Funding Wizard

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems rapidly increase in size, acquire new capabilities, and are deployed in high-stakes settings, their safety becomes extremely important. Ensuring system safety requires more than improving accuracy, efficiency, and scalability: it requires ensuring that systems are robust to extreme events, and monitoring them for anomalous and unsafe behavior. The objective of the Safe Learning-Enabled Systems program, which is a partnership between the National Science Foundation, Open Philanthropy and Good Ventures, is to foster foundational research that leads to the design and implementation of learning-enabled systems in which safety is ensured with high levels of confidence. While traditional machine learning systems are evaluated pointwise with respect to a fixed test set, such static coverage provides only limited assurance when exposed to unprecedented conditions in high-stakes operating environments. Verifying that learning components of such systems achieve safety guarantees for all possible inputs may be difficult, if not impossible. Instead, a system’s safety guarantees will often need to be established with respect to systematically generated data from realistic (yet appropriately pessimistic) operating environments. Safety also requires resilience to “unknown unknowns”, which necessitates improved methods for monitoring for unexpected environmental hazards or anomalous system behaviors, including during deployment. In some instances, safety may further require new methods for reverse-engineering, inspecting, and interpreting the internal logic of learned models to identify unexpected behavior that could not be found by black-box testing alone, and methods for improving the performance by directly adapting the systems’ internal logic. Whatever the setting, any learning-enabled system’s end-to-end safety guarantees must be specified clearly and precisely. Any system claiming to satisfy a safety specification must provide rigorous evidence, through analysis corroborated empirically and/or with mathematical proof.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) seeks to encourage nationally transformative ideas and scalable models to strengthen the Nation’s research enterprise, particularly at emerging research and minority-serving institutions. Broadly defined, the research enterprise includes human capital, practices and processes related to research development, research administration, technology transfer and commercialization, corporate relation/public-private partnerships, research integrity, compliance and security, research policy, student research training, and research leadership. In the past several decades, the complexity of managing externally funded activities has increased significantly. The recent pandemic has exacerbated this issue through increased attrition of research enterprise professionals and additional budget constraints. Insufficient resources hinder institutional ability to develop and manage externally funded projects, reducing the opportunity to fully realize the outcomes from creativity present in all the Nation’s institutions of higher education and their partners. Beginning in FY2023, GRANTED, a new NSF-wide initiative, will seek to address these issues. At present, GRANTED is describing opportunities to submit proposals in a Dear Colleague Letter, NSF 23-027.

The Communications, Circuits, and Sensing-Systems (CCSS) Program supports innovative research in circuit and system hardware and signal processing techniques. CCSS also supports system and network architectures for communications and sensing to enable the next-generation cyber-physical systems (CPS) that leverage computation, communication, and sensing integrated with physical domains. CCSS invests in micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS), physical, chemical, and biological sensing systems, neurotechnologies, and communication & sensing circuits and systems. The goal is to create new complex and hybrid systems ranging from nano- to macro-scale with innovative engineering principles and solutions for a variety of applications including but not limited to healthcare, medicine, environmental and biological monitoring, communications, disaster mitigation, homeland security, intelligent transportation, manufacturing, energy, and smart buildings. CCSS encourages research proposals based on emerging technologies and applications for communications and sensing such as high-speed communications of terabits per second and beyond, sensing and imaging covering microwave to terahertz frequencies, personalized health monitoring and assistance, secured wireless connectivity and sensing for the Internet of Things, and dynamic-data-enabled autonomous systems through real-time sensing and learning. Areas managed by CCSS Program Directors (please contact Program Directors listed in the CCSS staff directory for areas of interest): RF Circuits and Antennas for Communications and Sensing RF Communications and Sensing Technologies from kHz to THz Antennas and Wave Propagation for Communications and Sensing Circuits and Systems for Secured Communications and Sensing Trusted Microelectronic Circuits RF Biomedical Applications and Remote Sensing Bio-mimetic Circuits and Systems Dynamic-data-enabled Reconfigurable RF Subsystems through Sensing and Machine Learning Wireless Energy Transfer and RF Energy Harvesting Communication Systems and Signal Processing Wireless, Optical, and Hybrid Communications and Networking Full-duplex, massive MIMO, mm-Wave, and THz communications Spectrum Access and Sharing Integrated Sensing, Communication, and Computational Systems Signal Processing, image processing, and Compressive Sampling Cyber Physical Systems and Hardware-controlled Secured Communications Dynamic-data-enabled Communication Systems through Sensing and Machine Learning Quantum Communication Systems Dynamic Bio-Sensing Systems Micro, Nano, and Bio Systems (MEMS/NEMS) Chemical, Biological, and Physical Diagnostics Sensors, Actuators, and Electronic Interfaces Ultra-Low Power Wearable and Implantable Sensing Systems Dynamic-data-enabled Reconfigurable Sensing Systems Personalized Health Monitoring Systems through Sensing and Machine Learning Neuroengineering and Brain-Inspired Concepts and Designs

