Mathematics, Computational, & Data Sciences

Institutionally Coordinated //  Limit: 1 // M. Franco ( HSI Initiatives)

Please contact HSI Initiatives for more information. 

Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization:

• Planning or Pilot Projects (PPP) track: There are no restrictions or limits.
• Implementation and Evaluation Projects (IEP) track: There are no restrictions or limits.
• Institutional Transformation Projects (ITP) track: One award and one submission per institution is allowed. Institutions with an active award are not eligible to apply to this track.

The goals of the HSI program are to enhance the quality of undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and to increase the recruitment, retention, and graduation rates of students pursuing associates or baccalaureate degrees in STEM. Achieving these, given the diverse nature and context of the HSIs, requires additional strategies that support building capacity at HSIs through innovative approaches: to incentivize institutional and community transformation; and to promote fundamental research (i) on engaged student learning, (ii) about what it takes to diversify and increase participation in STEM effectively, and (iii) that improves our understanding of how to build institutional capacity at HSIs. Intended outcomes of the HSI Program include broadening participation of students that are historically underrepresented in STEM and expanding students' pathways to continued STEM education and integration into the STEM workforce.

The HSI program is aligned with the National Science Board's vision for, and the NSF's commitment to, a more diverse and capable science and engineering workforce.1 2 HSIs are heterogeneous and unique in many respects.3 Some HSIs have well-established undergraduate STEM programs while others are just beginning to create STEM programs. Whether 2-year or 4-year, public or private, the HSIs serve a wide range of students with a diverse set of educational backgrounds. The need for tailored initiatives, policies, and practices (mindful of socio-cultural awareness) should meet the students' needs and institutions' expectations while advancing undergraduate students at HSIs toward higher levels of academic achievement in STEM. This is the motivation behind three HSI program tracks: Track 1: Planning or Pilot Projects (PPP); Track 2: Implementation and Evaluation Projects (IEP); and Track 3: Institutional Transformation Projects (ITP). Track 3, ITP, is motivated by work on organizational identities for HSIs that suggest that organizational culture and identity play a key role in the success of an HSI in promoting student success in STEM.4

Track 3: The Institutional Transformation Projects (ITP) track supports institution-wide structural or systemic changes to enhance undergraduate STEM education at the proposing HSI. The ITP must be grounded in STEM education research and broadening participation research and be designed to make institutional infrastructure and policy changes to support long-term institutional changes that encourage and support faculty in implementing evidence-based practices that enhance student outcomes in STEM at the proposing HSI.

Under the ITP track, research (including foundational research) that improves our understanding of how to build HSI institutional capacity in STEM is encouraged. Such research should result in a strategic understanding about how the multiple components of the HSI program goals work synchronously to advance STEM education. All institution types are encouraged to apply, especially PUIs (including community colleges). Proposed activities can include adaptation of evidence-based strategies and/or the design and implementation of innovative strategies. The ITP must include both project evaluation and dissemination components, as well as an education research component. The ITP proposed structural or systemic changes are expected to be institutionalized and sustained by the HSI.

Limit: 2 // Tickets Available: 1

M. Chertkov (Applied Math)

Applicant institutions are limited to both:
• No more than two pre-applications or applications as the lead institution.
• No more than one pre-application or application for each PI at the applicant institution.

The DOE SC program in Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) hereby announces its interest in research applications to explore potentially high-impact approaches in the development and use of data reduction techniques and algorithms to facilitate more efficient analysis and use of massive data sets produced by observations, experiments and simulation.

Scientific observations, experiments, and simulations are producing data at rates beyond our capacity to store, analyze, stream, and archive the data in raw form. Of necessity, many research groups have already begun reducing the size of their data sets via techniques such as compression, reduced order models, experiment-specific triggers, filtering, and feature extraction. Once reduced in size, transporting, storing, and analyzing the data is still a considerable challenge – a reality that motivates SC’s Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI) program [1] and necessitates further innovation in data-reduction methods. These further efforts should continue to increase the level of mathematical rigor in scientific data reduction to ensure that scientifically-relevant constraints on quantities of interest are satisfied, that methods can be integrated into scientific workflows, and that methods are implemented in a manner that inspires trust that the desired information is preserved. Moreover, as the scientific community continues to drive innovation in artificial intelligence (AI), important opportunities to apply AI methods to the challenges of scientific data reduction and apply data-reduction techniques to enable scientific AI, continue to present themselves [2-4].

The drivers for data reduction techniques constitute a broad and diverse set of scientific disciplines that cover every aspect of the DOE scientific mission. An incomplete list includes light sources, accelerators, radio astronomy, cosmology, fusion, climate, materials, combustion, the power grid, and genomics, all of which have either observatories, experimental facilities, or simulation needs that produce unwieldy amounts of raw data. ASCR is interested in algorithms, techniques, and workflows that can reduce the volume of such data, and that have the potential to be broadly applied to more than one application. Applicants who submit a pre-application that focuses on a single science application may be discouraged from submitting a full proposal.

