Program Development

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The goal of the Bridges to the Baccalaureate Research Training Program is to provide structured activities to prepare a diverse cohort of research-oriented students to transfer from associate degree-granting institutions to baccalaureate degree-granting institutions and complete a baccalaureate degree in disciplines related to the biomedical sciences. This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) provides support to eligible, domestic institutions to develop and implement effective, evidence-informed approaches to biomedical training and mentoring that will keep pace with the rapid evolution of the research enterprise. NIGMS expects that the proposed research training programs will incorporate didactic, research, mentoring, and career development elements. This program requires strong partnerships between at least two post-secondary educational institutions offering science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) degrees. At least one partner must be an institution that offers the associate degree as the highest STEM degree and the other partner(s) must offer baccalaureate degrees in biomedically relevant STEM fields. Upon completion of the Bridges to the Baccalaureate Research Training program, trainees are expected to be well positioned to pursue research-oriented biomedical higher degree programs or enter careers in the biomedical research workforce.

Training related expenses are limited to a maximum of $10,000/trainee/year. The maximum cap for the TRE portion of the proposed budget is $100,000/year. 

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UArizona may submit one proposal to this funding program. 

The national cyberinfrastructure (CI) ecosystem is essential to computational- and data-intensive research across all science and engineering (S&E) domains. The CI ecosystem is highly dynamic, driven by rapid advances in a wide range of technologies, increasing volumes of highly heterogeneous data, and escalating demands for CI resources and services by the research community. Innovations in CI are consequently key catalysts for new modes of discovery and play a critical role in ensuring U.S. leadership in science, engineering, economic competitiveness, and national security, consistent with NSF's mission. It is thus imperative that CI innovations become available, in a coordinated and sustainable manner, as part of the NSF-funded advanced CI ecosystem.

The Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem of Support and Services (ACCESS) program provides an array of national-scale CI services to the S&E research community, including integrated coordination of users’ requests for computational and data resources; integration of resource providers’ systems; deployment of technical support; monitoring of system usage; user training; and communication and outreach to the CI and research communities. The ACCESS program is envisioned to include a process to enable breakthrough CI innovations of recognized value to researchers to be translated into production-quality sustained services that are deployed and made available to the user community from applicable NSF-funded resource providers. Such a process would also include methods to prioritize which innovations to translate to production services and to identify when these services should be taken out of service or replaced.  

This CITAP solicitation is focused on the translation of innovative research CI software – such as system software, libraries, application codes, and software enabling data services. NSF seeks proposals that aim to design, test, and subsequently operate a pathway service within the ACCESS program that manages and accelerates the translation of promising research CI software to production-quality services across the NSF advanced CI ecosystem in support of the NSF S&E research community. CITAP proposals are expected to create a new workflow process (represented notionally in Figure 1 below) within the ACCESS program that: (1) identifies novel CI software from diverse sources in a strongly community-informed way; (2) establishes an open and merit-based process for selecting and prioritizing/sequencing which of the identified innovations are of highest and most immediate value to users of the advanced CI ecosystem and can be feasibly translated to production level and made available for use by researchers using ACCESS resources; and (3) establishes an operational process that translates innovations into production services, including creation of partnerships where necessary to address each of the technical challenges and intellectual property (IP) considerations faced when integrating novel CI software within the advanced CI ecosystem.

Examples of translation challenges include (but are not limited to): awareness by potential users who could benefit from the technology; systems engineering and software deployment; an initial launch period of collaborative maintenance; anticipation of user support that will be necessary; engagement of people or possibly organizations needed to sustain and upgrade the software/service in response to changes in technology and/or feedback from users and communities served; and determination of when the relative use or value of the software has decreased to an extent that decommissioning is warranted. The pathway must also be designed to evolve as the types of systems and services that are part of the NSF-funded production advanced CI ecosystem evolve and expand.

W. Parent-Johnson (Family and Community Medicine) //  Limit: 1  

UArizona may submit one proposal to this funding program. 

The purpose of the RPED Grant Program is to improve rates of postsecondary enrollment, persistence, and completion among rural students through development of career pathways aligned to high-skill, high-wage, and in-demand industry sectors and occupations in the region.

