NOTE: Penn State is limited to one CyberInfrastructure Professional (CIP Project) per CyberTraining program deadline. There are no limits on Pilot or Implementation proposals. If you intend to submit a Pilot or Implementation Proposal you do not need to submit to this internal competition.
Executive Summary:
This program seeks to prepare, nurture, and grow the national scientific research workforce for creating, utilizing, and supporting advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) to enable and potentially transform fundamental science and engineering (S&E) research and education and contribute to the Nation's overall economic competitiveness and security. The goals of this solicitation are to (i) ensure broad adoption of CI tools, methods, and resources by the research community in order to catalyze major research advances and to enhance researchers' abilities to lead the development of new CI; (ii) integrate core literacy and discipline-appropriate advanced skills in advanced CI as well as computational and data-driven methods for advancing fundamental research, into the Nation's undergraduate and graduate educational curriculum/instructional materials; and (iii) build communities of research CI professional staff to deploy, manage, and collaboratively support the effective use of research CI, as well as establish career paths for those staff within and across institutions and science and engineering (S&E) disciplines. Proposals responding to the CIP project class must address the third goal. For the purpose of this solicitation, advanced CI is broadly defined as the set of resources, tools, methods, and services for advanced computation, large-scale data handling and analytics, and networking and security for large-scale systems that collectively enable potentially transformative fundamental S&E research and education.
This solicitation calls for innovative, scalable training, education, and curriculum/instructional materials, along with deeper incorporation of CI professionals into the research enterprise — targeting one or more of the solicitation goals — to address emerging needs and unresolved bottlenecks in S&E research workforce development, from the postsecondary level to active researchers to CI professionals. The funded activities, spanning targeted, multidisciplinary communities, should lead to transformative changes in the state of research workforce preparedness for advanced CI-enabled research in the short- and long-term. This solicitation also seeks to broaden CI access and adoption by (i) increasing adoption of advanced CI and of computational and data-driven methods to a broader range of S&E disciplines and institutions; (ii) enhancing the incorporation of CI professionals into the research enterprise – highlighting the value of those professionals in S&E research; and (iii) effectively utilizing the capabilities of individuals from a diverse set of underrepresented groups. Proposals from, and in partnership with, the aforementioned communities are especially encouraged.
There are three project classes as defined below:
- Pilot Projects: up to $300,000 total budget with durations up to two years;
- Implementation Projects: Small (with total budgets of up to $500,000) or Medium (with total budgets of up to $1,000,000) for durations of up to four years; and
- CI Professional (CIP) Projects: up to two full-time equivalents (FTEs) per institution and four FTEs total with durations up to five years.
Section II. Program Description of the solicitation provides a more complete description of the project classes. Section V.A. Proposal Preparation Instructions describes the proposal elements required for the various project classes in order to address the suitable set of solicitation-specific review criteria.
The CyberTraining program is led by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and has participation from other NSF directorates/divisions as described in Section II. Program Description, Programmatic Areas of Interest. Not all directorates/divisions are participating at the same level and some have specific research and education priorities. The appropriate contact for the CyberTraining program in any directorate/division is the Cognizant Program Officer (PO) for the respective directorate/division/office/program listed in the solicitation.
All projects are expected to clearly articulate how they address important community needs, will provide resources that will be widely available to and usable by the research community, and will broaden participation from underrepresented groups. Prospective principal investigators (PIs) are strongly encouraged to contact the Cognizant Program Officers in CISE/OAC and in the participating directorate/division relevant to the proposal to ascertain whether the focus and budget of their proposed activities are appropriate for this solicitation. Such consultations should be completed at least one month in advance of the submission deadline. PIs should include the names of the Cognizant Program Officers consulted in a Single Copy Document as described in Section V.A. Proposal Preparation Instructions. The intent of the CyberTraining program is to encourage collaboration between CI and S&E domain disciplines. (For this purpose, units of CISE other than OAC are considered domain disciplines.) To ensure relevance to community needs and to facilitate adoption, those proposals of interest to one or more domain divisions must include at least one PI/co-PI with expertise relevant to the targeted research discipline. All proposals shall include at least one PI/co-PI with expertise relevant to OAC.
Prospective PIs contemplating submissions that primarily target communities relevant to directorates/divisions that are not participating in this solicitation are directed to instead explore the education and workforce development programs of the respective directorates/divisions.
CIP Project description:
CIP proposals should describe science-driven needs and the resulting potential impact of sustained access to and engagement of CI Professionals within and/or across institutions. Proposals should describe planned engagement activities in specific and multiple S&E research projects within and/or across institutions, including plans to leverage existing institutional CI. Proposals should describe and justify the structure and make-up of the proposed set of CI Professionals, including the approach to its engagement, interactions, and partnerships with S&E research as well as education and training activities, along with efforts to broaden participation from underrepresented groups. CIP proposals may request up to two FTEs per institution and four FTEs total for up to five years. It is expected that CI Professionals funded by this program will be part of institution-wide units rather than individual project groups, laboratories, etc. Proposals must address institutionalization of positions and activities by the CI Professionals in the longer term through discussion of a sustainability plan. Proposals are encouraged to consider how the CI Professionals will interact with national CI entities (such as the RCD-Nexus CI Center of Excellence Pilot, the Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) and the US Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE)), collaborators, participating institutions, and scientific virtual organizations where relevant. While single institution CIP proposals are encouraged, proposals are also encouraged from multi-institution teams to serve the advanced CI needs of institutions within a designated region of the U.S. or within one or more scientific or engineering disciplines.
CIP proposals should also include plans to interface with the awardee of the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) program end user support services (Track 2), as described in the ACCESS program page and solicitation (NSF 21-555). CIP projects must support the ACCESS program end user support services track goal of developing and fostering the Computational Science Support Network (CSSN) that will assimilate and coordinate the human capital, funded by NSF, at the national, regional and campus levels. Therefore, CIP projects are required to commit 20% of the time of funded CI Professionals to support the research activities of the broader computational science community outside the proposing institutions, coordinated by the ACCESS Track 2 awardee. It is expected that funded CI professionals will contribute to the CSSN by actively assisting prospective, new, and current users of national shared CI resources through activities ranging from institution-level, one-on-one user engagements to regional and national community events organized by the ACCESS Track 2 awardee.
Interested applicants should upload the following documents in sequence in one PDF file (File name: Last name_NSF-22-574_2022) no later than 4:00 p.m. on the internal submission deadline:
1. Cover Letter (1 page, pdf):
- Descriptive title of proposed activity
- PI name, departmental affiliations(s) and contact information
- Co-PI's names and departmental affiliation(s)
- Names of other key personnel
- Participating institution(s)
- Number and title of this funding opportunity
2. Project Description (no more than two pages, pdf) identifying the project scope that addresses the key aspects and elements of the sponsor's solicitation and roles of the principal investigators, collaborators, and partner organizations. References may be included on an additional page.
3. 2-page CV's of Investigators
Formatting Guidelines:
Font/size: Times New Roman (12 pt.)
Document margins: 1.0” (top, bottom, left and right)
Standard paper size (8 ½” x 11)
Questions concerning the limited submissions process may be submitted to limitedsubs@psu.edu.