Description:
USAID, through this Annual Program Statement (APS), is soliciting innovative ideas to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in the agriculture sector, and expand the knowledge base and evidence for greater gender integration in food security programing. There is a growing body of evidence showing the importance of gender integration for agricultural development (FAO 2011, World Bank 2009, IFPRI 2011). Women play multiple and distinct food-security roles throughout the sector — such as (but not limited to) sourcing inputs, production, marketing, processing, storing and consumption. Recognizing and enhancing these roles is critical for meeting the food needs of current and future populations, and ensuring that productivity increases are widely shared.

The goal of this APS is to pilot and collect evidence of impact from innovative and bold interventions that increase women’s leadership in the agriculture sector, improve women’s access to and utilization of technology to increase agricultural productivity, increase labor saving technologies, strengthen gender equality in land, credit and other policies, and enhance nutritional outcomes for women and children.

Description:
The need for understanding the potential adverse impacts of a slowly acidifying sea upon marine ecosystems is widely recognized and included as a priority objective in the new National Ocean Policy. The effects of ocean acidification could significantly affect strategies for developing practices towards the sustainability of ocean resources. Basic research concerning the nature, extent and impact of ocean acidification on oceanic environments in the past, present and future is required. Research challenges include:

• Understanding the geochemistry and biogeochemistry of ocean acidification;
• Understanding how ocean acidification interacts with biological and physical processes at the organismal level, and how such interactions impact the structure and function of ecosystems, e.g. through life histories, food webs, biogeochemical cycling, and other interactions; and
• Understanding how the earth system history informs our understanding of the effects of ocean acidification on the present day and future ocean.

Timely efforts to address these research challenges require fundamental research offered through this solicitation:

1. Regular research proposals,
2. Research Coordination Networks (RCN), and
3. Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER).

Description:
The U. S. Department of Commerce (DOC), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) plans to seek proposals from small business firms for participation in Phase I of the Fiscal Year 2012 NOAA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. Phase I of the SBIR program implements the Small Business Innovation Research Re-Authorization Act of 2000. Small businesses are invited to submit research proposals in response to the Request for Proposals.

The SBIR solicitation will be issued on or about October 14, 2011. The NAICS Code for this acquisition is 541712. The following are the NOAA, Research and Development (R&D) topics available for Phase I:

• Climate Adaption and Mitigation
• Weather-Ready Nation
• Healthy Oceans
• Resilient Coastal Communities and Economies

Description:
Funds may be used to pay expenses associated with providing technical assistance and/or training (TAT) to identify and evaluate solutions to water problems relating to source, storage, treatment, and distribution, and to waste disposal problems relating to collection, treatment, and disposal; assist applicants that have filed a preapplication with RUS in the preparation of water and/or waste disposal loan and/or grant applications; and to provide training that will improve the management, operation and maintenance of water and waste disposal facilities. Grant funds may not be used to recruit applications, duplicate current services such as those performed by a consultant in developing a project, fund political activities, pay for capital assets, purchase real estate or vehicles, improve and renovate office space or repair and maintain privately owned property, pay construction or O&M costs, and pay costs incurred prior to the effective date of grants made.

Description:
Under the authority of Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 5205.15E and the authority vested in the Secretary of Defense by 10 USC 113, the DoD announces the Department of Defense Forensic Research and Development Program. The program is executed under the policy and guidance of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (Defense Biometrics and Forensics Office) and administered by the US Army Research Office (ARO) and the US Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory (USACIL). The DoD Directive 5205.15E establishes policy and assigns responsibilities within the DoD to develop and maintain an enduring, holistic, global forensic capability to support the full range of military operations (ROMO). The Defense Forensic Enterprise (DFE) consists of those DoD resources, assets, and processes that provide forensic science analysis linking persons, places, things, and events. These linkages are made in both traditional law enforcement and medical purviews, as well as in the expeditionary environment. Additionally, DoD Directive 5205.15E designates the Secretary of the Army as the DoD Executive Agent (EA) for Forensics for those forensic disciplines relating to DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), serology, firearms and tool marks, latent prints, questioned documents, drug chemistry, and trace materials, as well as forensics relating to medical disciplines such as forensic pathology, forensic anthropology, forensic toxicology, and DNA analysis to identify human remains. Proposals that will assist the Army in achieving these goals are solicited, particularly proposals involving the development of equipment that is portable, sustainable, and useful in an expeditionary environment. The expeditionary environment requires systems that are lightweight, portable, inexpensive, fast, and capable of operating in extreme environments of temperature, dust, humidity, etc. The systems must also be capable of secure data communications.

