UCR Research and Economic Development Newsletter: September 11, 2014
Michael Pazzani
Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development
Back Issues of Newsletter: http://research.ucr.edu/vcr/newsletters.aspx
Grant Opportunity Search: http://pivot.cos.com
TEDxRiverside: Oct 16, 2014: http://www.tedxriverside.com
·
Federal Update
·
Postdoc Symposium Featuring 2013 Nobel
laureate Dr. Randy Schekman
·
Guggenheim fellowship applications due
Sept 19
·
Nearby conferences: microbiome and
bioinformatics
·
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
·
Intelligence Advanced Research
Projects Agency: IARPA Day, October 30
·
GUIRR's Webinar - Partnerships
for Innovation: Accelerating Innovation Research: Sept 30
·
New DARPA program managers
·
Birding in Laguna Beach
Federal Update
I spent the past few days in Washington at a meeting of the UC Vice Chancellors of Research and then subsequent visits to some federal agencies with some UCR faculty and Director of Federal Relations Kaitlin Chell. Here’s a summary of some meetings and conversations
Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP): Jo Handelsman, Associate Director of Science. (Dr. Handelsman recently joined OSTP from Yale). OSTP is not a funding agency but rather part of the executive branch of government that providence guidance to the funding agencies on the administration’s priorities and cross agency themes. OSTP guidance this year is typically reflected in next year’s programs at federal agencies.
S&T are central to meeting key
challenges of:
·
Economic
development & sustainable growth
·
Affordable,
safe, accessible, nutritious food supply
·
Biomedicine
& health-care delivery
·
Clean,
safe, reliable, & affordable energy
·
Climate-change
mitigation & adaptation
·
Competing
uses of land & water
·
Health
& productivity of the oceans
·
National
& homeland security
·
Discovery,
invention, & expanded understanding
S&T priorities in the
President’s 2nd term:
·
S&T
for the economy: advancing economic recovery and job creation through
S&T-based innovation to drive advanced manufacturing and new/improved
products
·
S&T
for biomedicine and health: helping to implement the Affordable Care Act
so as to get better healthcare outcomes for more Americans at lower costs
·
S&T
for energy and climate: advancing the coupled agendas of clean,
efficient, reliable, affordable energy and climate-change
mitigation/preparedness/resilience
·
S&T
for open government: using information science & technology to
improve access to government data & services and increase public
participation in government.
·
STEM education: strengthening the next generation of
discoverers, innovators, workers, and citizens
Science Division – New S & T
Priorities
·
Antibiotic
resistance
·
Precision
medicine
·
Nutrition
– health- agriculture nexus (e.g., plant breeding for nutrition)
·
Aquaculture
·
Microbiomes
– soil, plants, animals, humans
·
Public
Health, lab safety, national security
·
Forensic
sciences.
Science Division – New STEM
education Priorities
·
Classroom practices proven to increase retention, but
universities are slow to adopt.
o
active
learning
o
research
courses (for freshman)
·
Broader
graduate training
o
teaching
skills
o
entrepreneurship
o
mentoring
skills
o
communicating
with the public
·
Training
to explicit and implicit bias
·
Probability
in K-12 curriculum
DARPA
(Director, Arati Prabhakar).
Some areas of emphasis include. (note: This is not an exhaustive list).
• Use of data in many fields
(materials, biology, etc)
• Rethinking complex systems:
Can we find ways to build distributed, composable systems, not using a big
platform but large numbers of elements that combine to do the job in different
way.
• Next generation of information
revolution. Huge set of opportunities in information at massive scale
e.g., from sensor data.
• Trusted information, cybersecurity
• Biological technology and
interactions with engineering and information technology
• Synthetic biology. Applications
include new classes of materials, new fuels and new pharmaceuticals. Of
particulate interest are new tools and techniques to accelerate development in
synthetic biology.
• Understanding brain function, motor
function, and restoration of function, advanced prosthetics, direct motor
control of prosthetics
• Outpacing the spread of infectious
disease. Diagnostics, RNA based therapies, enhanced vaccines, prophylactics
that can be immediate unlike vaccines.
• Longer term questions about how
society will use new technologies.
