UCR Research and Economic
Development Newsletter: March 23, 2014
Michael Pazzani
Vice Chancellor for Research
and Economic Development
Back Issues of Newsletter: http://reserach.ucr.edu/vcr/newsletters.aspx
Grant Opportunity Search: http://pivot.cos.com
·
Proposal Tips
·
April 15: NSF CAREER Workshop
·
NSF Budget
·
April 22: UC Innovation Day at UCR: Save the date
·
Save the date: August 15: Sonny Ramaswamy: USDA
·
The Road to NIH on YouTube
·
NSF Brain Initiative, May 1 Deadline
·
NIAID Step Nine to a Winning Application:
Nail Your Budget
· Foundation Opportunities
·
Tufted Titmouse
Proposals Tips
I’ve been looking at some
recent proposals submitted by UCR recently and working on one of my own.
Here are some tips:
·
Include several photographs, graphs, and diagrams in a
proposal. These can include photographs of a lab, a field site, a
outreach activity as well as graphs or data that might appear in a
publications. Approximately 40% of the NSF CAREER awards submitted
from UCR with illustrations were funded. No CAREER proposal without
illustrations was funded.
·
Finish a complete draft at least a month early and allow
other in the department and colleagues at other universities to comment and
address their comments. I recently passed a proposal I was writing on to
people at 3 universities, and there was sufficient time to change the approach
in one section, to clarify several points, and to emphasize an additional
point. Often, the second version of a proposal is the one that is
funded. It’s better to wait a week or two for comments from colleagues to
produce the second version than 6-8 months for agency comments.
·
Have someone not familiar with the proposal proofread the
final proposal. Even after working with UCR grant facilitators, my wife
found about 20 typos. Little things, like “under way” vs. “underway,”
inconsistent capitalization and incomplete sentences can form a bad impression
on reviewers.
NSF CAREER Workshop:
April 15: 10:30
The CAREER is NSF’s most
prestigious award in support of untenured 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. See http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503214
for the NSF solicitation.
CAREER proposals are due July
21-24, 2014; the exact deadline varies by discipline. It pays to
start a few months early to make sure the proposal is well thought out and
addresses all criteria for funding.
UCR will offer a workshop on
preparing an NSF CAREER proposal on Tuesday April 15th from 10:30 – 12:00 PM in
the Highlander Union Building, Room 355.
At the workshop, we will go
over the essential components of the CAREER award, including
•
Research Plan
•
Educational Plan
•
Broader Impacts
•
Data Management Plans
Previous winners of the NSF
CAREER awards will discuss what worked (and what didn’t work) for them. We will
go over NSF requirements, suggestions and best practices from past winners, and
your questions and ideas. Sample funded proposals will be made
available.
NSF Budget
I
have attached the entire NSF proposed budget for FY2105. While the budget
has not passed congressed and the dollar amounts may change, the budget is a
good indicator of the scientific priorities for each NSF division. In
addition, the budget discusses new themes and programs that cross NSF divisions
and directorates (and cross UCR departments and schools). Some details
are below. If you want to find out where NSF thinks your field is
heading,
Cognitive
Science and Neuroscience ($29.0
million) in FY 2015 draws together under one framework ongoing cognitive
science and neuroscience research and NSF’s contributions to the
Administration’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovation and
Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. Improved understanding of the brain will
promote brain health; enable engineered solutions that enhance, replace, or
compensate for lost function; improve the effectiveness of formaland informal
educational approaches; and lead to brain-inspired smarter technologies for
improved quality of life.
Cyber-enabled
Materials, Manufacturing, and Smart Systems (CEMMSS) ($213.20 million)
aims to integrate a number of science and engineering activities
across the Foundation – breakthrough materials, advanced manufacturing,
robotics, and cyber-physical systems. It addresses pressing technological challenges facing the Nation and
promotes U.S. manufacturing competiveness. CEMMSS is aligned with key
interagency activities, including the Administration’s Materials Genome
Initiative, Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, and the National Robotics
Initiative.
Cyberinfrastructure
Framework for 21st Century Science, Engineering, and Education (CIF21)
($124.75
million) accelerates and transforms the process of scientific discovery and
innovation by providing advanced cyberinfrastructure and new capabilities in
computational and data-enabled science and engineering (CDS&E). In FY 2015,
NSF will continue to lead the Big Data/National Data Infrastructure program, a
joint solicitation with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that strives to
enable breakthrough discoveries and innovation in science, engineering,
medicine, commerce, education, and national security.
