Save the Date! Join the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the very first NSF Virtual Grants Conference, to be held during the weeks of November 16 and November 30, 2020.

This event is designed to give new faculty, researchers and administrators key insights into a wide range of current issues at NSF. NSF staff will be providing up-to-date information about the proposal and award process, specific funding opportunities and answering attendee questions.

Registration will be free of charge and opens on Thursday, October 29 at 12 p.m. EST. Each conference session will have its own Zoom registration page. Please sign up only for sessions that you are able to attend. For those who cannot attend the live conference, all recorded conference sessions will be available on-demand shortly after the event. We anticipate the sessions will reach capacity very quickly, so we encourage you to register as soon as possible. We will send an email reminder to our listserv on Wednesday, October 28.

In the meantime, please feel free to check nsfpolicyoutreach.com/ for the most up-to-date information, and view recordings of sessions from last year’s event. You may also contact us via email at grants_conference@nsf.gov.

To sign up to be updated about NSF proposal and award-related news and upcoming events, please visit this page.

Letter of Intent Deadline Date

    December 9, 2020

Preliminary Proposal Deadline Date

    January 5, 2021

Full Proposal Deadline Date

    April 19, 2021

The Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) program of the NSF Directorate for Engineering (ENG) serves a critical role in helping ENG focus on important emerging areas in a timely manner. This solicitation is a funding opportunity for interdisciplinary teams of researchers to embark on rapidly advancing frontiers of fundamental engineering research. For this solicitation, we will consider proposals that aim to investigate emerging frontiers in one of the following two research areas:

• Distributed Chemical Manufacturing (DCheM)
• Engineering the Elimination of End-of-Life Plastics (E3P)

This solicitation will be coordinated with the Directorate for Biological Sciences, the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences and the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.

EFRI seeks proposals with potentially transformative ideas that represent an opportunity for a significant shift in fundamental engineering knowledge with a strong potential for long term impact on national needs or a grand challenge. The proposals must also meet the detailed requirements delineated in this solicitation.

For additional information, please refer to the NSF page.

The US Geological Survey is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner to study Grass Carp reproduction in Lake Erie. Grass Carp is a non-native obligate herbivore that consumes primarily rooted and attached aquatic vegetation, but can consume algae, some terrestrial vegetation, and occasionally invertebrates. At high abundances Grass Carp can consume large percentages of aquatic vegetation, and because they have strong preferences for some species over others can alter species distributions and relative abundances. The potential for ecological damage in the Great Lakes is high if Grass Carp become established and produce large populations.

For more Information, please view the grant opportunity page.

As everything has gone virtual these days, so do we. Join us from your favorite chair, at your favorite table, and in your favorite room for the 2020 NIH Virtual Seminar on Program Funding and Grants Administration at the end of October.

Some things will remain the same…

This event is still geared towards administrators, early stage investigators, graduate students, and others new to working with the NIH grants process. Pros will be delighted to hear as well that there will still be in-depth sessions to learn more about the ins and outs of grants policies, processes and programs.

…while some things will be different.

The most obvious is it is virtual this year. This is a great, unique way for those who have been unable to travel to one of our Regional Seminars in the past, to get the information and answers to questions they seek. We’ll meet in the afternoons (Eastern Standard Time) over four days, from Tuesday October 27 through Friday October 30.

Also new this year will be over 40 virtual booths for each of NIH’s institutes, centers, and offices, some trans-NIH programs, as well as policy, compliance, eRA, MyNCBI and more. As most booths will be staffed by NIH and HHS experts, this is an unprecedented opportunity to get your questions answered, learn more about NIH funding opportunities and programs, and download valuable resources to your personal “swag bag”.

Sessions are focused on the NIH grants process, programs and policies and allow for Q&A. Stick around Tuesday  through Thursday for some “after hours” panel discussions on the future of the workforce as well, including enhancing diversity and mentoring. The full agenda is here. If you miss a session, don’t worry, recordings will be available the following day. And, there will be an On-Demand Library of additional presentations. So, feel free and drop in on sessions of interest and catch any you miss later.

And, if that is not enough, the best part of it all is the event is free. Don’t miss out, register today! We look forward to seeing you soon.

For more information, please visit the NIH page.

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. In recognition, we are reminding our extramural research community about the importance of prioritizing cybersafety across all functions of your organization and understanding how important it is to practice cyber-safe behaviors every day. As we have discussed in previous posts here and here, our current virtual environment makes it more important than ever that we stay vigilant and maintain strong cybersecurity protocols.

When institutions like yours accept NIH awards, you also accept responsibility for protecting sensitive and confidential data as part of proper stewardship of federally funded research [Section 2.3.12 of the NIH Grants Policy Statement (GPS)]. This means, in part, that:

• You must not house sensitive and confidential information about NIH-supported work on portable electronic devices.
• Data must be encrypted.
• Your institution must use proper controls to limit access to personally identifiable information.
• You and your institution should only transmit data when the security of the systems on the other side is known.
• You must take all reasonable efforts to prevent sensitive personal information, such as that held within online systems at your home institution, from being inadvertently lost, released, or disclosed.

For awardees who collect, store, process, transmit, or use federal data, you must also make sure your information systems are protected from unauthorized access as required by the Federal IT Security and Management Act (FISMA) (see NIH GPS Section 4.1.9).

While it may be annoying to change your electronic Research Administration (eRA) password every 120 days, doing so is an important FISMA-required part of our security protocol that protects the sensitive information of hundreds of thousands of NIH-funded projects and NIH applications. Additionally, it is absolutely prohibited to share system passwords, no matter how much we may want to do so. As an alternative to password sharing, eRA offers capabilities allowing you to delegate access to others With the notable exception about peer review responsibilities which cannot be delegated to anyone, the eRA capabilities do allow others to maintain your personal profile, prepare progress reports, maintain trainee information, work on financial conflict of interest information, and more. We urge you to make use of this functionality instead of sharing your password.

Despite our best efforts, cybersecurity breaches can happen. If you or your institution experiences an incident or breach, immediately report it to the NIH grants management specialist identified on your award and provide a copy of the report to your program official (Section 8.1). Once a report is made, we at the NIH can work with you to ensure that your research is protected.

Cybersecurity risks in biomedical research are continually evolving, threatening the integrity of our science and the public’s trust in our findings. It’s up to each one of us to mitigate these risks by staying vigilant, working together, and following the policies that are in place to protect our people and our science.

To learn more about this, please refer to the NIH page.