Physical Sciences & Engineering

Limit: 5 // Tickets Available: 4

Robert Ferrando (Applied Mathematics)

The Travel Grants Program is open to Ph.D. students doing research that requires facilities or expertise not available in their home country.

The program has two calls annually, each supporting 10 awards.

The awards are for $6,000 each.

The trips will be only to a higher education, or a research facility in the U.S.A. (for Israelis) or Israel (for U.S. students).

The program will not support participation in conferences, or trips by very early/late-stage Ph.D. students.

Each trip will be for a maximum length of 2 months.
The awards must be utilized within 1 year of BSF notification.
Applications for trips that have already occurred will not be accepted.

The BSF will only accept applications that are in the scientific fields it supports in its regular research grant program. 

• Biomedical Engineering
• Life Sciences
• Medicine
• Psychobiology
• Exact and Physical Sciences
• Social Sciences

Eligibility:

• Applicants must be U.S. or Israeli citizens.
• The applicant, rather than his or her thesis advisor, must write the application.
• Applicants must be conducting supervised research towards a PhD in an accredited higher education institution, or in a non-profit research institution (government or other, including hospitals).
• Submitting an application before the PhD research program/plan is formally approved by the university is not recommended.
• Students in their last year of PhD studies are not eligible to submit applications to the program.
• Applicants must be 35 years old or younger.
• Israeli and American students doing research in the other country are not eligible to apply.
• A student who was previously awarded a grant in this program is not allowed to submit again.
• A student who was turned down may resubmit an application after 12 months, but only after receiving an approval from the BSF office. This approval will be given if an examination of the original submission will indicate that a resubmission has a good chance to succeed, for example if the application was submitted too early in the PhD study, and was otherwise excellent.

Apply to the UA internal competition  // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

*UA may submit one proposal under the Research Partnerships track. There is no institutional limitation on the Technology Translation track.

If you don’t have a demonstrated and substantial industry relationship as required for a PFI submission, please reach out to Brian Adair(link sends e-mail) or Lindsay Ridpath(link sends e-mail), to help develop those connections so that your proposal is competitive. PFI proposals are accepted three times per year and you may be better served by strengthening your industry relationship and waiting for the next cycle.

The Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) Program within the Division of Translational Impacts (TI) offers researchers from all disciplines of science and engineering funded by NSF the opportunity to perform translational research and technology development, catalyze partnerships and accelerate the transition of discoveries from the laboratory to the marketplace for societal benefit.

The Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) track seeks to achieve the same goals as the PFI-TT track by supporting instead complex, multi-faceted technology development projects that are typically beyond the scope of a single researcher or institution and require a multi-organizational, interdisciplinary, synergistic collaboration. A PFI-RP project requires the creation of partnerships between academic researchers and third-party organizations such as industry, non-academic research organizations, federal laboratories, public or non-profit technology transfer organizations or other universities. Such partnerships are needed to conduct use-inspired research on a stand-alone larger project toward commercialization and societal impact. In the absence of such synergistic partnership, the project’s likelihood for success would be minimal.

The intended outcomes of both PFI-TT and PFI-RP tracks are: a) the commercialization of new intellectual property derived from NSF-funded research outputs; b) the creation of new or broader collaborations with industry (including increased corporate sponsored research); c) the licensing of NSF-funded research outputs to third party corporations or to start-up companies funded by a PFI team; and d) the training of future innovation and entrepreneurship leaders.

The please be aware of important revisions in the PFI program recently announced in solicitation NSF 23-538, as outlined below:

NSF Lineage Requirement
Innovation Corps (NSF I-CorpsTM) Teams awards no longer convey the lineage required to submit a PFI proposal.
All proposals submitted to the PFI program must meet a lineage requirement by having NSF-supported research results in any field of science and engineering: Principal Investigator (PI) or a co-PI must have had an NSF award that ended no more than seven (7) years prior to the full proposal deadline date or be a current NSF award recipient. The proposed technology development project must be derived from the research results and/or discoveries from this underlying NSF award.