NSF
Update. France Cordova, Director
• Richard Buckius, NSF Acting Chief
Operating Officer and Senior Science Advisor has been nominated as NSF Deputy
Director. Dr. Buckius was most recently the VP of Research at Purdue and
previously the AD of Engineering at NSF.
• NSF Goals
o Furthering Progress of Science
o Educating the next generation of US
scientists.
o Upcoming Deadlines: INSPIRE
($1M a year, interdisciplinary), Science and Technology Centers. These
are quite similar in requiring teams, but STC teams are 3-4x larger.
o NSF MAY be exploring modular budgets
like NIH to reduce burden on PIs.
NIH Update: Lawrence Tabak, Principal Deputy Director, focused on three topics
·
BIG
DATA:
o
Big
Data to Knowledge (BD2K) is a growing funding area. Goals: To
enable biomedical research as a digital research enterprise through which new
discoveries are made and knowledge generated by maximizing community engagement
and productivity.
o
As
an example of big data, NCBI gets 28M page views a day and , 35T a day
o
Phil
Bourns has been appointed Associate Director For Data Science
o
Digital
Assets (E.g. datasets, papers, software, lab notes-- Each asset is
uniquely identified and has provenance)
§ Locating and citing
the digital assets
§ Extending policies
and practices for data sharing
§ Organizing,
managing, and processing biomedical Big Data
§ Developing new
methods to analyze biomedical Big Data (computing across data types, data
integration)
§ Training
researchers who can use biomedical Big Data effectively
o
Establishing
Centers of Excellence for biomedical data science
o
Establishing
Data Commons that co-locate data with advanced computing resources
o
New
areas for FY15 include:
§ Piloting the Data
Commons
§ Increased focus on
Clinical Research, standards activities
§ Communication and
outreach
§ Increased
collaboration with NIH policy experts
o
Possible
FY15/16 BD2K FOAs
§ NIH Standards
Information Resource (NSIR).
§ Community-based
standards/metadata development.
§ Targeted methods
development for research use of clinical data.
§ Targeted software:
enabling appropriate repurposing of NIH-relevant open data
§ Innovative
partnerships for database sustainability.
§ Training: Support
of big data training through libraries and/or societies.
§ Diversity and
Training in Big Data
·
Brain
Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN)
o
Goal:
Map the brain’s circuits; measure patterns of electrical and chemical activity;
understand how their interplay creates our unique capabilities
o
Years
1–5: focus on technology development (tool development: Noninvasive imaging
technologies, higher spatial and temporal resolution)
o
Years
6–10: focus on discovery-driven science
o
Budget
§ By year 4: funding
ramps to $400M/year
§ By year 7: funding
plateau at $500M/year
§ Total
investment = $4.5 billion by FY25
o
White
Paper: http://www.nih.gov/science/brain
o
Joint
with NIH, NSF,DARPA, FDA, HHMI, Kavli….
o
New
RFAs expected in December
·
Funding
Mechanisms: NIH is exploring funding mechanism that fund the person not
the projects: In these times of tight budgets and rapidly evolving
science, we must consider new ways to invest biomedical research dollars to
achieve maximum impact—to turn scientific discoveries into better health as
swiftly as possible. We do this by thinking strategically about the areas of
research that we support, as well as the process by which we fund that
research.
o Awarding longer
grants — e.g., NIH Pioneer Awards
o NCI’s Outstanding
Investigator Award:
§ To
investigators with extraordinary records
§ $600,000/yr direct
costs for up to 7 yrs
o NIGMS’s Maximizing
Investigators’ Research Award
§ Concept stage,
awaiting RFI feedback
§ $150,000–$750,000/yr
direct costs for 5 yrs
o Other NIH ICs may
follow with similar opportunities
ARPA-E:
Cheryl Martin, Acting Director
·
In
FY15, there will be an open solicitation in which faculty may propose
innovations on any energy related topic, as well as focused solicitations on
topics selected by ARPA-E.