For rural students, and particularly low-income and underserved rural students, barriers to accessing postsecondary education include difficulties in accessing high speed internet, transportation, child care, and healthcare; as well as challenges of experiencing poverty, food insecurity, and housing insecurity. Furthermore, many rural students who do decide to attend college are first-generation students who lack sufficient college preparation in high school,[4] and are unfamiliar with the inner workings of postsecondary institutions, including the college application process and how to finance a college education.[5] These students may feel underprepared for higher education and typically face challenges once in college; many experience hurdles that leave them unable to complete their programs.[6] Accordingly, these inequities in college readiness and knowledge may discourage individuals from underserved student populations from continuing their education beyond high school.[7] These and other challenges may negatively affect rural students' ability to be academically successful and in turn be competitive in the job market.[8] 

Many of these challenges result from geographic isolation, distance from services, and a lack of resources and institutions to support community members. Rural communities are often located in education deserts, which may limit students' exposure or convenient access to postsecondary institutions.[9] For many rural students, transportation is a barrier to accessing colleges where they can earn a bachelor's degree, and thus they begin their postsecondary education at 2-year colleges

M. Fox (Center of Excellence in Data for Society).

UofA may submit one proposal as the lead organization. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is looking for an organization that can help develop, launch, and run a “Builder Platform” to support its NSF Regional Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) awardees, a signature initiative of NSF’s Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) directorate. The goal of the NSF Engines program is to spur the development of inclusive and diverse innovation ecosystems across the country, with an intentional focus on regions that have not fully participated in the tech boom of past decades. The NSF Engines Builder Platform and accompanying team will be responsible for providing the tailored support structures, networks, and services needed by and vital to the growth of individual NSF Engines. The NSF Engines Builder Platform has been planned as a human-centered portfolio of support structures that empower awardees with the tools, skills, networks, and capital needed to thrive

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UArizona may submit one proposal to this funding program. 

The OPPE is committed to ensuring underserved communities can equitably participate in USDA programs. Differences in demographics, culture, economics, language, and other factors preclude a single approach to identifying solutions that can benefit underserved farmers and ranchers. Grants are provided to nonprofit community-based organizations, higher education institutions, and eligible Tribal entities with at least three (3) years of documented experience, preceding the submission date of an application. Eligible entities working with underserved farmers and ranchers or military veteran farmers and ranchers can improve their ability to start and maintain successful forestry and/or agricultural-related operations. With 2501 Program funding, eligible entities can provide education, training, and technical assistance and extend outreach and education efforts to connect with and assist underserved and military veteran farmers and ranchers to provide them with information on available USDA resources.

J. Barton (BOI5 Instiutue) 

UArizona may submit one proposal to this funding program.

BioFoundries is an infrastructure program from the National Science Foundation (NSF) that is designed to accelerate advances in the biological sciences, chemical biology, biotechnology, and bioengineering via access to modern infrastructure, technology, and capacity. BioFoundries will provide the intellectual, technical, digital, and physical frameworks needed for tight integration of technology innovations and applications with foundational interdisciplinary research and training, by: 

1. serving as access points for new biological technologies, workflows, processes, automations, and knowledge-bases to enable transformative discoveries;
2. catalyzing new innovations and transformative discoveries by supporting in-house and external user-initiated research programs that take full advantage of technological and methodological advances;
3. continuing to develop novel technologies, workflows, processes, automations, and knowledge-bases that are both forward-looking and user-responsive;
4. increasing the reproducibility of life science discoveries and data and knowledge sharing capabilities;
5. training the next generation of the scientific workforce; and
6. facilitating pathways to translation.

Leveraging lessons learned from existing national and international biofoundries, NSF encourages researchers to consider a diversity of models (centralized, distributed, consortium) in the design and implementation of BioFoundries. Each BioFoundry should enclose a scientific ecosystem, that includes in-house research scientists across all relevant disciplines supported by NSF, technical staff including cyberinfrastructure experts, external users, and other contributors who, collectively, form a community of practitioners and share tools, reagents, workflows, software, samples, and data. Knowledge sharing should be a central tenet, designed to strengthen collaborations among researchers and enable them to work in new ways and to foster new modalities of research and education/training, for the purpose of accelerating discovery and advancing development. BioFoundries should promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in their in-house programs and external user programs. BioFoundries should also promote new avenues for translating such knowledge and technology broadly in ways that benefit society.

L. Hammer (College of Social and Behavioral Sciences - Outreach and Program Development)

UArizona may submit on proposal to this funding program.

