Featured Opportunities

July 24, 2024

• • • Nominations for the National Science Foundation’s 2025 Alan T. Waterman Award will be accepted from July 22 to September 20, 2024. The annual award is the nation's highest honor for early-career scientists and engineers. In addition to a medal, the awardee receives a grant of $1,000,000 over a five-year period for scientific research or advanced study in the science and engineering disciplines supported by the National Science Foundation at the institution of their choice. Disciplines supported by the NSF include the biological sciences, computer and information science and engineering, engineering, geosciences, mathematical and physical sciences, social, behavioral and economic sciences, and research on STEM education. If you would like to plan a nomination, please review the Nomination form description, Letter of reference template, and Nominations tips at the link above to help you prepare a nomination. The Nomination tips were created by the Alan T. Waterman Awards Committee to support nominators and reference writers in their efforts to expertly showcase the talents and expertise of nominees.
    • The MacArthur Foundation today announced the launch of a new round of its 100&Change competition for a single $100 million grant to help solve one of the world's most critical social challenges. The third round of100&Change remains open to organizations and collaborations working in any field, anywhere in the world. Proposals must identify a problem and offer a solution that promises significant and durable change; applications will be accepted online only, from May 22 to August 15, 2024. For the third round of the competition, MacArthur is adding “just” as a criterion to align with the Foundation’s Just Imperative, incorporating a sharper focus on how projects advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. No topic is exempt or excluded from these commitments.
    • The Kress Foundation’s History of Art Grants program supports scholarly projects that will enhance the appreciation and understanding of European works of art and architecture from antiquity to the early 19th century. Grants are awarded to projects that create and disseminate specialized knowledge, including archival projects, development and dissemination of scholarly databases, documentation projects, museum exhibitions and publications, photographic campaigns, scholarly catalogues and publications, and technical and scientific studies. Grants are also awarded for activities that permit art historians to share their expertise through international exchanges, professional meetings, conferences, symposia, consultations, the presentation of research and other professional events.
    • The NASA Kansas Space Grant Consortium (KSGC) is funding a program aimed at the development of new and innovative ideas to notably enhance our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Improving the way the consortium finds, engages, and supports underrepresented minorities and women is the priority. In summary, this call offers funding to affiliates (K-State is an affiliate) to develop and implement special DEI-focused projects. Selected projects will improve overall consortium DEI metrics and, just as important, identify ways for all other affiliates to significantly improve their DEI.
    • The NASA Kansas Space Grant Consortium (KSGC) Teacher Workshop Program (TWP) supports the development and implementation of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) educator workshops. NASA is especially interested in helping teachers bring NASArelevant material and content into middle-school classrooms. KSGC affiliate proposals are competitively awarded by peer review. Multiple awards of between $15,000 – $50,000 each are anticipated. Affiliates must identify a $1.00 commitment for every NASA dollar requested (use of federal matching funds is not allowed). Matching funds can be real-dollar, in-kind, or waived/reduced indirect costs provided by the institution, industry, or private sponsors. The majority of activity should be planned to take place between September 2024 and June 2025. Follow-up activities, such as reporting and program evaluations, can take place within three months following a workshop.
    • The Department of Health and Human Servies (HHS), NIH’s Research Software Engineer (RSE) Award (R50) supports the ability of exceptional Research Software Engineers (RSEs) to contribute their skills in the development and dissemination of NIH-funded biomedical, clinical, behavioral or health related research software, tools, and algorithms as well as to the training of prospective users of these tools.The Research Software Engineer (RSE) Award is designed to provide salary support for RSEs involved in research and positioned to make outstanding contributions to NIH-funded biomedical, clinical, behavioral or health related research software, tools, and algorithms, but who are not in a traditional independent investigator career path. This NOFO will use the NIH Research Specialist Award (R50) mechanism to provide up to 3 years of funding to encourage the development of stable research career opportunities for exceptional RSEs who want to contribute to scientific research. It is intended to provide incentives to participate in a research career path, with some level of autonomy so that the individuals are not solely dependent on grants held by others for their career continuity. Supporting RSEs in this manner is integral to NIH’s strategic goal of creating a sustainable ecosystem of high-quality research software tools that can enhance research across projects and domains.