·
Characteristics
of an ARPA-E Project
o
IMPACT
§ High impact on
ARPA-E mission areas
§ Credible path to
market
§ Large commercial
application
o
TRANSFORM
§ Challenges what is
possible
§ Disrupts existing
learning curves
§ Leaps beyond
today’s technologies
o
BRIDGE
§ Translates science
into breakthrough technology
§ Not researched or
funded elsewhere
§ Catalyzes new
interest and investment
o
TEAM
§ Comprised of
best-in-class people
§ Cross-disciplinary
skill sets
§ Translation
oriented
·
Workshops
in FY14 that may result in FY15 foci
o
Drivers
for Economical Fusion Technologies
o
Personal
Thermal Management to Reduce Building Energy Consumption
o
Transportation
Network Optimization
o
Microscale
Concentrated Photovoltaics
o
Advanced
Dry Power Plant Cooling
o
Efficient
Small Engines for Combined Heat and Power
o
Plant
Phenotyping
o
Grid
of the Future: From Vertical to Flat
USDA NIFA: Sonny
Ramaswamy
·
NIFA
will be creating a program like NSF REU, but with an extension focus, i.e.,
giving undergraduates an extension experience.
·
NIFA
will be creating a program like NSF IGERT, i.e, interdisciplinary graduate
education related to food and agriculture.
·
The
Agriculture and Food Technology industry want to recruit 60,000 new
employees a year, but US universities graduate only 20,000. A working
group of companies and universities has been created.
·
Data
and sensors are increasing in importance in agriculture
·
Drones
for data gathering will become commonplace
USAID: HSI Programs
·
Higher Education Multicultural Scholars Program (MSP): The purpose of
this competitive undergraduate scholarship grant program is to increase the
multicultural diversity of the food and agricultural scientific and
professional workforce, and advance the educational achievement of all
Americans by providing competitive grants to colleges and universities. The
Multicultural Scholars Program is available every year. Due Date: September
30, 2014: Percent of Applications Funded Last Fiscal Year 25% http://www.csrees.usda.gov/fo/multiculturalscholars.cfm
·
Food and Agricultural Sciences National Needs Graduate
and Postgraduate Fellowship (NNF) Grants Program: This grant program
supports: (1) training students for Master's and doctoral degrees in food,
agricultural and natural resource sciences, and; (2) Special International
Study or Thesis/Dissertation Research Travel Allowances (IRTA) for eligible
USDA NNF beneficiaries. Awards are specifically intended to support traineeship
programs that engage outstanding students to pursue and complete their degrees
in USDA mission areas. Applicants provide clarity about the philosophy of their
graduate training, and relevance to USDA mission sciences, NIFA priorities and
national science education policies and statistics. Applications are being
solicited from institutions that confer a graduate degree in at least one of
the following Targeted Expertise Shortage Areas: 1) animal and plant
production; 2) forest resources; 3) agricultural educators and communicators;
4) agricultural management and economics; 5) food science and human nutrition;
6) sciences for agricultural biosecurity; and 7) training in integrative
biosciences for sustainable food and agricultural systems. . Due Date:
September 30, 2014: http://www.csrees.usda.gov/fo/nationalneedsgraduatefellowships.cfm
UCR
Postdoctoral Symposium: Sept.23-24, 2014.
The Riverside Postdoctoral Association is organizing its Inaugural Postdoctoral Symposium, sponsored by the Graduate Division, on the 23rd and 24th of September, 2014 in the Genomics Auditorium. The symposium will include:
· An opening reception on the evening of the 23rd with a postdoctoral poster session.
· Oral presentations on the 24th by UCR postdocs from across disciplines.
· Keynote talk on the 24th by 2013 Nobel laureate Dr. Randy Schekman
Registration is free and can be done by following this link or by email to postdoc@ucr.edu.
Space is limited, don’t delay-register today!
Guggenheim fellowship applications due Sept 19
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants to selected individuals made for a minimum of six months and a maximum of twelve months. Since the purpose of the Guggenheim Fellowship program is to help provide Fellows with blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible, grants are made freely. No special conditions attach to them, and Fellows may spend their grant funds in any manner they deem necessary to their work. Often characterized as "midcareer" awards, Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for faculty members who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.
http://www.gf.org/about-the-foundation/frequently-asked-questions/
https://competition.gf.org/applicant/
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is now inviting applications to Grand Challenges Explorations, which has awarded over 1070 grants in over 58 countries to date.
