The Office of Naval Research (ONR) seeks a broad range of applications for augmenting existing or developing innovative solutions that directly maintain, or cultivate a diverse, world-class STEM workforce in order to maintain the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ technological superiority. The goal of any proposed effort must provide solutions that will establish and maintain pathways of diverse U.S. citizens who are interested in uniformed or civilian DoN STEM workforce opportunities.

As the capacity of the DoN Science and Technology (S&T) workforce is interconnected with the basic research enterprise and STEM education system, ONR recognizes the need to support efforts that can jointly improve STEM student outcomes and align educational efforts with Naval S&T current and future workforce needs. This announcement explicitly encourages projects that improve the capacity of education systems and communities to create impactful STEM educational experiences for students and workers. Submissions are encouraged to consider including active learning approaches and incorporating 21st century skill development. Projects must aim to increase student and worker engagement in STEM and enhance people with needed Naval STEM capabilities. ONR encourages applications to utilize current STEM educational research for informing project design and advancing our understanding of how and why people choose STEM careers and opportunities of Naval relevance.

While this announcement is relevant for any stage of the STEM educational system, funding efforts will be targeted primarily toward projects addressing the below communities or any combination of these communities:

• Secondary education communities
• Post-Secondary communities
• Informal science communities;
• Current Naval STEM workforce communities.

Project scope may range in size and complexity. Projects that are already established with prior funding sources or have established stakeholder partnerships are especially encouraged to consider the following scope areas:

• Develop and implement exploratory pilot projects that seek to create new educational experiences within educational and training communities.
• Develop larger cohesive STEM education and training activities that strengthen the capacity of regional communities and stakeholders to improve STEM education and training.
• Establish meetings of stakeholders that must seek to connect relevant people and organizations to explicitly develop broader projects for affecting entire communities.

The NSF ADVANCE program contributes to the National Science Foundation’s goal of a more diverse and capable science and engineering workforce. In this solicitation, the NSF ADVANCE program seeks to build on prior NSF ADVANCE work and other research and literature concerning gender, racial, and ethnic equity. The NSF ADVANCE program goal is to broaden the implementation of evidence-based systemic change strategies that promote equity for STEM faculty in academic workplaces and the academic profession.

The NSF ADVANCE program provides grants to enhance the systemic factors that support equity and inclusion and to mitigate the systemic factors that create inequities in the academic profession and workplaces. Systemic (or organizational) inequities may exist in areas such as policy and practice as well as in organizational culture and climate. For example, practices in academic departments that result in the inequitable allocation of service or teaching assignments may impede research productivity, delay advancement, and create a culture of differential treatment and rewards. Similarly, policies and procedures that do not mitigate implicit bias in hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions could lead to women and racial and ethnic minorities being evaluated less favorably, perpetuating historical under-participation in STEM academic careers and contributing to an academic climate that is not inclusive.

All NSF ADVANCE proposals are expected to use intersectional approaches in the design of systemic change strategies in recognition that gender, race and ethnicity do not exist in isolation from each other and from other categories of social identity. The solicitation includes four funding tracks: Institutional Transformation (IT), Adaptation, Partnership, and Catalyst, in support of the NSF ADVANCE program goal to broaden the implementation of systemic strategies that promote equity for STEM faculty in academic workplaces and the academic profession.

• The Institutional Transformation (IT) track is designed to support the development, implementation, and evaluation of innovative systemic change strategies that promote gender equity for STEM faculty within an institution of higher education.
• The Adaptation track is designed to support the work to adapt, implement, and evaluate evidence-based systemic change strategies that have been shown to promote gender equity for STEM faculty in academic workplaces and the academic profession. Adaptation projects can either: 1) support the adaptation of evidence-based systemic change strategies to promote equity for STEM faculty within an institution of higher education; or 2) facilitate national or regional STEM disciplinary transformation by adapting evidence-based systemic change strategies to non-profit, non-academic organizations.
• The Partnership track is designed to support the work to facilitate the broader adaptation of gender equity and systemic change strategies. Partnership projects are expected to result in national or regional transformation in STEM academic workplaces and the academic profession and demonstrate significant reach. Partnership projects can focus on the transformation of institutions and organizations and/or the transformation within one or more STEM disciplines.
• The Catalyst track is designed to broaden the types of IHEs that are able to undertake data collection and institutional self-assessment work to identify systemic gender inequities impacting their STEM faculty so that these can be addressed by the institution.