    • The Department of Energy, EERE’s Smart Manufacturing Technologies for Material and Process Innovation program seeks applications to address the development of smart manufacturing technologies –including through “smart RD&D” – that can contribute to a resilient, responsive, leading-edge, and efficient manufacturing sector that delivers the technologies needed for the nation’s clean energy transition. The manufacturing community can reduce manufacturing costs and accelerate time-to-market by integrating performance characteristics of final products with processes aided by a smart manufacturing framework. The information-driven collaborative orchestration of physical and digital processes across the entire value chain is one aspect of smart manufacturing. Smart manufacturing relies on a combination of physical and virtual technologies to make designing, processing, and manufacturing faster, higher value-added, more resilient, sustainable, and more cost-effective. Individual processes within a plant, factory, or entire value chain are integrated and continually monitored with sensing, process modeling, and predictive analytics. The physical processes focus on controlling and optimizing processing conditions for desired outcomes, while virtual processes uncover underlying complex interactions between the physical processes and provide insight into better ways to design and manufacture products (i.e., feedback for physical processes).
    • HHS, NIH’s Building Sustainable Software Tools for Open Science (R03) seeks to enhance the sustainability and impact of research software tools by enabling the use of best practices and design principles in software development and by leveraging continuing advances in computing. This funding opportunity is intended to provide a flexible mechanism to support the use of best practices for scientific software development and to promote community engagement for open science. Successful grants will enable and/or enhance biomedical, clinical, behavioral, social, and health-related research endeavors by (1) developing robust, sustainable, scalable, and reproducible research software tools and workflows, (2) extending the impact of research software by broader dissemination to the scientific community, (3) supporting collaborations between scientists and software engineers to leverage modern, best practices in research software development, and (4) enhancing software skills of the research workforce. This initiative is aligned with the NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science, which describes actions aimed at building a better data infrastructure and a modernized data ecosystem.
    • The Department of Defense, Air Force Research Laboratory Directed Energy Directorate (RD) is the Department of the Air Force's Center of Expertise for directed energy and optical technologies. The Directorate develops and transitions technologies in four core technical competencies: Laser Systems, Directed Energy and Electro-Optics for Space Superiority, High Power Electromagnetics, and Weapons Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis. This five-year, open FOA is for soliciting research applications for Basic, Applied, and Advanced Research in the Core Technical Competencies (CTCs) described above. Multiple awards of assistance instruments are anticipated with periods of performance ranging from one to five years. All funding is subject to change due to Government discretion and availability. Potential offerors should be aware that, due to unanticipated budget fluctuations, funding may change with little or no notice. There are no limits to the number of Letters of Intent an applicant may submit for this FOA. The Government reserves the right to make multiple awards or no awards pursuant to this announcement.
    • HHS, NIH’s Maximizing Investigators Research Award (MIRA) for Early Stage Investigators (ESI) (R35) provides support for a program of research in an early stage investigator's(ESI) laboratory that falls within the mission of NIGMS. For the purposes of MIRA NOFOs, a research program is defined as a collection of scientific projects in an investigator’s lab that are related to the mission of NIGMS. The purpose is to increase funding stability while offering investigators the flexibility to follow important new research directions as opportunities arise; to more widely distribute funding among NIGMS investigators and increase the efficiency and efficacy of NIGMS funding; to reduce time spent writing, reviewing and managing multiple research grants and thus provide more time for research and mentoring junior scientists. The ESI-MIRA program does not require preliminary data, which should enable investigators to apply earlier in their independent careers and move into research areas that are distinct from those of prior mentors.
    • The Dirksen Congressional Center invites applications for grants to fund research on congressional leadership and the U.S. Congress. The competition is open to individuals with a serious interest in studying Congress. Political scientists, historians, biographers, scholars of public administration or American studies, independent researchers, and journalists are among those eligible. The Center encourages graduate students who have successfully defended their dissertation prospectus to apply. Applicants must be U.S. citizens who reside in the United States. The grants program does not fund undergraduate or pre-Ph.D. study. Organizations are not eligible. Research teams of two or more individuals are eligible. he Center’s first interest is to fund the study of the leadership in the Congress, both House and Senate. Topics could include external factors shaping the exercise of congressional leadership, institutional conditions affecting it, resources and techniques used by leaders, or the prospects for change or continuity in the patterns of leadership. In addition, The Center invites proposals about congressional procedures, such as committee operation or mechanisms for institutional change, and Congress and the electoral process.