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Letter of intent due: Fourth Monday in July (Annually)
Full proposal due:Fourth Monday in August (Annually)
The Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Computing Research Infrastructure (CRI) program supports the acquisition, development, enhancement, and operation of research infrastructure that enables discovery, learning, and innovation in all computing fields supported by CISE. Supported infrastructure includes instrumentation needed by a few research or research and education projects, major experimental facilities for an entire department or for multi-institutional projects, and testbeds or data archives for an entire subfield of CISE researchers.
One goal of the CISE CRI program is to provide infrastructure that enables high-quality computing research and education. A second goal is to extend the set of individuals and departments that are able to conduct such activities. The CRI program is committed to maintaining a broad portfolio that supports research and education across a diverse population and lessens the digital divide. The program encourages proposals that are from or that include minority-serving institutions.
The CRI program will support a variety of infrastructure needs, such as general or specialized research equipment, technical support, and/or software. CRI will also support the development of infrastructure that can be used by others, such as data archives or libraries of software tools. The primary criteria are that the infrastructure facilitates the conduct of high-quality research and related education, and that it cannot be acquired or developed without funding resources beyond those available from individual research and education grants and the host institution.
The CRI program will make three kinds of awards.
- Infrastructure Acquisition. These awards have budgets from $50,000 and up to $2,000,000.
- Community Resource Development. These awards have budgets from $300,000 to $2,000,000. Community Resource Development projects create a resource for an entire CISE research community, such as a testbed for evaluating research results or a large data resource for use by a research community (e.g., annotated speech data).
- Planning. These awards facilitate the preparation of a proposal for a medium or large Infrastructure Acquisition/Development or Community Resource Development grant. They have budgets up to $50,000 for one institution or up to $100,000 if more than one institution is involved.
Full proposal due: Fourth Thursday in January (Annually)
The Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI) is designed to increase access to scientific and engineering equipment for research and research training in our Nation's organizations of higher education, research museums and non-profit research organizations. This program seeks to improve the quality and expand the scope of research and research training in science and engineering, and to foster the integration of research and education by providing instrumentation for research-intensive learning environments. The MRI program encourages the development and acquisition of research instrumentation for shared inter- and/or intra-organizational use and in concert with private sector partners.
The MRI program assists in the acquisition or development of major research instrumentation by organizations that is, in general, too costly for support through other NSF programs. Proposals may be for a single instrument, a large system of instruments, or multiple instruments that share a common or specific research focus.
Currently Funded, but No Longer Receiving Proposals
The Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is developing an Initiative called Global Environment for Networking Investigations (GENI) to explore new networking capabilities that will advance science and stimulate innovation and economic growth. The GENI Initiative responds to an urgent and important challenge of the 21 st Century to advance significantly the capabilities provided by networking and distributed system architectures.
GENI comprises two components: the GENI Research Program and the experimental GENI Facility. It is intended to catalyze a broad community effort that will engage other agencies, other countries, and corporate entities.
Research that falls under the broad conceptual umbrella of this Initiative will focus on designing new network architectures and services by rethinking network functions, designing in key capabilities such as security, robustness and economic viability, and including applications and new technologies as design components. New technologies range from new wireless and sensor devices to customized routers and optical switches to control and management software. Research will call on multiple disciplines to explore a spectrum of areas from large-scale distributed services to high-level policy (e.g., network access).
To have significant impact, innovative research and design ideas must be implemented, deployed, and tested in realistic environments involving significant numbers of users and hosts. The Initiative includes the deployment of a state-of-the-art, global experimental GENI Facility that will permit exploration and evaluation under realistic conditions. The GENI Facility will permit a range of researchers, including network engineers, policy analysts, protocol designers, system architects, and economic modelers to contribute to and study innovative new capabilities for the global network of the future.
The GENI Initiative builds on the extensive experience of the broad research community and two decades of NSF-supported networking research. For the past several years, CISE has supported a series of workshops, planning grants, and meetings with leaders in the networking field in preparation for this Initiative.
NASA depends upon the private sector -- industry, educational institutions and other nonprofit organizations -- for the greater part of its research needs. Therefore, NASA encourages the submission of unique and innovative unsolicited proposals which will further the Agency's mission.