Please note that NSF ADVANCE does not provide fellowships, research, or travel grants to individual students, postdoctoral researchers, or faculty to pursue STEM degrees or research. Undergraduate STEM opportunities can be found at stemundergrads.science.gov and graduate STEM opportunities at stemgradstudents.science.gov.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites exploratory/developmental applications that propose transformative engineering solutions to technical challenges associated with meaningful development, substantial optimization of existing technologies and clinical translation of intraoral biodevices. Proposed technologies are expected to advance development of oral biodevices to clinical use, including but not limited to: precision medicine-based detection, diagnosis and treatment of oral and overall health conditions, and measurement of patient functional status and clinical outcome assessment. Areas of interest in this FOA include engineering approaches that allow integration of electronic, physical, and biological systems essential to the development of functional biodevices that are safe and effective for detection, diagnosis and treatment of oral and systemic disease.

Products of this research will be proof-of-concept prototype biodevices, dedicated biosensors and associated core technologies that enable development of safe and effective intraoral biodevices intended for specific clinical applications. To streamline the development of oral biodevices that advance precision medicine-based approaches in clinical practice, this FOA encourages interdisciplinary collaborations across engineering, multifunctional sensors, pharmacology, chemistry, medicine, and dentistry, as well as between academia and industry.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites exploratory/developmental applications that propose transformative engineering solutions to technical challenges associated with meaningful development, substantial optimization of existing technologies and clinical translation of intraoral biodevices. Proposed technologies are expected to advance development of oral biodevices for specific clinical use cases, including but not limited to: precision medicine-based detection, diagnosis and treatment of oral and overall health conditions, and measurement of patient functional status and clinical outcome assessment. Areas of interest in this FOA include engineering approaches that allow integration of electronic, physical, and biological systems essential to the development of functional biodevices that are safe and effective for detection, diagnosis and treatment of oral and systemic disease.

Products of this research will be proof-of-concept prototype biodevices, dedicated biosensors and associated core technologies that enable development of safe and effective intra-oral biodevices intended for specific clinical applications. To streamline the development of oral biodevices that advance precision medicine-based approaches in clinical practice, this FOA encourages interdisciplinary collaborations across engineering, drug delivery sensors, pharmacology, chemistry, medicine, and dentistry, as well as between academia and industry.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages applications to implement and evaluate community interventions testing 1) the impacts of mitigation strategies to prevent COVID-19 transmission in NIH-designated health disparity populations and other vulnerable groups; and 2) already implemented, new, or adapted interventions to address the adverse psychosocial, behavioral, and socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic on the health of these groups.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated mitigation strategies are expected to have significant psychosocial, behavioral, socioeconomic, and health impacts, which are exacerbated in populations that experience health disparities and other vulnerable groups. Those experiencing health disparities prior to the COVID-19 pandemic are at increased risk of infection and other COVID-19 related consequences (e.g., job loss, unpaid leave, lost wages). Tackling the complex drivers of health disparities requires strong partnerships between researchers, community organizations, health service providers, public health agencies, policymakers, and other stakeholders to ensure that relevant, culturally and contextually appropriate research is conducted and, more importantly, that findings can be translated into sustainable community and system-level changes that promote health equity.

Given the urgent need for prevention and mitigation strategies (i.e., physical distancing, wearing face coverings, frequent handwashing, disinfecting surfaces, shelter-in-place, self-isolation upon suspected exposure for 14 days, leaving home only for essential activities, etc.), there is also a need to leverage and scale existing resources and platforms (e.g., health education materials, technology, social and mass media, social support networks, social services) and ongoing mitigation efforts within communities to attenuate adverse outcomes. Moreover, it is also important to evaluate the outcomes of existing interventions and large-scale policies based in community settings that are being or will be implemented regardless of NIH grant funding (i.e., natural experiments). In domains and populations in which the evidence base is limited, the development, testing, and implementation of novel or adapted interventions to address the negative health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic (including unintended health consequences) may also be needed to address the unique needs of populations.

June 16, 2020

The National Science Foundation is mindful of the challenges many in our country face today. We also are acutely aware that while the research community is dedicated to its work, science may not be at the forefront of everyone’s minds during this particular moment in our nation’s history. With this in mind, NSF has decided to extend some of our upcoming proposal deadlines where possible. In addition, we are aiming to provide maximum flexibility in all cases and ask that any principal investigator urgently in need of an extension please contact their program manager as soon as possible. NSF is continually assessing deadlines at the program level and will continue to balance making awards with the needs of our community.

-NSF-