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SoftwareInfrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) is a long-term investment focused on realizing a portion of the Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21, http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=504730) vision and catalyzing new thinking, paradigms and practices in science and engineering. CIF21 envisions a linked cyberinfrastructure architecture that integrates large-scale computing, high-speed networks, massive data archives, instruments and major facilities, observatories, experiments, and embedded sensors and actuators, across the nation and the world, and that enables research at unprecedented scales, complexity, resolution, and accuracy by integrating computation, data, and experiments in novel ways. Software is a primary modality through which CIF21 innovation and discovery will be realized. It permeates all aspects and layers of cyberinfrastructure (from application codes and frameworks, programming systems, libraries and system software, to middleware, operating systems, networking and the low-level drivers). The CIF21 software infrastructure must address the complexity of this cyberinfrastructure, accommodating: disruptive hardware trends; ever-increasing data volumes; data integrity, privacy, and confidentiality; security; complex application structures and behaviors; and emerging concerns such as fault-tolerance and energy efficiency. The programs must focus on building robust, reliable and sustainable software that will support and advance sustained scientific innovation and discovery.
 The Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure in the Computer & Information Science & Engineering Directorate (CISE/ACI) is partnering with Directorates and Offices across the NSF to support SI2, a long-term comprehensive program focused on realizing a sustained software infrastructure that is an integral part of CIF21.

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

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are engineered systems that are built from, and depend upon, the seamless integration of computational algorithms and physical components. Advances in CPS will enable capability, adaptability, scalability, resiliency, safety, security, and usability that will far exceed the simple embedded systems of today. CPS technology will transform the way people interact with engineered systems -- just as the Internet has transformed the way people interact with information. New smart CPS will drive innovation and competition in sectors such as agriculture, energy, transportation, building design and automation, healthcare, and manufacturing. The December 2010 report of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) titled Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technologycalls for continued investment in CPS research because of its scientific and technological importance as well as its potential impact on grand challenges in a number of sectors critical to U.S. security and competitiveness such as the ones noted above. These challenges and technology gaps are further described in aCPS Vision Statementpublished in 2012 by the federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) CPS Senior Steering Group. Tremendous progress has been made in advancing CPS technology over the last five-plus years. We have explored foundational technologies that have spanned an ever-growing set of application domains, enabling breakthrough achievements in many of these fields. At the same time, the demand for innovation in these domains continues to grow, and is driving the need to accelerate fundamental research to

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.

This program seeks to prepare, nurture, and grow the national scientific research workforce for creating, utilizing, and supporting advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) to enable and potentially transform fundamental science and engineering research and contribute to the Nation's overall economic competitiveness and security. The goals of this solicitation are to (i) ensure broad adoption of CI tools, methods, and resources by the research community in order to catalyze major research advances and to enhance researchers' abilities to lead the development of new CI; and (ii) integrate core literacy and discipline-appropriate advanced skills in advanced CI as well as computational and data-driven science and engineering into the Nation's educational curriculum/instructional material fabric spanning undergraduate and graduate courses for advancing fundamental research. Pilot and Implementation projects may target one or both of the solicitation goals, while Large-scale Project Conceptualization projects must address both goals. For the purpose of this solicitation, advanced CI is broadly defined as the set of resources, tools, methods, and services for advanced computation, large-scale data handling and analytics, and networking and security for large-scale systems that collectively enable potentially transformative fundamental research.

Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes are large-scale interdisciplinary research projects that aim to advance the frontiers of quantum information science and engineering. Research at these Institutes will span the focus areas of quantum computation, quantum communication, quantum simulation and/or quantum sensing. The institutes are expected to foster multidisciplinary approaches to specific scientific, technological, educational workforce development goals in these fields. Two types of awards will be supported under this program: (i) 12-month Conceptualization Grants (CGs) to support teams envisioning subsequent Institute proposals and (ii) 5-year Challenge Institute (CI) awards to establish and operate Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes. This activity is part of the Quantum Leap, one of the research Big Ideas promoted by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes program is consistent with the scope of NSF multidisciplinary centers for quantum research and education as described in the National Quantum Initiative Act[1]. In 2016, the NSF unveiled a set of "Big Ideas," ten bold, long-term research and process ideas that identify areas for future investment at the frontiers of science and engineering (seehttps://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/big_ideas/index.jsp). The Big Ideas represent unique opportunities to position our nation at the cutting edge of global science and engineering leadership by bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives to support convergence research. Although proposals responding to this solicitation must be submitted tothe Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (OMA) in the Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS),they will subsequently be managed by a cross-disciplinary team of NSF Program Directors.