The NSF CISE Directorate supports research and education projects that develop new knowledge in all aspects of computing, communications, and information science and engineering, as well as advanced cyberinfrastructure, through the following core programs: Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF): Algorithmic Foundations (AF) program; Communications and Information Foundations (CIF) program; Foundations of Emerging Technologies (FET) program; and Software and Hardware Foundations (SHF) program. Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS): Computer Systems Research (CSR) program; and Networking Technology and Systems (NeTS) program. Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS): Human-Centered Computing (HCC) program; Information Integration and Informatics (III) program; and Robust Intelligence (RI) program. Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC): OAC Core Research (OAC Core) program; Proposers are invited to submit proposals in several project classes, which are defined as follows: Small Projects -- up to $600,000 total budget with durations up to three years: projects in this class may be submitted to CCF, CNS, and IIS only; Medium Projects -- $600,001 to $1,200,000 total budget with durations up to four years: projects in this class may be submitted to CCF, CNS, and IIS only; and OAC Core Projects -- up to $600,000 total budget with durations up to three years: projects in this class may be submitted to OAC only. A more complete description of these project classes can be found in SectionII. Program Descriptionof this document.

The NSF Division of Mathematical Sciences’ Partnerships for Research Innovation in the Mathematical Sciences program aims to enhance partnerships between minority-serving institutions and DMS-supported Mathematical Sciences Research Institutes. The activity seeks to boost the participation of members of groups underrepresented in the mathematical sciences through their increased involvement in research programs at the institutes.

The Plant Genome Research Program (PGRP) supports genome-scale research that addresses challenging questions of biological, societal and economic importance. PGRP encourages the development of innovative tools, technologies and resources that empower a broad plant research community to answer scientific questions on a genome-wide scale. Emphasis is placed on the scale and depth of the question being addressed and the creativity of the approach. Data produced by plant genomics should be usable, accessible, integrated across scales and of high impact across biology. Training, broadening participation, and career development are essential to scientific progress and should be integrated in all PGRP-funded projects. Two funding tracks are currently available: RESEARCH-PGR TRACK: Genome-scale plant research to address fundamental questions in biology, including processes of economic and/or societal importance. TRTech-PGR TRACK: Tools, resources and technology breakthroughs that further enable functional plant genomics.

