The objective of the Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure (CICI) program is to develop, deploy and integrate security solutions that benefit the scientific community by ensuring the integrity, resilience and reliability of the end-to-end scientific workflow. CICI seeks three categories of projects:
- Secure Scientific Cyberinfrastructure: These awards seek to secure the scientific workflow by encouraging novel and trustworthy architectural and design approaches, models and frameworks for the creation of a holistic, integrated security environment that spans the entire scientific CI ecosystem;
- Collaborative Security Response Center: This single award targets the development of a community resource to provide security monitoring, analysis, expertise, and resources Research & Education (R&E) cyberinfrastructure staff, regardless of physical location or organization; and
- Research Data Protection: These awards provide solutions that both ensure the provenance of research data and reduce the complexity of protecting research data sets regardless of funding source.
Award Information:
Anticipated Type of Award: Standard Grant or Continuing Grant or Cooperative Agreement
Estimated Number of Awards: 6 to 12
Anticipated Funding Amount: $10,000,000 to $12,000,000
Total funding for the CICI program is $10,000,000 to $12,000,000, subject to the availability of funds. Secure Scientific Cyberinfrastructure awards will be supported at up to $1,000,000 total per award for up to three years. Research Data Protection awards will be supported at up to $1,000,000 total per award for up to three years. A single Collaborative Security Response Center award will be supported at up to $5,000,000 for up to three years.
Eligibility Information:
Who May Submit Proposals:
Proposals may only be submitted by the following:
- Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) - Two- and four-year IHEs (including community colleges) accredited in, and having a campus located in the US, acting on behalf of their faculty members. Special Instructions for International Branch Campuses of US IHEs: If the proposal includes funding to be provided to an international branch campus of a US institution of higher education (including through use of subawards and consultant arrangements), the proposer must explain the benefit(s) to the project of performance at the international branch campus, and justify why the project activities cannot be performed at the US campus.
- Non-profit, non-academic organizations: Independent museums, observatories, research labs, professional societies and similar organizations in the U.S. associated with educational or research activities.
Who May Serve as PI:
There are no restrictions or limits.
Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization:
Organizations are limited to 2 CICI proposals. These eligibility constraints will be strictly enforced in order to treat everyone fairly and consistently. In the event that an organization exceeds this limit, proposals received within the limit will be accepted based on earliest date and time of proposal submission (i.e., the first two proposals received will be accepted and the remainder will be returned without review). No exceptions will be made.
Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or Co-PI:
An individual can participate as PI, co-PI or senior personnel on no more than two CICI proposals. Note that any individual whose biographical sketch is provided as part of the proposal will be considered as Senior Personnel in the proposed activity, irrespective of whether that individual will receive financial support from the project.
Interested applicants should send the following documents in sequence in one PDF no later than 4:00 p.m. on the internal submission deadline:
- Principal Investigator’s (PI's) names and departmental affiliation
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Co-PI's names and departmental affiliation(s)
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A list of possible participating organizations (if applicable)
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Proposal Title
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Project Description (no more than two pages) and identify the project scope that addresses the key aspects and elements outlined in the NSF solicitation, principal investigators, collaborators, and partner organizations.
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2-page current NSF Bio-sketch for all PIs and Co-PIs.
Formatting Guidelines and Page Limit:
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Font/size: Times New Roman (12 pt.)
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Document margins: 1.0” (top, bottom, left and right)
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Standard paper size (8 ½” x 11)
Questions concerning the limited submissions process may be submitted to limitedsubs@psu.edu.