The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) announces a limited competition for organizations interested in submitting applications for a project that supports Nepal’s progress towards sustainable peace and stability through a credible, locally led, inclusive, and victim-centric transitional justice process.1

Programs should advance family and civil society led efforts to pursue truth, justice, and accountability for enforced disappearances and other human rights violations and abuses committed during Nepal’s conflict. Programs should consider leveraging Nepal’s federal structure and opportunities at the local level to advance both formal and informal transitional justice processes for victims and their families, including forms of reparative justice, memorialization, and truth-telling; while also considering the legal, social, economic, and other impacts, of enforced disappearances on families, especially women and children. Recognizing the long-term nature of transitional justice processes, programs should also include efforts that strengthen the resilience of family members and support locally relevant ways for coping with ambiguity of their loss

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UArizona may only submit one proposal as the lead organization

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), its grantees, and partners have demonstrated the impact of using data to communicate and increase understanding of how the conditions of place impact community health. Structural racism produces a complex set of barriers (often invisible) that undermines opportunities for health and wellbeing for many communities. Yet researchers and data producers—especially those with vital comprehensive, nationwide data that include findings at smaller state and local levels—often struggle to communicate their findings in ways that resonate for policymakers, community partners, and others who are best positioned to make decisions informed by this information. Data visualization, or tools that make it easy to visualize complex measures, can be a powerful means to communicate data showing structural racism’s impact on communities and to contextualize the legacy of racism.

This Call for Proposals will fund up to eight interdisciplinary teams that each consist of researchers/data producers, data scientists, communications experts, designers, and national social change networks/alliances or national-level social change organizations. Funding will support the creation of data visualizations as tools to provide an understanding of structural racism’s impact on place, health, and wellbeing.

Because organizations in individual sectors may find it difficult on their own to communicate an effective understanding of the impact of structural racism to diverse audiences (e.g., policymakers, advocates, funders and investors, or the media), collaboration is needed across organizations and/or disciplines such as academia, design, media, policy, public health, and social services. Together, these sectors can combine their relevant expertise to design new ways to understand and communicate the impacts of structural racism.

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UArizona may submit only one Concept Paper and one Full Application.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is being issued by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) on behalf of the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO). EERE’s AMMTO collaborates with industry, small businesses, universities, national laboratories, state and local governments, and other stakeholders to advance emerging energyrelated materials and manufacturing technologies to increase domestic competitiveness and build a clean, prosperous economy. This FOA seeks to:

• Strengthen the domestic manufacturing base and associated supply chains, for manufacturing large near net shape (NNS) metallic components through technology development;
• Reduce the U.S. dependence on foreign supply chains to achieve the nation’s clean energy and national strategic goals; and
• Increase U.S. competitiveness, reshore manufacturing, grow the economy, create skilled jobs, and ensure national energy security.

The intent of this FOA topic is to accelerate the development and commercialization of innovative manufacturing technologies to increase the competitiveness of the domestic Near Net Shape (NNS) manufacturing base and strengthen the clean energy manufacturing supply chains. The technical and economic viability of the proposed manufacturing technologies will be established by producing a full-scale component as part of the requirements. The component must be relevant to a clean energy manufacturing application with a weight over 10 tons (20,000 lbs.). Project teams are expected to represent multiple segments of the value/supply chain.

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Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization: 1. Collaborative proposals are not allowed.

The Geospace Section of the NSF Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (AGS) offers funding for the creation of new tenure-track faculty positions within the disciplines that comprise the AGS Geospace programs to ensure their vitality at U.S. universities and colleges. The aim of the Faculty Development in geoSpace Science (FDSS) is to integrate topics in geospace science including solar and space physics and space weather research into natural sciences or engineering or related departments at U.S. institutions of higher education (IHE). FDSS also stimulates the development of undergraduate or graduate programs or curricula capable of training the next generation of leaders in geospace science. Geospace science is interdisciplinary in nature and FDSS awardees will be expected to establish partnerships within multiple parts of the IHE. NSF funding will support the salary, benefits and training of the newly recruited tenure-track FDSS faculty member for a duration of up to five years with a total award amount not to exceed $1,500,000.

Growing diversity in the geospace science workforce and institutions is a community priority, yet relatively few geospace science research and training opportunities are available at minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and emerging research institutions (ERIs). One of NSF's priorities is to improve representation in the scientific enterprise. FDSS aims to bolster long-term investments in geospace science at a broad range of U.S. IHEs, including MSIs and ERIs. This solicitation offers a track for all qualified U.S. IHEs and additionally, a separate track for proposal submissions from MSIs and ERIs.