The NSF Division of Science Resources Statistics has released its Academic Institutional Profiles for 2006. A convenient upgrade for this year is that you can scroll through alphabetized lists of academic institutions with their various rankings or without any rankings. Clicking on the institution name in either list takes you to their data tables (earned doctorates, federal science & engineering obligations, grad students & postdoctorals, and R&D expenditures). A search engine can also be used to take you to the institution of interest.
Archive for NSF Info
Job Stimulation – and Study by the NSF
A brief observation. This morning, the Washington Post sent out a news alert that “Obama promises more than 600,000 stimulus jobs” this summer. As if we needed another reminder as to a key review criteria for applications for ARRA funding.
Perhaps this would be a good time to remind you that in the NSF Dear Colleage letter that appeared and then disappeared and then reappeared, the Science of Science & Innovation Policy (SciSIP) Program is accepting 2-5 page proposals for RAPID funding that address the outcome of ARRA, such as:
- What was the contribution of the science investment to the creation and retention of jobs?
- What was the contribution of the science investment to science and technology industries?
- What scientific or technological advances were achieved?
- What was the impact on the scientific workforce?
In keeping with the Presidential focus on openness and transparency in government, proposals might also examine and evaluate different approaches to building appropriate platforms for tracking and assessing science investments across the federal government as well as ways to visually convey the information to policy makers and the American public.
Edward Tufte, your country needs you.
NSF ARRA Solicitations
Though of course, the NSF uses R² (recovery & reinvestment) rather than ARRA. Both are limited submissions, with up to two instrumentation acquisition plus one instrumentation development proposal allowed, and just one facilities modernization proposal allowed per applicant institution. Cost sharing (30% of project total cost) is required for the instrumentation program but not the research infrastructure program.
Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI-R²)
Full Proposals Due: August 10, 2009
400 awards: Proposal budgets may include requests of $100K-$6M from Ph.D.-granting institutions & up to $6M (no minimum) from non-Ph.D.-granting institutions & the disciplines of mathematical sciences or social, behavioral, & economic sciences at any eligible organization. Up to $40M (of $200M) will be available for the acquisition or development of instruments costing between $2-$6M.
Acquisition proposals are characterized by a rapid implementation requiring limited personnel. MRI-R2 acquisition proposals may also be characterized by a demonstrated need for the purchase or upgrade of generally available, yet sophisticated, instruments with little or no modification for shared use among a group of researchers.
Development proposals are characterized by a demonstrated need for new or upgraded instruments that can provide enhanced or potentially transformative use and performance, open up new areas of research and research training, and/or have potential as commercial products. Development proposals must describe the added performance of the new instrument and the expected impact on the broader research community; development of instrumentation that takes advantage of new opportunities enabled by investments in cyberinfrastructure is encouraged.
Academic Research Infrastructure Program (ARI-R²)
LOI due July 1, Full Proposals due Aug 24.
The ARI-R² program will invest in the repair, renovation, or in exceptional cases, the replacement of existing research facilities. It will not support the construction of new research facilities. Organizations may submit one proposal, either as lead or as a sub-awardee but not both.
Approximately 100 awards ranging from a total of $250K-$2M; 6-10 awards ranging from $2-$5M; and 3-5 awards ranging from $5-$10M. The award duration for ARI-R² grants up to $2M is up to 3 years; award duration for grants $2-$10M is up to 4 years.
NSF ARRA Update
Last week, the NSF distributed and then removed an ARRA-related Dear Colleague letter. Yesterday, Arden Bemet (NSF Director) issued Important Notice No. 131 in which he noted, among other things:
The Recovery Act supplements NSF fiscal year 2009 funding by $3.0 billion. NSF currently has many highly rated proposals that it has not been able to fund. For this reason, NSF is planning to use the majority of the $2 billion available in Research and Related Activities for proposals that are already in house and will be reviewed and/or awarded prior to September 30, 2009. Read the rest of this entry »
NSF RAPID Research of Stimulus
Update: It’s baaack. The Dear Colleague letter, that is, and I assume NSF’s interest in funding this research.
NSF had issued a Dear Colleague letter [not sure what to make of its disappearance] announcing “Grants for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) to Study the Impact of the Economic Stimulus Package and to Advance the Scientific Understanding of Science Policy”:
People will ask important questions over the next one to two years about the success and the impact of the economic stimulus. The Science of Science & Innovation Policy (SciSIP) Program, within the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, can be a vehicle for mobilizing research capacity to respond to these questions and to assess the effects on both the ecology of innovation and on the science and engineering enterprise.