The Acquisition Research Program (ARP) (www.acquisitionresearch.net) conducts and supports research in academic disciplines that bear on public procurement policy and management. These include economics, finance, financial management, information systems, organization theory, operations management, human resources management, risk management, and marketing, as well as the traditional public procurement areas such as contracting, program/project management, logistics, test and evaluation and systems engineering management. The ARP is interested in innovative proposals that will provide unclassified and non-proprietary findings suitable for publication in open scholarly literature. Studies of government processes, systems, or policies should also expand the body of knowledge and theory of processes, systems, or policies outside the government. The following research areas are of special interest: Leading-edge techniques in data collection, management, visual analytics and decision-making; Robust risk modeling techniques; Performance metrics and methodologies; Collaboration and cross-functional teams; and, Model-Based Acquisition. Offerors bear prime responsibility for the design, management, direction and conduct of research. Researchers should exercise judgment and original thought toward attaining the goals within broad parameters of the research areas proposed and the resources provided. Offerors are encouraged to be creative in the selection of the technical and management processes and approaches and consider the greatest and broadest impact possible.

Researchers in all fields of science and engineering are being challenged in two key directions.  The first challenge is to push beyond the current boundaries of knowledge to provide ever-deeper insights through fundamental disciplinary research by addressing increasingly complex questions, which often requires extremely sophisticated integration of theoretical, experimental, observational and simulation and modeling results.   These efforts, which have relied heavily on observing platforms and other data collection efforts, computing facilities, software, advanced networking, analytics, visualization and models have led to important breakthroughs in all areas of science and engineering and represent a very strong bottom-up approach to the necessary research infrastructure.  The second, and more extensive challenge, is to synthesize these fundamental ground breaking efforts across multiple fields to transform scientific research into an endeavor that integrates the deep knowledge and research capabilities developed within the universities, industry and government labs. Individuals, teams and communities need to be able work together; likewise, instruments, facilities (including MREFCs), datasets, and cyber-services must be integrated from the group to campus to national scale. One can imagine secure, geographically distributed infrastructure components including advanced computing facilities, scientific instruments, software environments, advanced networks, data storage capabilities, and the critically important human capital and expertise. Greater understanding is also needed of how scientific and research communities will evolve in the presence of new cyberinfrastructure. 

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) solicits applications to develop web-accessible data archives to capture, store, and curate data related to BRAIN Initiative activities.  The data archives will work with the research community to incorporate tools that allow users to analyze and visualize the data, but the creation of such tools is not part of this FOA.  The data archives will use appropriate standards to describe the data, but the creation of such standards is not part of this FOA. A goal of this program is to advance research by creating a community resource data archive with appropriate standards and summary information that is broadly available and accessible to the research community for furthering research.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) solicits applications to develop web-accessible data archives to capture, store, and curate data related to BRAIN Initiative activities.  The data archives will work with the research community to incorporate tools that allow users to analyze and visualize the data, but the creation of such tools is not part of this FOA.  The data archives will use appropriate standards to describe the data, but the creation of such standards is not part of this FOA. A goal of this program is to advance research by creating a community resource data archive with appropriate standards and summary information that is broadly available and accessible to the research community for furthering research.

The ACI is a DoD-sponsored computing systems research program initiated by the NSA and the Combat Capabilities Development Command/Army Research Laboratory/ARO. It focuses on areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy. It seeks to increase the Department's intellectual capital in computing systems and improve its ability to address future challenges and build bridges between the Department and the computing research community. ACI 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 Defense. The ACI aims to promote research in specific areas of computing systems and to promote a candid and constructive relationship between DoD and the computing research community.

The Advanced Manufacturing (AM) program supports the fundamental research needed to revitalize American manufacturing to grow the national prosperity and workforce, and to reshape our strategic industries. The AM program accelerates advances in manufacturing technologies with emphasis on multidisciplinary research that fundamentally alters and transforms manufacturing capabilities, methods and practices. Advanced manufacturing research proposals should address issues related to national prosperity and security, and advancing knowledge to sustain global leadership. Areas of research, for example, include manufacturing systems; materials processing; manufacturing machines; methodologies; and manufacturing across the length scales. Researchers working in the areas of cybermanufacturing systems, manufacturing machines and equipment, materials engineering and processing, and nanomanufacturing are encouraged to transcend and cross domain boundaries. Interdisciplinary, convergent proposals are welcome that bring manufacturing to new application areas, and that incorporate challenges and approaches outside the customary manufacturing portfolio to broaden the impact of America's advanced manufacturing research. Proposals of all sizes will therefore be considered as justified by the project description. Investigators are encouraged to discuss their ideas with AM program directors well in advance of submission at AdvancedManufacturing@nsf.gov.

The Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (ECCS) Division supports enabling and transformative research that fuels progress in engineering applications with high societal impacts. ECCS programs encompass novel electronic, photonic, and magnetic devices; communication systems, novel integrated circuits, antennas, sensors; machine learning, control, and networks, to name a few. The fundamental research supported by ECCS impacts a wide range of applications such as communications, energy and power, healthcare, environment, transportation, manufacturing, and other areas. ECCS strongly emphasizes the integration of education into its research programs to support the preparation of a diverse and professionally skilled workforce. ECCS also strengthens its programs through links to other areas of engineering, science, industry, government, and international collaborations. The Addressing Systems Challenges through Engineering Teams (ASCENT) program is a strategic investment of ECCS that emphasizes new collaboration modalities among the various ECCS supported sub-disciplines. ASCENT encourages robust collaborations between the devices, circuits, algorithmic, and network research communities to develop innovative projects. ASCENT seeks proposals that are bold and ground-breaking transcending the perspectives and approaches typical of disciplinary research efforts. ASCENT projects are expected to lead to disruptive technologies or nucleate entirely new research fields motivated by the most pressing societal challenges the global community faces.