Science,
Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) ($139.0 million) aims to increase understanding of the
integrated system of supply chains, society, the natural world, and
alternations humans bring to Earth, in order to create a sustainable world. In
FY 2015, SEES enters a transition period toward sunsetting in FY 2017. SEES
continues to support important scientific and societal contributions during the
phase-down period and will make significant progress towards achieving
programmatic goals through projects currently underway.
The
Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) investment ($99.75 million)
aims to build the knowledge base in cybersecurity that enables discovery,
learning and innovation, and leads to a more secure and trustworthy cyberspace.
Through a focus on long-term, foundational research, SaTC will develop the
scientific foundations for cybersecurity research for years to come. SaTC
aligns NSF’s cybersecurity investments with the four thrusts outlined in the
national cybersecurity strategy, Trustworthy Cyberspace: Strategic Plan for
the Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Program.
Advanced
Manufacturing research ($150.70
million) holds tremendous potential for significant
short-term
and long-term economic impact by promising entirely new classes and families of
products that were previously unattainable. In FY 2015, NSF’s investment
emphasizes several emerging opportunities including cyber–physical systems,
advanced robotics research, scalable nanomanufacturing, sensor and model-based
smart manufacturing, educational activities to support training the next
generation of product designers and engineers, and industry-university
cooperation.
Clean
Energy investments ($361.95 million)
that will lead to future clean energy and energy efficient technologies are
seen throughout the NSF portfolio, both in core research programs and targeted
investments such as BioMaPS and SEES. Specific activities include research
related to sustainability science and engineering, such as the conversion,
storage, and distribution of diverse power sources (including smart grids), and
the science and engineering of energy materials, energy use, and energy
efficiency.
The
Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program ($118.48 million)
is a more
extensive
coordination of NSF’s undergraduate STEM education investments within a
framework designed to accelerate improvement and measurable impact in
undergraduate STEM education. IUSE is built upon a knowledge base accumulated
from decades of research, development, and best practices across the Nation in
STEM undergraduate education, and it integrates theories and findings from
education research with attention to the needs and directions of frontier
science and engineering research.
April 22: UC Innovation
Day at UCR: Save the date
UC Innovation Day – Riverside
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
5-7 PM, reception immediately
following
Alumni and Visitors Center at
UC Riverside
3701 Canyon Crest Dr,
Riverside, CA 92521
Featured Speakers include:
Welcome by Chancellor Kim
Wilcox
Program overview by Kish
Rajan, Director – Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development
New Innovations and Industry
partners
For more details please
contact Rebeccah Goldware goldware@ucr.edu
Save the date: August 15:
Sonny Ramaswamy: USDA
Dr Sonny Ramaswamy will be visiting
UCR on August 15. We are working out the details of his visit which will
include a talk on USDA/NIFA and visits to research labs. For now, if you
are interested in interacting with Ramaswamy, please plan on being on campus
that day.
Dr. Sonny Ramaswamy was appointed to serve as director of the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) on May 7, 2012. As part of USDA's Research, Education, and Extension mission, he oversees NIFA awards funds for a wide range of extramural research, education, and extension projects that address the needs of farmers, ranchers, and agricultural producers. Prior to joining NIFA, Dr. Ramaswamy served as dean of Oregon State University's College of Agricultural Sciences and director of the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station. He received a Bachelor of Science in agriculture and a Master of Science in entomology from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, India, and his doctorate in entomology from Rutgers University.
The Road to NIH Funding on
YouTube
New to the NIH grants process? Looking
for some direction? Then grab a seat and watch our new YouTube video, The NIH Grants Process: the Big
Picture, designed to help you get started on the road to NIH
funding. This video, produced by the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER),
provides a high-level overview of the grants process from application to award.
As you begin to navigate the NIH
grants process, be sure to bookmark grants.nih.gov for
many more online resources. These include guidance on the various aspects of
the grants process, podcasts, webinars, policy
information, the NIH
Guide to Grants and Contracts, and
so much more. More videos related to NIH grants information
may be also be found on YouTube.
NSF Brain Initiative, May
1 Deadline
There is a new opportunity
for researchers interested in the Administration’s BRAIN Initiative. The
National Science Foundation (NSF) released a Dear Colleague Letter announcing
that the Biological Sciences Directorate (BIO) will fund Early Concept Grants
for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals as part of NSF’s activities related
to the BRAIN Initiative.