Grand Challenges Explorations seeks innovative global
health and development solutions. Applicants can be at any experience level; in
any discipline. Two-page proposals are being accepted online until
November 12, 2014 on the following topics:
- Surveillance Tools, Diagnostics and an Artificial Diet to
Support New Approaches to Vector Control.
- New Approaches for Addressing Outdoor/Residual Malaria
Transmission
- New Ways to Reduce Pneumonia Fatalities through
Timely, Effective Treatment of Children
- Enable Universal Acceptance of Mobile Money Payments
to Create an Economic Ecosystem that Will Help Lift the Poorest Out of Poverty
- Explore New Ways to Measure Brain Development and
Gestational Age
- New Ways of Working Together: Integrating
Community-Based Interventions
Initial grants will be US $100,000 each, and projects showing promise will have the opportunity to receive additional funding of up to US $1 million. Full descriptions of the new topics and application instructions are available at: www.grandchallenges.org/explorations.
If you have a great idea, please apply. If you know someone who may have a great idea, please forward this message.
Please also note the Global Health Innovation Group on LinkedIn. Developed in collaboration with Grand Challenges Canada, this group offers a platform to connect and communicate with innovators from around the world. Anyone with a LinkedIn account can join and make use of this forum.
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency:
IARPA Day, October 30
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) will be hosting its first IARPA Day 30 October 2014 in the College Park, Maryland area.
Dubbed in The New York Times as one of the government's "most creative agencies," IARPA performs high-risk, high-payoff research to address Intelligence Community (IC)-wide intelligence challenges. The purpose of IARPA Day is to provide a unique look at the breadth and depth of IARPA's research through briefings, discussions and demonstrations, including:
•
The
Aggregative Contingent Estimation (ACE) program, which seeks to improve
forecasting of world events through the wisdom of crowds,
•
The
Trusted Integrated Chips (TIC) program, which addresses supply-chain security
and intellectual property with a new chip-fabrication approach,
•
The
Strengthening Human Adaptive Reasoning and Problem-solving (SHARP) program,
which explores ways to enhance analysts' ability to reason though complex and
ambiguous problems, and
•
The
Babel program, which is creating technology to provide robust search tools for
human speech in any language in the world.
IARPA Day will allow attendees the opportunity to speak directly with IARPA leadership and IARPA's subject matter experts (the program managers) about their work and experiences, as well as discuss career opportunities at IARPA.
REGISTRATION AND SECURITY INFORMATION
Attendees must register no later than 6 p.m. local time on 15 October 2014 at https://www.signup4.net/Public/ap.aspx?EID=IARP14E. No walk-in registrations will be allowed. Directions to the event facility, agenda and other information will be provided online upon registration. There is no registration fee.
The event is being held on two days. UCR faculty may only attend the second day (30 October) which is entirely unclassified and will be held in a facility close to IARPA in Maryland.
Unclassified Day: Due to space limitations, attendance on the unclassified day (30 October) will be limited to the first 400 registrants. All attendees will be required to present government-issued photo identification to enter the event. Non-U.S. citizens will be required to present passports.
If you’d like support to attend, please send Pazzani@ucr.edu an email with an expression of your interest in IARPA programs.
Nearby
conferences: microbiome and bioinformatics
·
Joint
Calit2/IGB Symposium on Microbiome Connections to the Environment, Health, and
Disease (September 19, 2014) http://www.calit2.uci.edu/calit2-events/calendar.aspx?eid=691
(James Borneman UCR is one of the keynote speakers)
·
ACM-BCB2014:
the fifth ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health
Informatics in Newport Beach, CA (September 20-23, 2014) http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/ACM-BCB2014/
(Stefano Londardi UCR is chairing one of the sessions)
Partnerships for Innovation:
Accelerating Innovation Research (PFI:AIR) webinar Sept 30
A program for translational research opportunities for NSF-supported faculty
and research consortia
Tuesday, September 30, 2014, 10:00-1:00 p.m. PDT
Hosted by the National Academies'
Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR)
The NSF PFI:AIR program offers
opportunities to conduct translational research activities in support of moving
previously funded NSF research results toward commercial application.