This solicitation launches an ambitious new program to fund international, interdisciplinary collaborative research centers that will apply best practices of broadening participation and community engagement to develop use-inspired research on climate change and clean energy. This program will prioritize research collaborations fostering team science, community-engaged research, and use knowledge-to-action frameworks. The proposed research work should maximize the benefits of international, interdisciplinary collaborations. Climate change is a global threat that impacts the natural and human world through changes in regional weather patterns, acceleration of species extinctions, alteration of the structure and function of ecosystems as well as by affecting human societies, the built environment, and processes in urban and rural areas around the globe. Given the complexity of the problem and the cascading nature of impacts, climate change demands convergent, interdisciplinary research collaborations that bring together studies of any number of topics such as greenhouse gas emissions, atmospheric and oceanic circulation drivers, impacts of natural and built environment, human behavior, and policy constraints, coupled with innovative artificial intelligence (AI), computational and data science solutions, to help assess or mitigate community impacts and/or lead to technology developments. The changes to the global climate system are diverse, with some areas experiencing greater flooding frequencies or intensities, others impacted by more frequent or more severe heat or droughts, and still others suffering from sea level rise. Impacts on natural systems vary greatly from changes in the distribution of plants and animals, alterations in the flow of energy and materials within ecosystems, changes in the timing of biological processes, altered molecular and cellular processes, to increased occurrences of infectious diseases. Changes to human systems show complex responses, including those in transportation and agricultural production, cultural innovation, economic policies, as well as in diverse effects on manufacturing, electrical production and distribution, and computation. Conceiving solutions to climate change may involve decarbonization efforts such as switching to renewable or clean energy or deploy technologies that directly remove CO2 from the atmosphere such as Net Zero initiatives. Developing solutions will require interdisciplinary collaboration and international cooperation to accelerate the transition to clean energy or net zero through science, technology, and policy. In some regions solutions might employ urban planning to address environmental justice issues or reduce exposure to high heat or flooded areas, other solutions might use nature-inspired design to develop resilient environments. Still others might focus on engineering solutions to failing power grids, employ novel statistical and mathematical methods to pro-actively evaluate the associated climate-induced risks, use AI, biotechnology or advanced manufacturing to innovate solutions, while others might create economic policies to incentivize social change. This list is not exhaustive. Climate change is complex and solutions requires synergistic partnerships. It crosses geo-political borders, and mitigation and adaptation require a mix of scientific, technological, and policy knowledge, and an inclusive approach that involves stakeholder groups to develop the informed approaches, responses, and actions. Global cooperation among researchers is needed to bring a range of skills, experiences, and knowledge to understanding the problem, devising solutions, and training the world’s scientific workforce. The diverse needs, priorities, experiences, and perspectives of impacted communities will be essential components to drive innovative research to mitigate impacts of climate change on human and natural systems, promote adaptation to climate change, and explore clean energy alternatives. NSF is committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce to increase the Nation's capacity to perform STEM research and development, enhance innovation, and create new technologies that benefit society. Many of the communities that are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change include significant populations of groups that have historically not been included in STEM fields or in the development of STEM research. Important aims of this program are to broaden participation in research and engage stakeholders in innovative and meaningful ways that benefit individuals, communities, society, and STEM disciplines through diversity, equity, inclusion, and access (DEIA).Successful proposals will embrace both broadening participation and stakeholder engagement as key values that are integrated into the design of the Centers and the choice of science priorities to explore.Broadening participation, in this context, includes rethinking how one identifies, approaches, and prioritizes scientific questions to involve a diversity of individuals in the scientific enterprise.Diversifying the research workforce through a variety of approaches that support sustainable inclusion in the workplace is an important component of broadening participation. Stakeholder engagement through citizen science, partnerships, community engagement and many more types of activities that help drive research priorities will also support and facilitate broadening participation in STEM. The main objectives of a Center must focus on any combination of research disciplines supported by NSF. However, if some of the stakeholders’ expertise fall out of that scope, justification must be provided as to how their expertise is required to advance the main research focus of the Centers. Centers are expected to be driven by a bold vision for high-impact, use-inspired, basic research along with a strategy to integrate diverse perspectives from different stakeholder groups into the research endeavor, including perspectives from beyond the academic sector. It is expected that this effort will enhance societal benefits and expand international partnerships while building a diverse scientific and stakeholder community able to potentially carry out the work beyond the Center funding period. Centers are expected to create and promote opportunities for students and early career researchers to gain education and training in world class research while enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Centers are expected to undertake sustainable activities that advance knowledge, empower resilient communities, and generate discovery of innovative solutions at a regional and/or global scale.