NASA will foster and encourage the submission of unsolicited proposals relevant to Agency mission requirements. All unsolicited proposals will receive equitable handling and review. Contact between the Proposer and NASA technical personnel is encouraged before an extensive effort is expended in preparing a detailed proposal. This preliminary contact allows the Proposer to find out what kind of work is currently being done in a particular field, if the work proposed is sufficiently related to current NASA mission goals to warrant a formal submission, the level of funding support currently being expended in that field, and whether NASA has any interest in the type of work being proposed. Such discussions, which convey to the potential Proposer an understanding of the Agency mission and needs relative to the type of effort contemplated, do not jeopardize the unsolicited status of any subsequently submitted proposal.
Correspondence of this nature is handled directly between the interested individual or organization and the appropriate NASA office. This approach is to the Proposer's advantage, as experience has demonstrated that abbreviated submissions rarely contain sufficient information to adequately communicate the potential merits of a contemplated project.
There are no specific dates for the submission of unsolicited proposals. However, funding availability is greater during the start of the Government's fiscal year cycle beginning October 1 of each year. All proposals should be submitted at least six (6) months in advance of the desired starting date.
Please see ( http://ec.msfc.nasa.gov/hq/library/unSol-Prop.html) for information that gives insight into NASA's specific current and anticipated research goals, and science or engineering topics that may be of interest to NASA. It should be noted that projects toward the research end of the spectrum rather than supplies or services are generally most suited to the unsolicited proposal approach.
Funding opportunities of particular interest to faculty engaged in computational research are identified on a regular basis by staff at the Ohio Supercomputer Center and made available on their web site here. Please check the site frequently as it changes almost daily.
The Case Office of Sponsored Projects Administration also provides lists of funding opportunities on a regular basis here. It is also updated regularly, so check back often!
The Cisco University Research Program (URP) is dedicated to fostering communication between Cisco technical staff and researchers at universities and other research institutions around the globe. Twice each year, once in the Spring and again in late Summer, the URP accepts proposals from research institutions, and through a competitive process of peer review selects the most worthy for funding in order to:
- support the advancement of technology in areas of interest to Cisco (see below);
- provide a venue for Cisco to experiment with risky or "orphan" research topics, i.e., those of limited immediate interest to Cisco's Business units and functions (up to 25% of the URP budget may be allocated to this class of research);
- encourage research faculty to remain in academia; and
- identify and recruit top industry-bound research students.
Areas of interest include
| Routing Protocols |
High end routers |
High speed switching |
Congestion control |
| Optical nets |
Control Plane |
Multicast |
IPv6 |
| QoS |
MPLS/TE |
VoIP |
Video-over-IP |
| Wireless |
Mobility |
Storage networking |
CDN (caching, etc.) |
| Network management |
Security |
Middleware |
Measurement and analysis |
| Simulation and modeling |
Micro nets |
Ad hoc nets |
End-to-end protocols |
Through its University Relations Program, Microsoft Research supports basic research and curriculum innovation in many areas of computing. Its goals are to (1) stimulate identification and investigation of research areas central to expanding the power, utility, and availability of computing resources, and (2) encourage creation of curriculums that best prepare future software architects and developers for productive careers devoted to innovation in software. They fund specific research or curriculum development projects only pursuant to identified initiatives or programs. They do not provide general institutional support or funding for ongoing educational or philanthropic activities. All funding is awarded in response to solicited proposals. They solicit proposals both through private invitations and through published public requests. Currently they do not accept unsolicited proposals. Details on funding objectives, eligibility, and application requirements for all programs are detailed in the published requests for proposals.
Fitech Laboratories Inc has announced the creation of the Fitech Laboratories University Relationship Program. The program is designed to facilitate research projects that can benefit from the computing power of using a computational Grid and is now accepting applications from universities worldwide. In order to qualify prospective research projects should meet the following two criteria: (1) The proposed project must either directly concern research in distributed computing, or must possess significant computational requirements that are suited to running on a computational Grid, (2) at the conclusion of the research project the results should be published, with acknowledgement of xTier/Grid and Fitech Laboratories' participation
Fitech Laboratories will supply qualified projects with a number of free academic licenses of xTier/Grid and in certain cases, Fitech Laboratories will provide additional project support by providing xTier/Grid training and consulting. Fitech Laboratories can also help qualified projects to obtain financial assistance from participating non-profit funds.
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