Description:

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is interested in receiving proposals to develop a set of tools for evaluating the manpower impacts of various platform designs, system enhancements, and Active Fleet deployments. The tool set – to be known as the Simulation Toolset for Analysis of Mission, Personnel and Systems (STAMPS) – will report on the training impacts of technology introduction; the effectiveness of proposed crew complements to operate and maintain the platform/system under a wide variety of realistic scenarios; and the effectiveness of manpower reduction features. STAMPS’ objectives are:

1. to provide the Navy’s decision authorities with realistic data on the effectiveness and cost implications of new platform/system designs and new deployments for existing assets
2. to identify where efficiencies can be achieved

Description:
Applications for the Combat Casualty Care Research Program are being solicited by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, Defense Health Program (DHP). The Combat Casualty Care Research Program (CCCRP) provides resources for advances in biotechnology research administered by the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), located at Fort Detrick, Maryland. TATRC is administering the application process for this Program Announcement/Funding Opportunity, and the United States Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA) is issuing this Program Announcement and will be negotiating all resulting awards. With this Program Announcement/Funding Opportunity, the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) is seeking to fund biotechnology research that culminates in outcomes and technologies that may qualify as advanced development activities within the Department of Defense (DoD). The results of the research funded through this Program Announcement/Funding Opportunity are expected to increase the body of knowledge available to professionals and practitioners in health, medical science and related fields. The research impact is expected to benefit both civilian and military communities, particularly as it relates to the Priority Areas of Forward Surgical/Intensive Critical Care, EnRoute Care, Mechanisms of immune-modulatory protection after hemorrhagic shock using complement inhibition, T-cell depletion, or T-cell sequestration, and Metabolic and Tissue Stabilization.

Description:
Progress in cancer research depends on identifying important outstanding questions in the field and designing appropriate experiments to answer them. The best research questions often illuminate the key issues that underlie a problem, suggest potential approaches to attack the question, and even hint at the promise of the final results. Over the past year, the NCI has sponsored several workshops to identify, articulate, and prioritize particularly compelling but understudied problems in cancer research to create a list of “Provocative Questions.” PQs come from various fields relevant to cancer research, but all are framed to inspire interested scientists to conceive new approaches or feasible solutions.

Most PQs fall broadly into three categories. The first type of questions brings ignored or neglected cancer-relevant problems back into focus. These problems typically relate to intriguing older observations or issues that cancer researchers may have taken for granted but for which satisfactory, rigorous research answers are still lacking. A second class of PQs is built on more recent findings that are perplexing or paradoxical, revealing important gaps in current knowledge. Research answers to this type of PQs have the potential to re-shape several of our current key conceptions about cancer. Finally, a third class of PQs reflects problems that used to be perceived as particularly difficult to explore but became open to investigations because of recent scientific discoveries and technical advances.

Description:
Sustainable Energy Pathways is part of the NSF-wide initiative on Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES). The Sustainable Energy Pathways solicitation calls for innovative, interdisciplinary basic research in science, engineering, and education by teams of researchers for developing systems approaches to sustainable energy pathways based on a comprehensive understanding of the scientific, technical, environmental, economic, and societal issues.