TheElectronics, Photonics and Magnetic Devices (EPMD) Programsupports innovative research on novel devices based on the principles of electronics, optics and photonics, optoelectronics, magnetics, opto- and electromechanics, electromagnetics, and related physical phenomena. EPMD’s goal is to advance the frontiers of micro-, nano- and quantum-based devices operating within the electromagnetic spectrum and contributing to a broad range of application domains including information and communications, imaging and sensing, healthcare, Internet of Things, energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing. The program encourages research based on emerging technologies for miniaturization, integration, and energy efficiency as well as novel material-based devices with new functionalities, improved efficiency, flexibility, tunability, wearability, and enhanced reliability. Areas managed by Program Directors (please contact Program Directors listed in the EPMD staff directory for areas of interest): Electronic Devices Nanoelectronics Wide/Extreme- and Narrow-Bandgap, Semiconductor Devices Devices with New Functionalities based on Material-Device Interactions and Reliability Device-Related Electromagnetic Effects, Propagationand Scattering Microwave/mm-Wave/THz Devices Flexible, Printed Electronics Carbon-based Electronics Thermoelectric and Ferroelectric Devices Photonic Devices Advanced Optical Emitters and Photodetectors, from Extreme UV to THz Single-Photon Quantum Devices Nonlinear and Ultrafast Photonics Nanophotonics and Photonic Integration Optical Imaging and Sensing Techniques Opto-Mechanical Nanodevices Optical Communication Components Magnetic Devices Biomagnetic Devices Nanomagnetic and Quantum Devices Spin Electronics for Next Generation of Logic and Memories Cross-Cutting 2D Material Devices and Circuits Devices based on Paper Electronics Bioelectronic Devices Photovoltaic and Energy Harvesting Devices Metamaterial and Plasmonic-Based Devices Sensor Device Technologies

The National Science Foundation (NSF) seeks to increase the scale and pace of advancing discoveries made while conducting academic research into tangible solutions that benefit the public. This is the primary aim of the “Accelerating Research Translation” (ART) program. Specifically, the primary goals of this program are to build capacity and infrastructure for translational research at U.S. Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) and to enhance their role in regional innovation ecosystems. In addition, this program seeks to effectively train graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in translational research, benefiting them across a range of career options. A particular intent of ART is to support IHEs that want to build the necessary infrastructure to boost the overall institutional capacity to accelerate the pace and scale of translation of fundamental research outcomes into practice by supporting the development of a range of activities essential for this activity. The ART program is not intended to support IHEs that already have high levels of translational research activity as part of their R&D enterprise (as noted by their number of invention disclosures, patents issued, start-ups, licenses/options, revenue from royalties, the overall volume of industry-funded research, broad adoption of research outputs by communities or constituents, etc.). Such institutions are encouraged to become part of the ART network as valuable collaborators, providing expertise in building the necessary infrastructure for translational research at other IHEs responding to this solicitation. The ART program is also not intended as a resource for conducting additional fundamental research. See sections II and VI of this solicitation for additional information. This solicitation seeks proposals that enable IHE-based teams to propose a blend of: (1) activities that will help build and/or strengthen the institutional infrastructure to sustainably grow the institutional capacity for research translation in the short and long terms; (2) educational/training opportunities, especially for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, to become entrepreneurs and/or seek use-inspired and/or translational research-oriented careers in the public and/or private sectors; and (3) specific, translational research activities that offer immediate opportunities for transition to practice to create economic and/or societal impact. The funded teams will form a nationwide network of ‘ART Ambassadors’ who will champion the cause of translational research.

The Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program aims to harness the power of open-source development for the creation of new technology solutions to problems of national and societal importance.Many NSF-funded projects result in publicly accessible, modifiable, and distributable open-source products, including software, hardware, models, specifications, programming languages, or data platforms, that catalyze further innovation. In some cases, an open-source product that shows potential for wide adoption forms the basis for a self-sustaining open-source ecosystem (OSE) that comprises a leadership team; a managing organization with a well-defined governance structure and distributed development model; a cohesive community of external intellectual content developers; and a broad base of users across academia, industry, and government. The overarching vision of POSE is that proactive and intentional formation of managing organizations will ensure a broader and more diverse adoption of open-source products; increased coordination of external intellectual content developer contributions; and a more focused route to technologies with broad societal impact. Toward this end, the POSE program supports the formation of new OSE managing organizations based on an existing open-source product or class of products, whereby each organization is responsible for the creation and management of processes and infrastructure needed for the efficient and secure development and maintenance of an OSE. POSE constitutes a new pathway to translate scientific innovations, akin to the Lab-to-Market Platform that NSF has pioneered over many decades. Whereas programs like the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps™), Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) and Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR and STTR) represent an integrated set of programs to provide researchers with the capacity to transform their fundamental research into deep technology ventures, POSE is specifically focused on another translational pathway–supporting the transition from open-source research artifacts to OSEs. Importantly, the POSE program is not intended to fund the development of open-source products, including tools and artifacts. The POSE program is also not intended to fund existing well-resourced, open-source communities or ecosystems. Instead, the program aims to support new managing organizations to catalyze distributed, community-driven development and growth of new OSEs. The expected outcomes of thePOSE program are to grow the community of researchers and innovators who develop and contribute to OSE efforts, and to enable pathways for the safe and secure development of OSEsthat have broad societal impacts. OSEs can stem from any areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) research and development. This solicitation seeks two types of proposals, allowing teams to propose specific activities to scope and plan the establishment of an OSE (Phase I), and to establish a sustainable OSE based on a robust open-source product that shows promise in the ability to both meet anemergent societal or national need and build a community to help develop it (Phase II). Phase I: OSE Scoping and Planning Proposals Phase I projects are for open-source research products with a small community of external users though the product may not necessarily have external content developers. The objectives of Phase I projects are to: (1) enable scoping activities that will inform the transition of promising research products that are already available in open-source formats into sustainable and robust OSEs that will have broad societal impacts, and (2) provide training to teams interested in building such an OSE. Each Phase I proposal must describe the current context and, to the extent known at the time of the Phase I proposal, the long-term vision and potential impact of the proposed OSE. The proposals shouldalso includespecific scoping activities that will informplansfor ecosystem discovery; organizational and governance structure; continuous development, integration, and deployment of the open-source product(s); and community building for users and intellectual content developers. Phase I scoping activities are intended to help teams determine (a) whether their open-source product is suitable and ready to be transitioned into an OSE; (b) whether there is a user base that is ready to serve as early adopters; and (c) whether there is a distributed intellectual content developer community that can help develop and maintain the core product going forward. Phase I proposals are limited to a total budget of $300,000 with durations of up to one year. The Project Description can be up to 7 pages for Phase I proposals. Please note that the Phase I proposals described in this solicitation are a solicitation-specific project category and are separate and distinct from the Planning type of proposal described in Chapter II.F.1 of the PAPPG. When preparing a Phase I proposal in response to this solicitation, the "Research" type of proposal should be selected. Phase II: Establishment and Expansion Proposals Phase II projects are for open-source research products with a small community of external users and external content developers. The objective of Phase II projects is to support the transition of a promising open-source product into a sustainable and robust OSE. Phase II proposals are expected to have conducted the scoping activities (not necessarily via a Phase I award) needed to develop a detailed project plan to support the community-driven distributed development and deployment of successful open-source tools into operational environments. The proposals must include a community outreach plan that outlines activities to engage the intended intellectual content developer community that will further develop and maintain the technology and identifies user communities and/or organizations that will serve as early adopters of the technology. Each Phase II proposal must describe the current context and the long-term vision and impact of the proposed OSE. The proposal should also include awell-developed, cohesive plan for building an OSE, including ecosystem establishment/growth, organizational and governance structure, a framework for continuous development, integration, and deployment of the technology, methods for evaluating the OSE’s effectiveness, and activities to ensure security and privacy, build the community, and sustain the ecosystem. Phase II proposals are limited to a total budget of $1,500,000 with durations of up to two years. The Project Description can be up to 15 pages for Phase II proposals. Phase I awardees are not obligated to submit Phase II proposals in the future. An NSF POSE Phase I award is not required for the submission of a Phase II proposal.