Limit: 2 // Tickets Available: 1

 H-J. Kim (Civil Engineering)

Institutions can receive only two awards each year and can submit a limit of two applications per year.
*The ORAU Innovation Partnerships Grant Program is a single fiscal year award for events held between September 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024.

Event or conference sponsorship is often beneficial to the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Council of Sponsoring Institution Members, whether as a means of fostering collaboration among Council members, gaining new and important information for a proposal or business plan, and more. Up to $4,000 may be requested to support an in-person or virtual event that involves participants from more than one ORAU member institution, including students. Innovation Partnership applications should focus on focused workshops/conferences that highlight your university’s strategic STEM research and education growth areas, and where collaborations with other member universities would add value. We are specifically interested in events that can bring more thought leadership in building a national strategy for STEM education and workforce development. Member universities are encouraged to collaborate around this topic in anticipation of federal funding initiatives. 

FY 2024 Innovation Partnerships Grant Focus Areas:

• Climate and Environment - sustainability, environmental justice, clean energy, resilience to climate hazards, emerging technologies, measurement and impact assessment, diversity and inclusion, policy, and data science and analytics
• Health Equity - telemedicine, telehealth, health literacy, health communication, behavioral and mental health, health disparities, diversity and inclusion, policy, and data science and analytics
• Future of the STEM Workforce - new ways of teaching and learning (K-16), transformative workforce capacity building and mentoring, diversity and inclusion, policy, data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence

UPDATED from NSF 21-536 to NSF 24-597 to reflect the updated solicitation posted August 16, 2024

Limit: 2 // Tickets Available: 1
Track 1 ONLY

H. Kim (Civil and Architectural Engineering and Mechanics)

Proposals may be submitted under two tracks (i.e., Track 1 and Track 2). All projects should include a focus on STEM graduate students in research-based PhD and/or master's degree programs. Track 1 proposals may request a total budget up to $3 million for projects up to five years in duration; Track 2 proposals may request a total budget up to $2 million for projects up to five years in duration; NSF requires that Track 2 proposals focus on programs from institutions not classified as Doctoral Universities: Very High Research Activity (R1). U of A is not eligible for Track 2.

The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) program seeks proposals that explore ways for graduate students in research-based master's and doctoral degree programs to develop the skills, knowledge, and competencies needed to pursue a range of STEM careers. The program is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary or convergent research areas, through a comprehensive traineeship model that is innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.

The NRT Program accepts proposals in any interdisciplinary or convergent research theme of national importance and encourages specific priority research areas that change periodically. All interdisciplinary or convergent research themes should align with NSF or other national STEM research priority areas and have high potential to develop novel, innovative practices in graduate education. Proposers should describe the importance of the NRT project's thematic focus to the Nation and the particular need to train students for a variety of careers in that thematic area.

Limit: 1 // C-k Chan (Steward Observatory) & G. Leroy (Management Information Systems)

The overarching goal of this solicitation is to democratize access to NSF’s advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) ecosystem and ensure fair and equitable access to resources, services, and expertise by strengthening how Cyberinfrastructure Professionals (CIP) function in this ecosystemThis solicitation will support NSF’s advanced CI ecosystem with a scalable, agile, diverse, and sustainable network of CIPs that can ensure broad adoption of advanced CI resources and expert services including platforms, tools, methods, software, data, and networks for research communities, to catalyze major research advances, and to enhance researchers' abilities to lead the development of new CI.

UArizona is ineligible to propose as a lead institution * // Limit: 1 

*Eligibility note: Universities awarded as part of MIRO Group 6, Group 6R, and Group 7 are ineligible to propose as a lead institution to this funding opportunity. 
UArizona was awarded a  MUREP APPENDIX G MUREP Institutional Research Opportunity – MIRO Group 7 in 2018, which makes the institution ineligible to lead a proposal to this funding program.

The NASA OSTEM MUREP Program solicits proposals from four-year colleges/universities designated by the U.S. Department of Education as MSIs for the MUREP Institutional Research Opportunity (MIRO) awards. MIRO develops significant scientific, engineering, and/or technology research centers. The purpose of MIRO is to strengthen and develop the research capacity and infrastructure of MSIs in areas of strategic importance and value to NASA’s mission and priorities. MIRO awards promote STEM literacy and enhance and sustain the capability of institutions to perform NASA-related research and education. Additionally, MIRO strengthens student participation in research at MSIs in order to develop and diversify the next generation of the STEM workforce. MIRO awards directly support research pertinent to NASA’s five Mission Directorates (MDs) – Aeronautics Research, Exploration Systems Development, Space Operations, Science, and Space Technology. 

