NSF Dear Colleague Letter: Supporting Research Advances in Smart and Connected Communities

Colleagues, I know this program rather well, and would be very happy to work with anyone looking to pursue funding from this program.

September 14, 2015

Dear Colleagues:

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR), Engineering (ENG), Geosciences (GEO), and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) wish to notify the community of their intention to support, foster, and accelerate fundamental research that addresses challenges in enabling Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC).

Apply for support through the Proposal Preparation Program (PPP)

Is your research proposal almost ready to submit, but you need to do some work to complete it? Do you need support to resubmit a promising but so-far unfunded proposal?

To facilitate the timely completion of proposals for external funding, the College’s Research Office may be able to offer up to $3000 in funding for a range of activities that would help to strengthen a grant or fellowship proposal. Such activities include supporting pilot studies, travel to archives or other facilities, funding grad students for data entry for a pilot study, visits to a program officer or other funding official, or engaging a consultant to evaluate the proposal, manuscript, data analysis, and the like.

You may apply for support by filling in a form found at http://www.chass.ncsu.edu/research/ppp/index.php, or visit http://go.ncsu.edu/hss-ppp for updated information.

Submission Guidelines

Applications are accepted and evaluated on an on-going basis. The applications will be reviewed by the Associate Dean for Research, who may call upon members of the research committee for advice and input.

Please be sure to submit your PPP application to the research office no later than 7 months before your grant proposal deadline. This is a firm deadline.

Q&A

Are these funds available only for projects supporting grant and fellowship proposals?  Yes.

Are these funds available only for projects that, if funded, would return large overhead (F&A) revenues?
 No. We will consider proposals to support projects that would yield smaller grants, as well as high-prestige fellowship applications.

Is this program designed just for big-money social science researchers?  No. This funding will also support preliminary work for applications for fellowships, applications to work as a visiting scholar, and similar programs. Any T/TT faculty member may apply.

Does this program support conference travel?  No.

Can I budget summer salary or academic year salary?  No.  You can budget hourly wages for a student employee.

Are these funds available to NTT faculty?  No. This program, because it funds grant proposals, is for T/TT faculty. However, teams that consist of both T/TT and NTT faculty may apply, but the lead PI must be a T/TT faculty member.

Join the UGPN Meeting in Australia

NC State faculty are invited to attend the University Global Partnership Network (UGPN) meeting February 29th -March 3 in Australia. The meeting will be hosted by the network's newest member, the University of Wollongong.

The annual meeting brings together researchers, academics, administrators and staff from the member institutions: University of Surrey, University of Sao Paulo, NC State University and the University of Wollongong.  The program will consist of campus/facility tours, workshops, round table discussions about research and exchange opportunities.

Applications Open for Scholarship of Community Engagement Institute

Are you interested in exploring how to connect your scholarship to the community or to design effective projects in collaboration with community partners? Do you want to study how integrating service learning into your course can improve student learning outcomes? Are you interested to learn about research methods useful to conduct engaged scholarship? These are just a few of the topics that you could explore by attending the Office of Faculty Development’s Scholarship of Community Engagement Institute. 

Postdoctoral Fellows: UN University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability

The United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS) has several openings for postdoctoral fellows, including a position in its “Governance for Sustainable Development” project.

Two Funding Opportunities: Critical Infrastructure and Food

These are NSF funding opportunities that may be of interest to faculty. 

Pre-Announcement of Large-Scale Seed-Funding Program

Dr. Alan Rebar, Vice Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Economic Development, is pleased to announce a new, large-scale seed-funding program to stimulate the growth of interdisciplinary research at NC State.  This initiative, the Game-Changing Research Incentive Program (GRIP), will allocate approximately $1,500,000 over three years to fund exceptional research teams and projects that span NC State colleges.  GRIP is intended to incentivize and support visionary research ideas that will result in large-scale extramural funding, award-winning research impacts, and first-class interdisciplinary graduate education and training.   

Data Science Initiative Winter Symposium

Colleagues, I received this from Trey Overman, the Data Science Initiative program manager--many of you may be interested in this symposium.

Symposium on Friday, February 5th in the Duke Energy Hall (Room C) at Hunt Library on Centennial Campus.  This event is free and will run from 9:00 - 5:00, with lunch provided and a reception to immediately follow.  A detailed agenda will be forthcoming.  

Lauren Di Monte of the libraries has sent us news about the Making Space event series that many of our faculty and staff will find interesting: 

• Video Games, Psychology and the User Experience, a public talk given by Dr. Ceclia Hodent from Epic Games. February 2, 4:00pm-5:00pm
• User Experience in Video Game Design, a hand-on workshop led by Dr. Hodent.February 2, 5:30-6:30pm
• Engineering an Engineering Toolset for Girls--and Boys Too, a public talk given by Sibel Deren Guler, founder of Teknikio. March 31, 3:00pm-4:00pm
• Future Wearables, a hands-on workshop led by Deren Guler on March 31, 6:00pm-9:00
  , and and a second session on April 1, 10:00am-1:00pm

New ways to learn more about 2016 Gulf Research Program fellowships (apply by Feb. 17)

Dear Colleagues,

We encourage you and your colleagues to take advantage of two new ways to learn more about the 2016 Gulf Research Program Early-Career Research Fellowships and Science Policy Fellowships for early-career researchers and professionals in the social and behavioral sciences, health and medicine, engineering, earth and life sciences, and relevant interdisciplinary fields.

Limited Submission Opportunity: Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research.

Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research: New Innovator in Food and Agriculture Research Award

This award will fund new faculty and their teams of graduate students and post-doctoral scholars to conduct innovative research with potential to expand the availability of food and facilitate the global practice of sustainable agriculture as the world’s population grows to more than 9 billion people by the year 2050. The program is intended to shine a spotlight on food and agriculture sciences and elevate the field in the scientific arena.