The SEP solicitation considers scalable approaches for sustainable energy conversion to useful forms, as well as its storage, transmission, distribution, and use. The following Topic Areas illustrate the broad scope of sustainable energy interest areas of this solicitation:

• Energy Harvesting & Conversion from Renewable Resources
• Sustainable Energy Storage Solutions
• Critical Elements & Materials for Sustainable Energy
• Nature-Inspired Processes for Sustainable Energy Solutions
• Reducing Carbon Intensity from Energy Conversion & Use
• Sustainable Energy Transmission & Distribution
• Energy Efficiency & Management

Description:
The Office of Rural Health Policy’s Outreach Program supports projects that demonstrate effective models of outreach and service delivery through collaboration, adoption of an evidence-based or promising practice model, demonstration of health outcomes, replicability and sustainability. Proposed projects will have an outcomes-oriented approach that will enhance and sustain the delivery of effective health care in rural communities by tracking specific health indicators that will demonstrate the impact of their project at the end of their grant period. They will be based on evidence-based or promising practice models in order to avoid “reinventing the wheel” and demonstrate health status improvement in rural communities. Proposed Outreach projects can take the framework of an evidence-based or promising practive model and tailor it to their community’s need and organization.

Description:
NIFA requests applications for the Community Food Projects Competitive Grants Program (CFPCGP) for fiscal year (FY) 2012 to support:

1. the development of Community Food Projects with a one-time infusion of federal dollars to make such projects self-sustaining;
2. Planning Projects to assess the food security needs and plan long-term solutions to help ensure food security in communities; and
3. a project that provides Training and Capacity Building on a nationwide basis to entities interested in developing new Community Food Projects or assisting current grantees and others to effectively operate their food security projects.

Description:
The goal of the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Awards initiative is to provide support for collaborative investigative teams or individual scientists who propose transformative research projects, which, if successful, would have a major impact in a broad area of biomedical or behavioral research. To be considered transformative, projects must have the potential to create or overturn fundamental scientific paradigms through the use of novel approaches or to lead to major improvements in health through the development of highly innovative therapies, diagnostic tools, or preventive strategies. Consistent with this focus, applications supported under the Transformative Research Awards initiative will reflect ideas substantially different from mainstream concepts.

Several key features of this FOA have been designed to emphasize to applicants and peer reviewers that these applications are very different from conventional, investigator-initiated research awards. The application format, through its page limitations for sub-topics and requirements for explicitly addressing specific issues, focuses attention on the importance of the problem, the novelty of the hypothesis and/or the proposed methodology, and the magnitude of the potential impact rather than on experimental details. Reviewers will be instructed to emphasize significance and innovation in their evaluations, and these criteria will be the primary basis for funding decisions. These features are intended to steer applicants and reviewers, at each step of the process, toward the goal of this initiative, which is to solicit and fund unusually bold and potentially transformative research.

Projects in any area of NIH interest, including basic, clinical, translational and behavioral studies, are encouraged and will be considered responsive to this FOA. Though technical and conceptual risks are expected in highly innovative projects, clinical research also must contend with potential risk to human subjects. Clinical researchers should not be dissuaded from submitting applications as long as rigorous assessment of participant risk/benefit ratios compellingly indicates the ratio to be in favor of the potential benefit. Many of the advances in public health have been achieved through clinical trials, which necessarily involve some risk to participating human subjects. NIH acknowledges the presence of such risk and has established a set of clinical research ethics principles that provides guidance regarding the risk/benefit ratio in clinical research.

Description:
Because of the range of scientific disciplines involved and the types of data required, research infrastucture has been crucial in promoting research in demography and other population sciences.

Demography is an intrinsically interdisciplinary field, drawing from the academic disciplines of sociology and economics, as well as geography, anthropology, and other social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. These academic disciplines are housed in a variety of academic departments and, often, across several schools or divisions within a university. Research infrastructure support has been instrumental in developing and advancing demography and other population science across these disciplinary and institutional barriers.

