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2016 Charles E. Kaufman Foundation Research Grant Programs

The Charles E. Kaufman Foundation of The Pittsburgh Foundation will award annual research grants in 2016 to researchers at Pennsylvania universities to carry out fundamental research in the areas of biology, chemistry, and physics. Guidelines can be found on the website: http://kaufman.pittsburghfoundation.org/

Grant programs include:

  • New Investigator Research Grants – Up to six awards at a maximum of $150,000 for two years ($75,000 per year)
  • New Initiative Research Grants – Up to four awards at a maximum of $300,000 for two years ($150,000 per year)

Please contact Kathy Zimmerman at kaz309@lehigh.edu for more information if you are interested in pursuing these. Letters of intent are due on January 27, 2016.

Funding Opportunity: Energy-Efficient Computing: from Devices to Architectures (E2CDA) A Joint Initiative between NSF and SRC

This partnership between the National Science Foundation and the Semiconductor Research Corporation will support a new collaborative research program to minimize the energy impacts of processing, storing, and moving data within future computing systems, and will be synergistic with other research activities that address other aspects of this overarching energy-constrained computing performance challenge.

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) 2016 Summer Faculty Opportunities

These programs at Oak Ridge National Laboratory provide hands-on research opportunities for faculty from U.S. colleges and universities. All programs are limited to current, full-time teaching faculty at an institution of higher education in the U.S., unless otherwise noted. Application deadlines vary by program. This information is provided via the Oak Ridge Association of Universities (ORAU).

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New Interdisciplinary Program from NSF: Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems (INFEWS)

The overarching goal of INFEWS is to catalyze the well-integrated interdisciplinary research efforts to transform scientific understanding of the FEW nexus in order to improve system function and management, address system stress, increase resilience, and ensure sustainability. The NSF INFEWS initiative is designed specifically to attain the following goals:

  1. Significantly advance our understanding of the food-energy-water system through quantitative and computational modeling, including support for relevant cyberinfrastructure;
  2. Develop real-time, cyber-enabled interfaces that improve understanding of the behavior of FEW systems and increase decision support capability;
  3. Enable research that will lead to innovative system and technological solutions to critical FEW problems; and
  4. Grow the scientific workforce capable of studying and managing the FEW system through education and other professional development opportunities.

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NSF Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity (NSF PFI: BIC)

The Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity (PFI: BIC) program supports university-industry partnerships which are led by an interdisciplinary academic research team collaborating with a least one industry partner. In this program, there is a heavy emphasis on the quality, composition, and participation of the partners, including the appropriate contributions for each role. These partnerships focus on the integration of technologies into a specified human-centered service system with the potential to achieve transformational change, satisfying a real need by making an existing service system smart(er) or by spurring the creation of an entirely new smart service system.

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Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Funding Opportunities $50 Million in Funding Potential for Solar Energy Technology Research and Innovation

To accomplish the goals of the SunShot Initiative, the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office supports funding opportunities on photovoltaics, concentrating solar power, systems integration, technology to market, and soft costs projects. Following an open, competitive solicitation process, these funding opportunities encourage collaborative partnerships among industry, universities, national laboratories, federal, state, and local governments and non-government agencies and advocacy groups. Solicitations may include financial or technical assistance.

Broadly, these Energy Department investments support state-of-the-art products, solutions, and technology advancements that will increase solar energy system performance and efficiency and drive down costs. The Energy Department’s SunShot Initiative is a collaborative national effort that aggressively drives innovation to make solar energy fully cost-competitive with traditional energy sources by the end of the decade.

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Call for User Proposals: High-Impact Nanoscience Research

The Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is soliciting proposals for user-initiated nanoscience research that will make effective use of CNMS facilities and staff expertise. The CNMS nanoscience research program provides users with access to a broad range of capabilities for nanomaterials design, synthesis, characterization, and theory/modeling/simulation in order to carry out studies that will significantly advance our understanding of nanoscale phenomena and develop functional nanomaterials systems. Access is provided at no cost to users for research that is in the public domain and intended for publication in the open literature.

For more information on this solicitation and submission guidelines, please see the website. Submission deadline is October 21, 2015.

ORNL’s SNS User Meeting and STS Workshop is approaching

The Neutron Sciences Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is holding a 1 and a half day Spallation Neutron Source/High Flux Isotope Reactor (SNS/HFIR) User Meeting, October 26–27, 2015. The aim of this meeting is to bring together current and potential neutron users to discuss recent scientific results utilizing neutrons. This meeting will emphasize current and emerging research trends that will influence the development of new neutron facilities, specifically the STS at ORNL, For more information on the SNS/HFIR user meeting, please see the website. Registration deadline is October 9, 2015.

Note, Steve McInstoh (ChemE) will be giving a talk at the SNS/HFIR user meeting and is available to anyone for questions or information.  Email Steve at mcintosh@lehigh.edu.

Following this meeting, the Second Target Station (STS) Workshop will be held on October 27–29, 2015. The forum will be used to update the user community on the planning for the STS, to engage the users in the process of moving the STS forward, and to seek the community’s input on all aspects of the project. For more information on the STS workshop, please see the website. Registration will open soon (Please note that this is a separate registration).

NSF Interdisciplinary Funding Opportunity:  Supporting Research Advances in Smart and Connected Communities

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR), Engineering (ENG), Geosciences (GEO), and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) wish to notify the community of their intention to support, foster, and accelerate fundamental research that addresses challenges in enabling Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC).

With this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), NSF invites supplements to existing CISE, EHR, ENG, GEO, and SBE grants, or new EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals submitted to the CISE, EHR, ENG, GEO, and/or SBE directorates. Supplemental proposals must enhance existing projects by incorporating or exploring the concepts described in this DCL, while demonstrating how the proposed work is related to the active project and must describe how the research and activities fit within the Smart and Connected Communities vision.

For more information including examples of relevant projects and the list of program directors, please read the DCL.

Proposal deadline is March 1, 2016 or earlier.

Sponsored by ORAU, Mars, Incorporated, and the National Science Foundation, this program allows faculty an opportunity to nominate Lehigh graduate students to attend a week-long meeting of Nobel Laureates in chemistry, physics, and physiology/medicine. As an investigator on an NSF funded project or through a nomination sponsored by MARS, Inc. or ORAU – which are not tied to any specific funding source – a graduate student under your mentorship may qualify for this honorable and rare opportunity. In 2012 two Lehigh graduate students, Tyler Drake (Physics) and Justin Barton (Mechanical Engineering), were chosen to attend this meeting. Also, Matthew Smith (Physics) attended the 2011 Lindau meeting and wrote about the experience on his blog.

The 2016 meeting will focus on physics or related disciplines of research. The selection and submission of nominations from Lehigh will be done by the Office of the Vice President and Associate Provost for Research and Graduate Studies. Deadline for submission of nomination to our office is 8am EST on October 1, 2015. The full application deadline for submission of nominations to the Lindau meeting sponsors is October 16, 2015. Further information about the program can be found online at http://www.orau.org/lindau/ and at http://www.lindau-nobel.org/about/

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