The HHPR Summit is an international meeting supporting human systems research held in Dayton, Ohio with the objective of linking defense and academic research to the commercial domains. The Summit is a forum to generate research knowledge and ideas, recruit and retain key organizations and researchers in the human systems domain, and link research to entrepreneurial outcomes, and diffuse information.

The Acquisition Research Program (ARP) conducts and supports research in academic disciplines that bear on public procurement policy and management. These include economics, finance, financial management, information systems, organization theory, operations management, human resources management, risk management, and marketing, as well as the traditional public procurement areas such as contracting, program/project management, logistics, test and evaluation and systems engineering management. The ARP is interested in innovative proposals that will provide unclassified and non-proprietary findings suitable for publication in open scholarly literature. Studies of government processes, systems, or policies should also expand the body of knowledge and theory of processes, systems, or policies outside the Government. Offerors bear prime responsibility for the design, management, direction and conduct of research. Researchers should exercise judgment and original thought toward attaining the goals within broad parameters of the research areas proposed and the resources provided. Offerors are encouraged to be creative in the selection of the technical and management processes and approaches and consider the greatest and broadest impact possible.

The CISE Research Infrastructure (CRI) program drives discovery and learning in the core CISE disciplines of the three participating CISE divisions by supporting the creation and enhancement of world-class research infrastructure that will support focused research agendas in computer and information science and engineering. This infrastructure will enable CISE researchers to advance the frontiers of CISE research. Further, through the CRI program, CISE seeks to ensure that individuals from a diverse range of academic institutions, including minority-serving and predominantly undergraduate institutions, have access to such infrastructure.

The Acquisition Research Program (ARP) conducts and supports research in academic disciplines that bear on public procurement policy and management. These include economics, finance, financial management, information systems, organization theory, operations management, human resources management, risk management, and marketing, as well as the traditional public procurement areas such as contracting, program/project management, logistics, test and evaluation and systems engineering management. The ARP is interested in innovative proposals that will provide unclassified and non-proprietary findings suitable for publication in open scholarly literature. Studies of government processes, systems, or policies should also expand the body of knowledge and theory of processes, systems, or policies outside the Government. Offerors bear prime responsibility for the design, management, direction and conduct of research. Researchers should exercise judgment and original thought toward attaining the goals within broad parameters of the research areas proposed and the resources provided. Offerors are encouraged to be creative in the selection of the technical and management processes and approaches and consider the greatest and broadest impact possible.

This solicitation includes two classes of science data pilot awards: 1. Early Implementations are large "at scale" evaluations, building upon cyberinfrastructure capabilities of existing research communities or recognized community data collections, and extending those data-focused cyberinfrastructure capabilities to additional research communities and domains with broad community engagement. 2. Pilot Demonstrations address advanced cyberinfrastructure challenges across emerging research communities, building upon recognized community data collections and disciplinary research interests, to address specific challenges in science and engineering research.

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.

With this Dear Colleague letter (DCL), the NSF is announcing its intention to accept EArly-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals to support NSF researchers in participating in the NIST GCTC teams, with the goal of pursuing novel research on effective integration of networked computer systems and physical devices that will have significant impact in meeting the challenges of the smart city. Priority will be given to researchers who have previously received funding from CPS, or who have related projects from other NSF programs (e.g., Computer Systems Research (CSR), Energy, Power, Control and Networks (EPCN), Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC), including CAREER awardees), and who are members of, or are seeking to, establish GCTC teams building upon the results of NSF-funded projects.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and The Boeing Company are supporting a new initiative, managed and administered by NSF through its EHR Core Research (ECR) program, to accelerate training in critical skill areas for the Nation's engineering and advanced manufacturing workforce. The EHR Core Research: Production Engineering Education and Research (ECR: PEER) initiative supports foundational research arising from the design, development, and deployment of creative online curricula that provide learners at various levels with skills in five focal areas: model-based systems engineering, software engineering, mechatronics, data science, and artificial intelligence. ECR: PEER invites proposals to design, develop, deploy, and study the effectiveness of online courses in any one of these focal areas using the theories and tools of the learning sciences. Proposals for these ECR: PEER Course, Curriculum, and Evaluation projects may request a maximum of $2,000,000 support for a duration of up to three years. Additionally, ECR: PEER welcomes proposals to convene experts in the academic, for-profit, and non-profit sectors to imagine the future of production engineering education for one of the five focal areas. Proposals for these ECR: PEER Workforce Development Workshops may request a maximum of $100,000 support for a duration of up to one year.