NSF CyberTraining Workforce Development – DUE: 1-25-19

The overarching goals of this program are to (i) prepare, nurture, and grow the national scientific research workforce for creating, utilizing, and supporting advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) that enables potentially transformative fundamental science and engineering research and contributes to the Nation’s overall economic competiveness and security; (ii) ensure broad adoption of CI tools, methods, and resources by the fundamental science and engineering research community to enable new modes of discovery; and (iii) integrate core literacy and discipline-appropriate advanced skills in advanced CI as well as computational and data science and engineering into the Nation’s educational curriculum/instructional material fabric spanning undergraduate and graduate courses.  For the purpose of this solicitation, advanced CI is broadly defined as the set of resources, tools, and services for advanced computation, data handling, networking, and security that collectively enable potentially transformative fundamental research.

This solicitation calls for developing innovative, scalable training and education programs to address the emerging needs and unresolved bottlenecks in scientific and engineering research workforce development, from the postsecondary level to active researchers.  The resultant training and education programs, spanning targeted, multidisciplinary communities, will lead to transformative changes in the state of workforce preparedness for advanced CI-enabled research in the short and long terms. As part of this investment, this solicitation seeks to broaden CI access and adoption by (i) increasing or deepening accessibility of methods and resources of advanced CI and of computational and data science and engineering by a wide range of scientific disciplines and institutions with lower levels of CI adoption to date; and (ii) harnessing the capabilities of larger segments of diverse underrepresented groups.  Proposals from, and in partnership with, the aforementioned communities are especially encouraged.

Prospective principal investigators (PIs) are strongly encouraged to engage all relevant stakeholders, to the extent possible within the budget, by forging alliances and forming backbones for collective impact; this is particularly necessary in order to inform forward-looking curriculum/instructional material development for the Nation’s science and engineering workforce.  At a minimum, each project shall have a board of expert advisors or a network of funded/unfunded collaborators representative of stakeholder communities to periodically scrutinize and help refine the curriculum/instructional material and project methods, and to inform professional associations and non-governmental organizations responsible for curriculum, accreditation, and professional examination.

The CyberTraining program is led by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and has participation from several directorates and divisions as described in Section II – Program Description, Programmatic Areas of Interest.  Not all directorates/divisions are participating at the same level and some have specific research and education priorities.  The appropriate contact for the CyberTraining program in any directorate/division is the Cognizant Program Officer (PO) for the respective directorate/division/office/program listed.

All projects must advance CI training and education goals for CI-enabled fundamental research as described in the full text of this solicitation, in addition to addressing specific domain needs.  Prospective PIs are strongly encouraged to contact the Cognizant Program Officers in CISE/OAC and in the participating directorate/division(s) relevant to the proposal to ascertain whether the focus and budget of the proposed activities are appropriate for this solicitation.  Such consultations should be completed at least one month in advance of the submission deadline.  PIs should include the names of the Cognizant Program Officers consulted in their Project Summaries as described in Section V.A – Proposal Preparation Instructions.  The intent of the CyberTraining program is to stimulate co-funding between OAC and one or more domain directorates/divisions.  (For this purpose, divisions of CISE other than OAC are considered “domain divisions.”)  To ensure relevance to community needs and to facilitate adoption, those proposals of interest to one or more domain divisions must include at least one PI/co-PI with expertise relevant to the targeted research discipline.  All proposals shall include at least one PI/co-PI with expertise relevant to OAC. 

Prospective PIs contemplating submissions that primarily target communities relevant to those directorates/divisions that are not participating in this solicitation are directed to instead explore the education and workforce development programs of the respective directorates/divisions.

Award Information

Anticipated Type of Award: Standard Grant

Estimated Number of Awards: 7 to 11

Each CyberTraining award shall range from $300,000 to $500,000 per award and shall be up to 3 years in duration. The number of awards will be based on quality of proposals, availability of funds, and responsiveness to the priorities of the participating directorates/divisions.

Anticipated Funding Amount: $3,500,000

Estimated program budget, number of awards and average award size/duration are subject to the availability of funds.

Eligibility Information

Who May Submit Proposals:

The categories of proposers eligible to submit proposals to the National Science Foundation are identified in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide(PAPPG), Chapter I.E.

Who May Serve as PI:

To ensure relevance to community needs and to facilitate adoption, those proposals of interest to one or more domain divisions must include at least one PI/co-PI with expertise relevant to the targeted research discipline. All proposals shall include at least one PI/co-PI with expertise relevant to OAC.

Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization:

There are no restrictions or limits.

Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or Co-PI: 1

An individual may serve as Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI on only one proposal submitted to the CyberTraining program per competition. In the event that an individual exceeds this limit, proposals will be accepted based on earliest date and time of proposal submission, i.e., the first proposal will be accepted and the remainder will be returned without review. No exceptions will be made.

FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?WT.z_pims_id=505342&ods_key=nsf18516