Award Information
The funding amounts in both tracks of the PFI program have significantly increased. Specifically:

• PFI-Technology Translation (PFI-TT) projects will be funded for up to $550,000 for 18-24 months per award; and

• PFI-Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) projects will be funded for up to $1,000,000 for 36 months.
   

New full proposal deadlines
The PFI solicitation has three revised deadlines each year:

• May 2, 2023
  First Tuesday in May, Annually Thereafter

• September 5, 2023
  First Tuesday in September, Annually Thereafter

• January 4, 2025
  First Tuesday in January, Annually Thereafter

Limit: 1// R. Liang (Wyant College of Optical Sciences)

*UA may submit one proposal under the Research Partnerships track. There is no institutional limitation on the Technology Translation track.

If you don’t have a demonstrated and substantial industry relationship as required for a PFI submission, please reach out to Brian Adair(link sends e-mail) or Lindsay Ridpath(link sends e-mail), to help develop those connections so that your proposal is competitive. PFI proposals are accepted three times per year and you may be better served by strengthening your industry relationship and waiting for the next cycle.

The Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) Program within the Division of Translational Impacts (TI) offers researchers from all disciplines of science and engineering funded by NSF the opportunity to perform translational research and technology development, catalyze partnerships and accelerate the transition of discoveries from the laboratory to the marketplace for societal benefit.

The Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) track seeks to achieve the same goals as the PFI-TT track by supporting instead complex, multi-faceted technology development projects that are typically beyond the scope of a single researcher or institution and require a multi-organizational, interdisciplinary, synergistic collaboration. A PFI-RP project requires the creation of partnerships between academic researchers and third-party organizations such as industry, non-academic research organizations, federal laboratories, public or non-profit technology transfer organizations or other universities. Such partnerships are needed to conduct use-inspired research on a stand-alone larger project toward commercialization and societal impact. In the absence of such synergistic partnership, the project’s likelihood for success would be minimal.

The intended outcomes of both PFI-TT and PFI-RP tracks are: a) the commercialization of new intellectual property derived from NSF-funded research outputs; b) the creation of new or broader collaborations with industry (including increased corporate sponsored research); c) the licensing of NSF-funded research outputs to third party corporations or to start-up companies funded by a PFI team; and d) the training of future innovation and entrepreneurship leaders.

The please be aware of important revisions in the PFI program recently announced in solicitation NSF 23-538, as outlined below:

NSF Lineage Requirement
Innovation Corps (NSF I-CorpsTM) Teams awards no longer convey the lineage required to submit a PFI proposal.
All proposals submitted to the PFI program must meet a lineage requirement by having NSF-supported research results in any field of science and engineering: Principal Investigator (PI) or a co-PI must have had an NSF award that ended no more than seven (7) years prior to the full proposal deadline date or be a current NSF award recipient. The proposed technology development project must be derived from the research results and/or discoveries from this underlying NSF award.

Award Information
The funding amounts in both tracks of the PFI program have significantly increased. Specifically:

• PFI-Technology Translation (PFI-TT) projects will be funded for up to $550,000 for 18-24 months per award; and

• PFI-Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) projects will be funded for up to $1,000,000 for 36 months.
   

New full proposal deadlines
The PFI solicitation has three revised deadlines each year:

• May 2, 2023
  First Tuesday in May, Annually Thereafter

• September 3, 2024
  First Tuesday in September, Annually Thereafter

• January 2, 2025
  First Tuesday in January, Annually Thereafter

No Applicants // Limit: 2 // Tickets Available: 2 

The PRINT program aims to transform organ biofabrication by leveraging recent advances in 3D bioprinting, cell manufacturing, biomaterials, modeling, and tissue engineering. The PRINT program will assemble the necessary tools to facilitate production from a human cell source to a patient matched biofabricated organ to restore at least 40% normal organ function as demonstrated in a large animal model. 