The goal is to identify, “...opportunities to leverage and synthesize
technological and conceptual innovation across disciplines and scales to
accelerate progress toward an integrated understanding of neural circuits in
behavior and cognition, or more simply “catching circuits in action”. The
neuroscience research community and specialists in other areas including, but
not limited to genetics, physiology, synthetic biology, engineering, physics,
mathematics, statistics, behavior and cognition are encouraged to work across
disciplines to develop new approaches and neurotechnology focused at
understanding the properties of circuits that underlie behavior and/or
cognition in any organism. Projects that take advantage of existing DBI
investments in informatics, computing and other infrastructure, such as the
Neuroscience Gateway, in novel ways are also eligible.”
Interested principal
investigators (PI) should submit a two-page summary of their research concepts
by May 1, 2014, to this email address: BIO-BRAIN@nsf.gov. The summaries will be reviewed internally
and those that best meet the goals of the Dear Colleague will be invited to
submit EAGER proposals.
The Dear Colleague is
available at: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14044/nsf14044.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click.
NIAID
Step Nine to a Winning Application: Nail Your Budget
From: NIAID Funding Newsletter: You
want the budget for your R01 application to be in the Goldilocks zone—not too big
and not too small, but just right. In this step, we show you how to reach that
happy medium. Read
the full article.
Foundation Opportunities
1)
Gates Foundation Grand Challenges
Exploration
Deadline: May
6, 11:30 P.M. P.D.T.
Amount: $100,000
for Phase I; up to $1,000,000 for Phase II
Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) supports hundreds
of early-stage research projects – including many ideas that have never before
been tested – and scientists and innovators from a wide range of disciplines
and regions. The Explorations initiative funds innovative ideas that could lead
to new vaccines, diagnostics, drugs, and other technologies targeting diseases
that claim millions of lives every year, as well as improvements and
innovations in agriculture development and others of the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation priority areas.
GCE is an extension of the foundation’s commitment to the
Grand Challenges in Global Health, which was launched in 2003 to accelerate the
discovery of new technologies to improve global health. More recently, GCE has
expanded to include global development and communications challenges. To date,
the foundation has committed over half a billion dollars to support hundreds of
projects on topics such as making childhood vaccines easier to use in poor
countries, and creating new ways to control insects that spread disease.
Key features of the Grand Challenges Explorations
initiative are:
· A
short application. Instructions are available online at:
http://www.grandchallenges.org/Explorations/Pages/ApplicationInstructions.aspx
· Rapid
turnaround time. We will select projects in approximately five months from the
proposal submission deadline. All applicants will be notified of the status of
their application via e-mail when final decisions are made.
· We
review for novel ideas that show great promise. Our review process is blinded
and champion-based, where reviewers with a track record in identifying
innovative ideas select the proposals they find most pioneering - no consensus
or peer review is needed.
Awards
of $100,000 USD are made in Phase I. Phase I awardees have one opportunity to
apply for a follow-on Phase II award of up to $1,000,000 USD.
2) ESA Foundation Seeks Proposals for
Youth-Oriented Technology/Computer Game Projects
Deadline:
May 15, 2014
Amount: up to $50,000
URL: http://www.esafoundation.org/
The Entertainment
Software Association Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Entertainment
Software Association, is seeking proposals for projects that
use innovative technology and/or computer and video games to positively shape
the lives of youth in the United States.
The
foundation supports geographically diverse projects and programs that benefit
boys and girls of all races and religions. Eligible projects must be
implemented or available in a minimum of two states (preferably nationwide) and
serve American youth between the ages 7 and 18. In addition, projects must
provide programs and services that utilize technology and/or computer and video
games for education purposes.
Grants
of up to $50,000 will be awarded to first-time recipients.
3) Gerber
Foundation Seeks Proposals for Pediatric Research Projects
Deadline: June 1, 2014 (Concept Papers)
Amount: up to $300,000
URL: http://www.gerberfoundation.org/
The Gerber Foundation is accepting
concept papers for health and/or nutrition-related research on issues affecting
infants and young children. Of particular interest are applied research
projects focused on reducing the incidence of serious neonatal and early
childhood illnesses, or improving cognitive, social, and emotional aspects of
development.