The scientific process for the population sciences frequently involves the collection or compilation of large, complex data sets by one research team, followed by analyses of these data by myriad and diverse research teams, many not associated with the original data collection. Population science addresses scientific questions that rely heavily on observational research and natural experiments. To ensure generalizability in these types of studies, population science requires population-representative data based on either probability samples or censuses. To address causal inference in these types of studies, population science requires detailed data on the factors affecting human health—often at multiple levels and drawing multiple scientific disciplines—and often requires longitudinal data. Support for collecting and disseminating population science data has been shared by private foundations and Federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and the U.S. Department of Labor. Examples of these fundamental population science data bases include the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study, Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study, the National Survey of Family Growth, and the National Survey of Families and Households. Continuing research infrastructure support in population science has made this model of scientific discovery possible and productive.

The first objective of this FOA is to increase the impact of population science research by:

1. encouraging collaborations among population scientists and between population scientists and scientists in other disciplines, within and across institutions;
2. developing new approaches and methods that advance population science research;
3. fostering the development of junior population scientists and providing opportunities for junior, mid-level, and senior scientists both within and outside of population science to engage in interdisciplinary population science;
4. promoting the application of the methods and perspectives of population science to new topics in the area of the health and well-being of populations; and
5. supporting the dissemination of population science data sets, methods, and significant research findings.

The second objective of this FOA is to decrease the costs of population science research and increase the efficiency of population scientists by supporting cost-effective research infrastructure.

Description:
The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students, teachers, administrators and parents. All DRK-12 projects should be framed around a research question or hypothesis that addresses an important need or topic in preK-12 STEM education. The emphasis in DRK-12 is on research projects that study the development, testing, deployment, effectiveness, and/or scale-up of innovative resources, models and tools. DRK-12 invites proposals that address immediate challenges that are facing preK-12 STEM education as well as those that anticipate a radically different structure and function of pre-K 12 teaching and learning. DRK-12 especially encourages proposals that challenge existing assumptions about learning and teaching within or across STEM fields, envision the future needs of learners, and consider new and innovative ways to support student and teacher learning. DRK-12 is particularly interested in projects that hold promise for identifying and developing the next generation of STEM innovators (NSB, 2010). There are four strands described in detail in the solicitation: 1) Assessment; 2) Learning; 3) Teaching; 4) Scale-up.

DRK-12 projects are based on theories of learning, prior research and development. Projects reflect the needs of an increasingly diverse population as well as national, state, or discipline priorities. Outcomes include usable and scalable resources, models, tools, and contributions to the knowledge about STEM teaching and learning. In addition, teachers and students who participate in DRK-12 studies are expected to enhance their understanding and use of STEM content, practices and skills.

The DRK-12 program is primarily concerned with the goals and effectiveness of formal education, but recognizes that learning is not limited to formal school environments and times. The program encourages projects to draw from knowledge and practice of learning in out-of-school and informal settings.

Most young people and STEM professionals today use powerful technologies in the activities of their everyday lives. New knowledge, new ways of thinking, and new ways of finding and processing information drive our society and economy. Many of the resources, models and tools researched and developed by DRK-12 will provide innovative ways to use current and emerging technologies to transform STEM education.

DRK-12 recognizes that outstanding teaching is a critical and integral component of this improvement process. While Strand 3 has a specific focus on resources, models and tools for teacher education and the impact of those models on student learning, projects submitted to the other strands may also include teacher support materials or professional development components in support of student learning. Projects submitted to the Learning strand might also include the development of assessments related to the specific goals of the project.

Some DRK-12 projects focus on a specific STEM discipline or concept, while others have cross-disciplinary, cross-grade level content, but all projects must demonstrate that the content is important from both a disciplinary and learning perspective.

Full Research and Development projects are expected to lead to successful dissemination and adoption of findings or products in the preK-12 enterprise at a scale beyond that directly supported by the grant.

