, 6. Particle Deterctor Research and Development. The full text of the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is located on FedConnect.

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.

CAREER: The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. NSF encourages submission of CAREER proposals from junior faculty members at all CAREER-eligible organizations and especially encourages women, members of underrepresented minority groups, and persons with disabilities to apply.

The purpose of this Dear Colleague Letter is to advise you about funding opportunities at the National Science Foundation for the research community to propose research projects or workshops that will gather data on the implementation and impacts of recent science policy initiatives including, but not limited to those noted earlier.  Especially encouraged are proposals that will: Develop new, or improve existing, analytical frameworks for evaluating the impacts of federal science policy initiatives; Explore different agencies' approaches to the implementation of particular policies to examine how variations in approach affect the achievement of intended policy outcomes; Collect case-study or quantitative data that facilitate identification of best practices in science and innovation policy implementation.

Within the framework of the For Women in Science partnership between the L'Oréal Foundation and UNESCO, we are launching the 2014 call for nominations for outstanding women scientist form all over the world. Five 100.000$ prizes will be awarded in march 2014 in Paris to five women scientists, one per region, for the contributions of their research, the strength of their commitments and their impact on society. An international Jury of eminent scientists presided in 2013 by the Nobel Prize winner, Ahmed Zewali, makes the final selection.

The New Scholars Program supports projects to help early- to mid-career women scientists balance family responsibilities with demanding academic careers. New Scholars seeks to actively address the attrition rate of talented women scientists caused by work-life balance issues.

The Accelerator Science program will support and foster research at universities that exploits the educational and discovery potential of basic accelerator physics research, and allows the development of transformational discoveries in this crosscutting academic discipline. In particular, this program seeks to support research with the potential to disrupt existing paradigms and advance accelerator science at a fundamental level, such as enabling discoveries that lead to novel, compact, powerful, and/or cost-effective accelerators.

A. Proposals for the development of novel collaborative perception algorithms that will enable heterogeneous teams of UxS (specifically unmanned air and ground systems) to share knowledge and perform joint target search and tracking autonomously. While existing distributed data fusion methods have looked at probabilistic representations for fusing detections at a decision level, work is needed to investigate shared perceptual features that exist across unmanned air and ground systems to enable the performance of collaborative tasks.  B. Development of a new Rigid Body Dynamics Software Library for Mathematical and Physics-Based Modeling and Simulation. The basic research proposed here would involve the development of a new software library for the temporal (time) integration of the governing equations of rigid body dynamics. The temporal integration technique employed in this new library involves the application of the Runge-Kutta method of various orders and possibly other finite-difference-type techniques to a system of equations consisting of kinematic equations (arising from the Lie Group structure of the group of rotation transformations) which define the first and second time derivatives of the rotation transformation in terms of angular velocity and angular acceleration together with the equations of motion (balance of momentum and balance of angular momentum) of a rigid body. C. Robustness of the Use of Botanical DNA Materials as Anti-Counterfeit Markers for Electronic Components - The project will solicit academic laboratory participation for doing testing that demonstrates the 'robustness' of the use of Botanical DNA material as anti-counterfeit markers for electronic components. Request analysis of candidate DNA marker materials utilizing current DNA manipulation technology. This would be done especially in light of results from (1) above.

According to recent conversations between OARS staff and an NSF official, the NSF BioMaPS program is a funding opportunity that is perhaps undertargeted by researchers.  It funds interdisciplinary proposals that address "the interface between the biological, mathematical, and physical sciences and engineering."  Unsolicited proposals can be submitted to the deadlines of any relevant program in BIO, ENG, or MPS.  The label "BIOMAPS" should appear at the beginning of the proposal title.