Areas of Interest:

• Technical Area 1 (TA1): Generation of all necessary organ cell types (Phase I)
• Technical Area 2 (TA2): Large scale manufacturing of organ cell types (Phase I & II)
• Technical Area 3 (TA3): Organ Biofabrication and in vivo testing (Phase I and II)

Submit ticket request  //  Limit: 3 nominations per department.

• A. Favela  (Plant-Microbe Interactions)
• R. Shomer  (School of Plant Sciences)
• M. Corty (Neuroscience)
• M.  Wohlgemuth (Neuroscience)

The Sloan Research Fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise.

Successful candidates for a Fellowship generally have a strong record of significant independent research accomplishments that demonstrate creativity and the potential to become future leaders in the scientific community. Nominated candidates are normally several years past the completion of their Ph.D. in order to accumulate a competitive record of independent, significant research. The Fellowship amount is $75,000 for a two-year term.

Eligibility:

• Candidates must hold a Ph.D. or equivalent degree in chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, physics, or a related field.
• Candidates must be tenure-track, though untenured, as of September 15 of the nomination year.
• Candidate’s faculty position must carry a regular teaching obligation.

*Due to the competitive nature of this funding program, the internal competition is run based on the anticipated September 15, 2024 nomination deadline.

No Applicants  // Limit: 3 // Tickets Available: 3 

Applicant institutions are limited to no more than 3 letters of intent, pre-applications, or applications as the lead institution per research area. There is no limitation to the number of applications on which an institution appears as a subrecipient or for which the institution is not the lead in a multi-institution team using collaborative applications.

The DOE SC program in Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) hereby announces its interest in basic computer science and applied mathematics research in the fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for science. Specifically, advancements in this area are sought that can enable the development of: 

• Foundation models for computational science;
• Automated scientific workflows and laboratories;
• Scientific programming and scientific-knowledge-management systems;
• Federated and privacy-preserving training for foundation and other AI models for science; and
• Energy-efficient AI algorithms and hardware for science.

Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

The 2025 Pew-Stewart Scholars Program for Cancer Research upports assistant professors of outstanding promise in science relevant to the advancement of a cure for cancer.

This program does not fund clinical trials research. Strong proposals will incorporate particularly creative and pioneering approaches to basic, translational, and applied cancer research. Ideas with the potential to produce an unusually high impact are encouraged.

An award of $75,000 per year for four years will be provided. Pew-Stewart scholars will spend at least 80 percent of their time in work related to their overall research goals.

Eligibility:

• Candidates must have been awarded a doctorate in biomedical sciences, medicine or a related field.
• As of Aug. 28, 2024 nominees must be at the rank of assistant professor.
• Candidates must not have been appointed as an assistant professor at any institution prior to June 10, 2020. 
• Candidates may apply two times in total
• Candidates may not be nominated for the Pew Scholars Program and the Pew-Stewart Scholars Program for Cancer Research in the same year.

For more information please contact UACC-preaward@arizona.edu.

Submit ticket request  // Limit: 5* // Tickets Available: 2

L. Davis (Arizona Institute for Resilience) - Design & Development Launch Pilots (DDLPs)

J. Thangavelautham (Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering) - Collaborative Change Consortia

M. Franco  ( HSI Initiatives) - Alliances

*Only 1 submission per project type/institution:

1. Design & Development Launch Pilot = $600K for up to 2 years.
2. Collaborative Change Consortia = $5M for up to 5 years.
3. Alliances = $10M for up to 5 years.
4. Network Connectors = $500K for up to 2 years.
5. Conferences = $100k for 1 year.