The
foundation awards pediatric research grants through two programs, a Research
Award and a Novice Research Grant. Both grants support research designed to
improve health, nutrition, and/or developmental outcomes for infants from
before birth and children up to age 3. Projects may include etiologic
mechanisms of disease; new, improved, or less invasive diagnostic procedures;
reduction or elimination of side effects; alleviation of symptoms; new,
improved, or less invasive therapies, care, or treatments; dosage or dosing
requirements or mechanisms for drugs, nutrient supplementation, or other
therapeutic measures (under or overdosing); and preventative measures.
Novice
Research Grants of up to $20,000 per project will be awarded to physicians as
well as candidates for Ph.D. and PharmD degrees who are in a residency or
fellowship training program and are no more than one year post training. The
Novice Research Grant program also provides up to $2,000 to cover travel and
attendance costs for one conference so that the awarded can report findings
from the project during the grant period. Novice Research grantees must have an
assigned mentor for the project as well as a current development plan and must
not have received a K award from the National Institutes of Health. The
qualifications and experience of the mentor will be an evaluation
consideration.
Priority
is given to projects offering a substantial promise of meaningful advances in prevention
and treatment of diseases and those with broad applicability to the general
population on a regional or national level.
4) Howard Hughes
Medical Institute Launches National Competition for Biomedical Researchers
Deadline: June 3, 2014
URL:
http://www.hhmi.org/
The Howard Hughes
Medical Institute has issued a call for applications from basic
researchers and physician scientists for research positions. The initiative
represents an investment of approximately $150 million in basic biomedical
research over the next five years.
Through
this national competition, HHMI seeks to appoint up to twenty-five new
researchers who study significant biological problems in the biomedical
disciplines, including plant biology and related fields such as evolutionary
biology, biophysics, chemical biology, biomedical engineering, and
computational biology. Individual researchers selected through the competition
will receive a five-year appointment to HHMI, which is renewable pending
favorable scientific review.
By
employing scientists as HHMI investigators — rather than awarding them
research grants — the institute is guided by the principle of “people, not projects.” HHMI investigators
have the freedom to explore and, if necessary, to change direction in their
research. Moreover, they have support to follow their ideas through to fruition
— even if that process takes many years.
Once
selected, HHMI provides each investigator with a full salary, benefits, and a research
budget for their initial five-year appointment. The institute also will cover
other expenses, including the purchase of critical equipment.
Successful
candidates are expected to hold a Ph.D. and/or M.D. or equivalent degree; have
a tenured or tenure-track position as assistant professor or higher academic
rank (or the equivalent) at an eligible institution in the U.S.; have more than
five but no more than fifteen years of post-training, professional experience;
and be the principal investigator on one (or more) active, national,
peer-reviewed research grants with a duration of at least three years.
All
semifinalists will be expected to attend a scientific symposium at HHMI in
April 2015 and present a brief research talk to HHMI scientific leadership and
a final advisory panel. Finalists will be selected shortly after the scientific
symposium.
5) Kress
Foundation Invites Applications for Scholarly European Art Projects
Deadline: Rolling (January 1, April 1, October 1)
URL: http://www.kressfoundation.org/
The Samuel H. Kress Foundation
is accepting applications from nonprofit organizations for scholarly projects
that will enhance the appreciation and understanding of European art and
architecture from antiquity to the dawn of the modern era. Through its
History of Art program, the foundation will award grants in support of projects
that create and disseminate specialized knowledge in the field of European art,
including archival projects, development and dissemination of scholarly
databases, documentation projects, museum exhibitions and publications,
photographic campaigns, scholarly catalogs and publications, and technical and
scientific studies. The program also supports activities that permit art
historians to share their expertise through international exchanges, professional
meetings, conferences, symposia, consultations, the presentation of research,
and other professional events.
In
previous years, grant amounts have ranged from $1,000 to $93,000.
The
foundation has three application deadlines a year ̶ January 1, April 1, and
October 1.
Tufted Titmouse
I still haven’t found much
time for birding in Southern California, but I was recently on the east coast
and got reacquainted with one my favorite backyard birds there: the tufted
titmouse.
(click to enlarge)
Michael Pazzani
Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development
Professor, Computer Science & Engineering
University of California, Riverside
200 University Office Building
Riverside, CA 92521
Assistant: Johanna Bowman