MIRO cooperative agreements are competitively awarded to MSIs to promote research capacity, expand aerospace research, increase workforce diversity, and strengthen students’ STEM skills.  The MIRO awards goals and objectives are to: 

1) Expand the nation's base for aerospace research and development by fostering new aerospace research and technology development concepts aligned with NASA research priorities as defined by NASA’s MDs. 

Objective 1.1: Develop significant scientific, engineering, and/or technology research centers at the MSI that align and engage one or more programs of the NASA Mission Directorates.

Objective 1.2: Increase the lead institution’s capacity to contribute to the priorities of NASA’s Mission Directorates (Aeronautics Research, Exploration Systems Development, Science, Space Operations and Space Technology) and NASA’s Centers and facilities.

2) Promote institutional advancement and enhanced research capacity through partnerships among MSIs, other academic institutions, NASA, and industry.

Objective 2.1: Increase the lead institution’s ability to sustain research efforts through development of strategic partnerships. .  

 Objective 2.2: Increase the lead institution’s pursuit of additional funding opportunities offered by NASA, industry, and other agencies.

 Objective 2.3: Increase the ability of research leadership at the lead institution to leverage resources to enhance its research capacity at the project, program, department, college, and/or university levels.

3) Strengthen participation of faculty, researchers, and students at MSIs in the research programs of NASA’s MDs.

Objective 3.1: Increase faculty and researcher knowledge and skills in NASA-related research through professional development and NASA research opportunities.

Objective 3.2: Increase capacity to develop student knowledge and skills in NASA-related research through curriculum enhancement, redesign, and development at the course, degree, and/or department levels.

Objective 3.3: Increase capacity to develop student knowledge and skills in NASA-related research through NASA internships and opportunities.

4) Facilitate mechanisms to ensure degrees awarded to students from MSIs in NASA-related fields reflect the diversity of our nation and contribute to the diversity of the NASA workforce.

Objective 4.1: Increase the number of undergraduate and graduate degrees awarded to students from MSIs in NASA-related fields.     

Limit: 3 // PIs:
Y. Vitaliy (Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering)
B. Revil-Baudard (Materials Science and Engineering)
H. Rastgoftar (Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering)

The DEVCOM Army Research Lab seeks unclassified research proposals from Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCU/MI) under Broad Agency Announcement (FOA) W911NF-23-S-0001-0002 (hereafter referred to as the DEVCOM ARL BAA”) to establish an Army HBCU/MI Early Career Program (ECP) which embodies the high priority placed by the government on maintaining the leadership position of the United States in science by producing outstanding scientists and engineers and nurturing their continued development. Each award will support basic research contributing to Army modernization needs conducted by outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their careers at HBCU/MI institutions. ECP awards are funded by the Army to support early career scientists and engineers who show exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research. This targeted opportunity is open to U.S. citizens, U.S. Nationals, or Lawful Permanent Residents of the U.S. who have held a tenure- track position at a covered educational institution for fewer than five years at the time applications are due in response to this special notice. Faculty at an institution of higher education which does not designate a faculty appointment as "tenure track" are eligible if that fact is so indicated in the proposal, and the supporting letter from the institute states that the faculty member submitting the proposal will be considered for a permanent appointment, or it is demonstrated that the faculty member is within five years of receiving his or her first competitively awarded federal research funding (as principal investigator), excluding funds secured during graduate school or postdoctoral training/fellowship and funds secured for training, fellowship, education, or career development. The objective of the ECP Award is to foster creative basic research in science and engineering; enhance development of outstanding early career investigators; and increase opportunities for early career investigators to pursue research in areas relevant to the Army. Proposals that do not meet these criteria for the Principal Investigator (PI) will be considered ineligible and not reviewed or considered for funding.

The eleven DEVCOM ARL competencies are:

•   Biological and Biotechnology Sciences

•   Electromagnetic Spectrum Sciences

•   Energy Sciences

•   Humans in Complex Systems

•   Mechanical Sciences

•   Military Information Sciences

•   Network, Cyber, and Computational Sciences

•   Photonics, Electronics, and Quantum Sciences

•   Sciences of Extreme Materials

•   Terminal Effects

•   Weapons Sciences

DEVCOM ARL plans to award up to eight (8) new HBCU/MI ECP grants at a total cost of $990,000 each over a duration of 5 years, with funding profile of $110,000 in year one, $165,000 in year two, $220,000 in year three, $330,000 in year four, and $165,000 in year five. Note this is more funding and longer duration than the typical ECP award specified in the DEVCOM ARL BAA.