NSF INCLUDES is a comprehensive, national initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) discovery and innovation, focused on NSF's commitment to ensuring accessibility and inclusivity in STEM fields, as communicated in the NSF Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years (FY) 2022 - 2026. The vision of NSF INCLUDES is to catalyze the STEM enterprise to work collaboratively for inclusive change, resulting in a STEM workforce that reflects the diversity of the Nation's population. More specifically, NSF INCLUDES seeks to motivate and accelerate collaborative infrastructure building to advance equity and sustain systemic change to broaden participation in STEM fields at scale. Significant advancement in the inclusion of groups that have historically been excluded from or under-served in STEM will result in a new generation of STEM talent and leadership to secure the Nation's future and long-term economic competitiveness.

With this solicitation, NSF offers support for five types of projects that connect and contribute to the National Network: (1) Design and Development Launch Pilots, (2) Collaborative Change Consortia, (3) Alliances, (4) Network Connectors, and (5) Conferences. The NSF INCLUDES National Network is a multifaceted collaboration of agencies, organizations, and individuals working collectively to broaden participation in STEM. The NSF INCLUDES National Network serves as a testbed for designing, implementing, studying, refining, and scaling collaborative change models and is composed of:

• NSF INCLUDES funded projects
• Other NSF funded projects
• Subcommittee on Federal Coordination in STEM Education (FC-STEM) agencies
• Scholars engaged in broadening participation research and evaluation, and
• Organizations that support the development of talent from all sectors of society to build an inclusive STEM workforce.

All NSF INCLUDES funded projects must operationalize five design elements of collaborative infrastructure - (1) shared vision, (2) partnerships, (3) goals and metrics, (4) leadership and communication, and (5) expansion, sustainability, and scale - to create systemic change that will lead to the substantially broadened participation of individuals from historically excluded and undeserved groups in STEM.

No Applicants  // Limit: 5 // Tickets Available: 5 

Applicant institutions are limited to both: 

• No more than a total of five pre-applications or applications as the lead institution in a single- or multi-institutional team.
• No more than one pre-application or application for each PI at the applicant institution.

Extreme-scale science recognizes that disruptive technology changes are occurring across science applications, algorithms, computer architectures and ecosystems. Recent reports point to emerging trends and advances in high-end computing, massive datasets, visualization, and artificial intelligence on increasingly heterogeneous architectures. Significant innovation will be required in the development of effective paradigms and approaches for realizing the full potential of scientific computing from emerging technologies. Proposed research should not focus on a specific science use case, but rather on creating the body of knowledge and understanding that will inform future advances in extreme-scale science. Consequently, the funding from this FOA is not intended to incrementally extend current research in the area of the proposed project. It is expected that the proposed projects will significantly benefit from the exploration of innovative ideas or from the development of unconventional approaches.

Institutionally Coordinated // Limit: 1 //  K. Luxbacher  (Mining and Geological Engineering)

The NSF Regional Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) program creates regional-scale, technology-driven, inclusive innovation ecosystems throughout the United States by accelerating key technologies, addressing regional, national, societal, and/or geostrategic challenges, driving economic growth, creating and retaining quality jobs, expanding equitable pathways into careers, and strengthening national competitiveness and security. Each NSF Engine represents a formal coalition of regional partners, led by a full-time Chief Executive Officer (CEO), tasked to carry out an integrated and comprehensive set of activities spanning use-inspired research, translation of innovation to practice, entrepreneurship, workforce development, community engagement, and ecosystem building, to nurture and accelerate the growth of regional innovation ecosystems grounded in technological innovation and regional, national, societal, and/or geostrategic challenges. The mission of an NSF Engine must be clearly rooted in regional interests and reflect the aspiration that a regional innovation ecosystem can help build strong communities where all residents can thrive. This includes the equitable development of regional talent, intentional community engagement, and attention to impacts on a region’s identities and cultures. The NSF Engines program is a placed-based innovation funding initiative, where the emphasis on “regions” expresses NSF’s aim to stimulate innovation-driven economic growth within a particular place or region of service. The emphasis of the NSF Engines program further includes creating new business and economic growth in sectors that are critical to American competitiveness and in those regions of America that have not fully participated in the technology boom of the past several decades.