The SciSIP program will take advantage of NSF’s RAPID funding mechanism to accept short (2-5 p) RAPID proposals that attempt to answer many of the outcome questions that will be asked about the impact of the stimulus package as well as to advance the scientific understanding of science policy. These would include, but not be limited to, such questions as:
* What was the contribution of the science investment to the creation and retention of jobs?
* What was the contribution of the science investment to science and technology industries?
* What scientific or technological advances were achieved?
* What was the impact on the scientific workforce?In keeping with the Presidential focus on openness and transparency in government, proposals might also examine and evaluate different approaches to building appropriate platforms for tracking and assessing science investments across the federal government as well as ways to visually convey the information to policy makers and the American public.
In other words, hundreds of NIH-funded investigators will be studied by, well, a handful of their NSF-funded colleagues.
Separately, NSF has also released R&D expenditures by academic institution for 2007.
FY09 Budget Bill
You may or may not recall that the federal government is still operating under a continuing resolution, which ends next Friday (March 6). On Wed, the House passed an omnibus bill to finish out fiscal year 2009 (ends Sept 30th). The AAMC has a nice summary of the health and biomedical research allocations. The biggies, of course, are NIH and NSF:
National Institutes of Health: The bill includes $30.317 billion for NIH, an increase of $937.5 million (3.2%) over the FY 2008 comparable. An accompanying explanatory statement notes the bill “provides funding for a 2% increase in the average cost of new and competing as well as non-competing grants.” The extramural salary cap is retained at Executive Level I, which is $196,700 for 2009. The explanatory statement also states, “NIH is encouraged to take steps to accelerate implementation of its conflict of interest policy for contract staff.”
In other portions, the omnibus increases funding for the FDA to $2.1 billion (a $335 million or 19.4% increase), and the NSF to $6.5 billion (a $363 million or 5.9% increase over funding provided in FY 2008). The NSF total includes $5.2 billion for research and related activities, a $339 million (7%) increase.
Looking ahead to 2010 and 2011, AAMC notes:
The budget overview assumes $675 billion in non-defense discretionary spending, including $78.7 billion for HHS, a $1.4 billion (1.7%) decrease below the FY 2009 comparable estimate. The overview notes that ARRA provides an additional $22.4 billion in FY 2009 and FY 2010 spending for HHS.
Within the HHS total, the budget overview highlights a number of health initiatives, including $6 billion for cancer research at the NIH, “as part of the Administration’s multi-year commitment to double cancer research funding.” The budget overview also “expands research comparing the effectiveness of medical treatments,” to build upon comparative effectiveness research supported through ARRA, though no specific recommendation is included.
NSF vs NIH Handling of Stimulus Money
The Chronicle of Higher Education offers a nice contrast on how the NSF and NIH differ in their planned distribution of ARRA funding.
While the NIH plans to “tweak its science-based distribution guidelines to ensure the largess some measure of geographic parity”, the NSF will not. Similarly, the NSF will not rush to spend its wad in the 2 years but will consider longer term projects. Read the rest of this entry »
NSF Cost-Sharing
In its recent report, Investing in the Future: NSF Cost Sharing Policies for a Robust Federal Research Enterprise, the NSF National Science Board recommends
(1) to allow, but narrowly circumscribe, the application of mandatory cost sharing requirements in NSF programs in which such cost sharing is foundational to achieving programmatic goals, and
(2) to prohibit voluntary committed cost sharing in NSF proposals and thus eliminate post-award tracking and reporting requirements.
These recommendations are intended to improve consistency and clarity of NSF cost sharing practices and policy and to maximize the effectiveness of institutional dollars invested in research. The Board firmly believes that prohibiting voluntary committed cost sharing, and permitting mandatory cost sharing requirements only in limited and appropriate circumstances, will not reduce institutional commitment and financial contributions to NSF-sponsored projects or negatively impact institutional stewardship of Federal resources. Instead, it likely will enhance the ability of institutions to strategically and flexibly plan, invest in, and conduct research projects and programs and promote equity among grantee institutions in NSF funding competitions.
Supplemental Funding 2008 – and FY09 Budget Projections
Update: Arlen Spector (R, Penn) & Tom Harkin (D, Iowa) will introduce a bill requesting an additional $5.2 Billion in FY08 supplemental funding for the NIH, of which $1.2 billion will be earmarked for the National Cancer Institute.
From H.R. 2642 (Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2008 – signed into law by our very own Dear Leader on June 30):
For an additional amount for `Office of the Director’, $150,000,000, which shall be transferred to the Institutes and Centers of the National Institutes of Health and to the Common Fund Read the rest of this entry »
Catching Up …
Let’s see … while I’ve been trying to save the world from bad grantsmanship, last week the NSF released its FY 2006 academic R&D expenditure data … no payline news likely to be forthcoming Read the rest of this entry »