Description:
NSF’s vision of a Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21) identifies advancing new computational infrastructure as a priority for driving innovation in science and engineering. Software is an integral enabler of computation, experiment and theory and a central component of the new computational infrastructure. Scientific discovery and innovation are advancing along fundamentally new pathways opened by the development of increasingly sophisticated software. Software is also directly responsible for increased scientific productivity and significant enhancement of researchers’ capabilities. In order to nurture, accelerate and sustain this critical mode of scientific progress, NSF has established the Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) program, with the overarching goal of transforming innovations in research and education into sustained software resources that are an integral part of the cyberinfrastructure. SI2 is a long-term investment focused on catalyzing new thinking, paradigms, and practices in developing and using software to understand natural, human, and engineered systems. It is NSF’s expectation that the SI2 investment will result in robust, reliable, usable and sustainable software infrastructure that is critical to the CIF21 vision and will transform science and engineering while contributing to the education of next generation researchers and creators of future cyberinfrastructure. Education at all levels will play an important role in integrating such a dynamic cyberinfrastructure into the fabric of how science and engineering is done.

The SI2 program includes three classes of awards:

1. Scientific Software Elements (SSE): SSE awards target small groups that will create and deploy robust software elements for which there is a demonstrated need that will advance one or more significant areas of science and engineering.
2. Scientific Software Integration (SSI): SSI awards target larger, interdisciplinary teams organized around the development and application of common software infrastructure aimed at solving common research problems. SSI awards will result in sustainable community software frameworks serving a diverse community.
3. Scientific Software Innovation Institutes (S2I2): S2I2 awards will focus on the establishment of long-term hubs of excellence in software infrastructure and technologies that will serve a research community of substantial size and disciplinary breadth. This solicitation is focused on the Scientific Software Innovation Institutes (S2I2) class of awards. Two subclasses of awards are planned for the S2I2 part of this program: Conceptualization Awards, which are planning awards aimed at organizing an interdisciplinary community and understanding their software requirements and challenges, and Implementation Awards, which will be made to implement community plans for software infrastructure, such as those developed by the conceptualization awards.

Only S2I2 Conceptualization Awards will be made in FY12. Please note that successful proposals will demonstrate clear and compelling science-driven goals that are responsive to research priorities identified across and within participating units. It is strongly recommended that prospective PIs contact program officers from the list of Cognizant Program Officers to ascertain that the scientific focus of the proposed work is appropriate for this solicitation.Proposals submitted to NSF in response to this solicitation must have a clear relevance to the overall SI2 program and should be responsive to this solicitation and its review criteria. Proposals that are not relevant or not responsive to the solicitation will not be considered for funding and will be returned without review.

Description:
Through the Cyberlearning: Transforming Education program, NSF seeks to integrate advances in technology with advances in what is known about how people learn to better understand how people learn with technology and how technology can be used productively to help people learn, through individual use and/or through collaborations mediated by technology; better use technology for collecting, analyzing, sharing, and managing data to shed light on learning, promoting learning, and designing learning environments; and design new technologies for these purposes, and advance understanding of how to use those technologies and integrate them into learning environments so that their potential is fulfilled.  Of particular interest are technological advances that allow more personalized learning experiences, draw in and promote learning among those in populations not served well by current educational practices, allow access to learning resources anytime and anywhere, and provide new ways of assessing capabilities.  It is expected that Cyberlearning research will shed light on how technology can enable new forms of educational practice and that broad implementation of its findings will result in a more actively-engaged and productive citizenry and workforce.  Cyberlearning awards will be made in three research categories, each focusing on a different stage of research and development: Exploratory (EXP), Design and Implementation (DIP), and Integration and Deployment (INDP).  The Cyberlearning program will also support small Capacity-Building Projects (CAP) and a Cyberlearning Resource Center (CRC).

Description:

The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, Defense Health Program Medical Research and Development Office is soliciting proposals for Defense Medical Research and Development Program (DMRDP) Applied Research and Advanced Technology Development awards to be funded beginning in fiscal year 2012 (FY12). The goal of the DMRDP is to advance the state of medical science in those areas of most pressing need and relevance to today’s battlefield experience, for example in the areas of psychological health and traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to the capability needs of the Joint Force Health Protection (JFHP) Concept of Operations (CONOPS), as delineated in the tasks described in this Program Announcement/Funding Opportunity. The objectives of the DMRDP are to discover and explore innovative approaches to protect, support, and advance the health and welfare of military personnel, families, and communities; to accelerate the transition of medical technologies into deployment; and to accelerate the translation of advances in knowledge into new standards of care for injury prevention, treatment of casualties, rehabilitation, and training systems that can be applied in theater or in the clinical facilities of the Military Health System (MHS).