There are two solicitations associated with the PFI:AIR program: one aimed at
single investigator faculty, the PFI:AIR--Technology Translation (PFI:AIR-TT)
program, and one aimed at NSF sponsored research consortia such as centers, the
PFI:AIR-Research Alliance (PFI:AIR-RA) program. The PFI:AIR-TT program
gives a faculty researcher an opportunity to take a NSF funded research result
and develop it further into a proof-of-concept or prototype for a particular
application. The PFI:AIR-RA program encourages technology translation
through the development of an innovation ecosystem around the NSF-funded
research consortium, with NSF funding in conjunction with third party
investment. This webinar will offer information about both programs in
terms of the goals of the solicitations, requirements for proposals, and some
initial statistics and results from the programs. The target audience are
those interested in academic technology translation and in industry-academic
partnerships to speed technology translation.
Cost: There is NO COST to attend this webinar, but registration
is required. A confirmation email will be issued prior to the event
containing the webinar URL.
Requirements: Audio for this event will be streamed through your
computer speakers. To participate, you will need a computer with Internet
access. You do not need a telephone or microphone. You will be able
to type questions for the speakers during the Q&A session.
Register Now
New
DARPA program managers
An
important strategy for dealing with DARPA is to work with program managers who
recently joined DARPA. Usually, within the first year, 1-2 new programs
are created and several projects are funded. After that, the program
funds are tied up with continuations of existing projects with little
opportunity for getting involved. Discussing your ideas in person, before
new programs are created, is a one way to influence the topics that DARPA
funds. My office will sponsor trips to DARPA for faculty that are
interested in meeting new program directors or attending DARPA workshops or
proposer’s days.
UCR’s
federal consulting firm, Lewis-Burke, has compiled a list of new DARPA
program managers and their interests.
·
Dr.
Justin
Gallivan
BTO synthetic biology, including
engineering microbial communities to produce small molecules or to prevent
disease, and reprogramming multicellular organisms to perform complex tasks
·
Dr.
Fariba
Fahroo
DSO Dr. Fahroo comes to DARPA from the Air
Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) where she was a program officer for
Math programs in Dynamics and Control, Computational Mathematics and
Optimization and Discrete Math. While at AFOSR, she initiated and managed basic
research programs in various areas of computational math and control theory
such as multiscale modeling and computation, uncertainty quantification, design
under uncertainty, distributed, multi-agent control and estimation, and
computational control theory.
·
Dr.
John Main
DSO physical sciences and fostering
the R&D communities that will support those programs. This is Dr. Main’s
second tour as a DARPA Program Manager. His first tour at DARPA began in 2002
and resulted in programs in a broad range of technical areas including
biologically inspired materials, fast and efficient human-powered swimming,
rapid rooftop access, small-scale power generation, GPS-denied underwater
navigation, and human exoskeletons for increased warfighter endurance.
·
Mr.
Timothy Booher I2O
cyberspace technology
·
David
Doerman
I2O language and media
processing and exploitation, vision and mobile technologies. He comes to DARPA
with a vision of increasing capabilities through joint vision/language
interaction for triage and forensics applications.
·
Dr.
John Everett
I2O intersection of automation
technologies with information security
·
Dr.
Angelos Keromytis
I2O computer systems, network
security and cryptography
·
Dr.
John Launchbury
I2O programming languages,
security, privacy and cryptography
·
Mr.
Frank
Pound
I2O cyber operations and
providing a useful interface to the “living Internet of things” such that it
can be more easily measured and understood.
·
LTC
Matthew Hepburn, MD,
BTO
dynamic threats of emerging infectious diseases with potential impact on
national security
·
Dr.
Geoffrey
Ling
BTO diagnosing and developing therapeutic
responses for brain and spinal cord injury
·
Dr.
Justin
Sanchez
BTO neurotechnology, brain science and
systems neurobiology
·
Dr.
Doug Weber
BTO neural engineering, specifically:
neural interface systems and how to apply these technologies to acquiring and
decoding neural signals for controlling assistive and prosthetic devices; and
neural stimulation technologies for restoring or retraining sensory, motor and
autonomic functions.
Birding in Laguna Beach
I was in Laguna Beach a few weeks
back when the surf was high. In addition to the usually birds, I spotted
a drone being used to take videos of surfers. If your research involves
observing difficult to reach areas, perhaps a drone can help.
Drone
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: Lila Basham-Casteloes
Email: VCREDadmin@ucr.edu