These awards are intended to provide support for research that is designed to advance state-of– the-art solutions for world class medical care with an emphasis on conditions directly relevant to the injuries our service members are currently receiving on the battlefield, as well as the capability needs of the JFHP CONOPS. DMRDP efforts will assess scientific and/or military field deployment feasibility of promising new technologies, pharmacologic agents (drugs and biologics), behavioral and rehabilitation interventions, diagnostic and therapeutic devices, clinical guidance, supporting medical information and training systems, and/or emerging approaches and technologies. These awards are expected to yield potential health technologies, approaches, or technologies positioned for human testing.

Description:
This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages the translation of technologies for biomedical or behavioral research from academic and other non-small business research sectors to the marketplace. Small Business Concerns (SBCs) are encouraged to submit Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant applications that propose to further develop, make more robust, and make more user-friendly such technologies in preparation for commercial dissemination. It is expected that this activity will require partnerships and close collaboration between the original developers of these technologies and SBCs, which may be accomplished in any of a number of ways, including the use of multiple principle investigators.

Additional information on the missions and general areas of interest of participating NIH institutes and centers can be accessed through their individual websites, which are listed in the full announcement and accessible through the below link.

Description:
The National Institute on Aging (NIA) issues this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) with special review to stimulate interdisciplinary aging-relevant research in the social, affective and economic neurosciences. The NIA invites applications examining social, emotional and economic behaviors of relevance to aging, using approaches that examine mechanisms and processes at both (a) the social, behavioral or psychological (emotional, cognitive, motivational) level, and (b) the neurobiological or genetic level. Proposals are encouraged that have an overriding emphasis on economic, social or emotional processes and associated genetic or neurobiological processes. Applications should demonstrate either relevance for aging or for age differences or age-related changes in these processes. Aging-relevant applications can address issues of importance to the well-being and health of either mid-life or older adults, and can include data spanning the entire life course.

Description:
Sustainability Research Networks will engage and explore fundamental theoretical issues and empirical questions in sustainability science, engineering, and education that will increase our understanding of the ultimate sustainability challenge – maintaining and improving the quality of life for the nation within a healthy Earth system. The goal of the Sustainability Research Networks (SRN) competition is to support the development and coalescence of entities to advance collaborative research that addresses questions and challenges in sustainability science, engineering, and education. SRNs will link scientists, engineers, and educators, at existing institutions, centers, networks, and also develop new research efforts and collaborations.

Each SRN network will be built upon an ambitious and nationally important sustainability theme. Proposers will be tasked with choosing a specific theme for their network, identifying the research already being done in this area, proposing methods for linking existing research efforts, and then proposing research needed to advance their specific research theme. Examples of possible SRN themes are provided in the “Program Description” section of this solicitation (Section II.B.). SRNs will foster new knowledge and tools at a frontier of research that significantly crosses and melds the boundaries of diverse disciplines, and creates the integrated science and engineering disciplines of the future. SRNs will pursue new opportunities in science, engineering and educational research that truly require the scale, scope, and facilities enabled by such a network.

The Sustainability Research Networks competition outlined here is one part of the growing NSF investment in its Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES) portfolio (www.nsf.gov/sees/). Challenges associated with broadly based SEES goals will be met by supporting fundamental science and engineering research and education needed to understand and overcome the barriers to sustainable human well being and to forge reasoned pathways to a sustainable future. NSF, in partnership with other agencies, international efforts, and the private sector, aims to support members of the academic research community for projects which produce discoveries and knowledge that will inform decisions leading to environmental, energy, social and cultural sustainability. NSF support will advance the frontiers of conceptual, empirical and computational research in science, engineering and education so that the nation has the knowledge base to inform policies on sustainability.

Proposed SRNs are expected to be multi-dimensional with regard to “disciplines” and address fundamental issues that are likely to yield significant new understanding and knowledge.