Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering

Good afternoon everyone and welcome. I’m now pleased to present this session, which will cover the programs in the NSF directorate for computer and information science and engineering. And this session will be presented by Funda Ergun. >> Funda Ergun: Hello everyone and welcome to the fall 2022 NSF virtual grants conference. And thank you very much for showing up. My name is Funda Ergun, I am a Program Director at NSF. I’m a rotator, as most of you know there are two types of program directors at NSF. Although we are all scientists, some of us are permanent government employees and some of us are coming from academia spanning a few years at NSF as program directors. So I belong to the second group as a rotative. I’m a part of the computer and information science and engineering directorate, CISE. And I am in the CCF computing communications foundations division of CISE. So, the goal of NSF is to promote the progress of science to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare, to secure the national defense. We’re a government agency and we take care of science. You see here the NSF building in Alexandria, Virginia. And after a long time with Covid restrictions, the building is having a lot of people in it again. So what is the purpose of this talk? What are we going to gain from this talk and more importantly what you aren’t going to get from this talk? So I would like to give a general idea about how NSF works and what is the role of CISE within NSF. So what are our funding priorities both NSF and CISE and how they reflect to funding opportunities. What are some examples of types of programs I’m going to talk in general terms. And the last one which is the most important one, in my opinion, is where to find information. I am not going to, aside from a few examples give information on individual programs, or divisions, or dates, even though you will have a few of them. For those there is detailed information in solicitations and dear colleague letters DCLs on the website. The best place for you to learn about all of funding opportunities and what has happened with funding really is the NSF website www.nsf.gov, which in a very very simple very easy to use setup has a funding tab that you can use to learn all about what’s happening at NSF in terms of funding. You can also go to the CISE website which tells you about funding and other activities happening within CISE. And I’m going to talk more about resources later. Let’s have a look at NSF organizational chart. At the top is the Director Sethuraman Panchnathan. The research part is done in several divisions. Each division is led by an Assistant Director. So our division CISE is led by Margaret Martonosi, we’re going to see the structure of CISE a little bit better in the next couple slides. Also interest to this CISE, PIs is Technology, Innovation, Partnerships which is a relatively new division that supports research in use inspired translational areas giving rise, with an ultimate goal of giving rise to new industries. CISE interacts with many of these other divisions here. And as CISE PIs I would encourage you to take a look at all of them. So let’s look at NSF in general by the numbers. So more than 90% of NSF budget goes to grants for research and stem education. Two hundred million goes to R&D through the small business program. Almost 1.5 billion goes to stem education and workforce development, which is an important priority for NSF. And it’s a funds research in 50 U.S states, all states. And foster scientific collaboration in all continents, including Antarctica. We have this peer reviewed for the 3,000 proposals, given 12,000 awards. 307,000 people annually involved in NSF activities for the 2,000 of which are graduate students. Funded 2,000 academic private and public institutions, 248 Nobel Laureates have received NSF awards. And perhaps the most important 24% of all federal funding for academic fundamental research comes from NSF, so NSF is a very important source of funding. So let’s look at the budget request FY2023, the fiscal year 2023 the request is a bit over 10.5, 10 billion. And the request comes with the following text for where the funds will be spent. Invest in responsive pandemic, climate change, economic recovery, national security, economic resilience priority areas. Advanced equity in science and engineering always important for NSF. Expedite technology development in emerging technologies and the new division is going to be part of this effort. Continue the construction and procurement of research infrastructure and instrumentation and I’m going to talk about infrastructure later. Support NSF operations and award management. I’m going to talk a lot of these in a little bit. Okay. So NSF supports all areas of fundamental research and computer science. Which CISE supports is at the top and we’re very proud to say almost 80% of federal funding for computer science comes from NSF. So that means as a computer science researcher you will, in all likelihood apply for NSF funding, receive NSF funding. And a lot of the work that goes on is done with NSF funding. NSF is very proud of this number and the number is high in other areas as well, for instance MAC is almost as high as computer science. But it’s interesting to see that computer science has the highest ratio among all the disciplines. So, how are these awards given? What is NSFs gold standard merit review process? We’re very proud of this process, as I said, all the program directors are scientists and also the review is done by your peers. So there are three phases to it. The first phase is proposal, preparation and submission. So you will see a call for proposals in terms of a solicitation or some other means. At least 90 day proposal submission deadline. So, once you submit your proposal, then we get to phase two. In phase two the program directors first check the proposals for compliance. And then they select reviewers from the community to review your proposal. And then peer review occurs, this can happen with ad hoc reviews or with a panel. And at the end of the panel, after the paneling process, the program officers, program director, same thing. they make a recommendation. The panel makes a recommendation to the panel, to the program director. And the program directors make a recommendation to the division director. About, which proposals should be funding. And the division director makes the final decision about which proposals are going to be funded. Even then this is in the form of a recommendation. And the award goes into award processing, which takes about a month. During which it’s checked for certain considerations including budget. And at the end of that the award is finalized and the funding reaches is given to the university of the PI. You can find more information about the process using the links at the bottom. So here’s the outline. We’re going to do now and over line, quick over line of CISE and now we’re going to talk about selected programs and types of programs. Again, I would like to give an idea about how to look for programs, rather than give you individual programs. And now we’re going to talk about NSF partnerships. So let’s take a look at the organization of CISE. CISE is led by Margaret Martonosi who’s the Assistant Director and Joydip Kundu is the Deputy Assistant Director. It consists of four divisions. Office of Advanced Cyber Infrastructure led by Manish Parashar and Amy Walton is the Deputy Office Director. This division supports and coordinates the development and acquisition and provisioning of cyber infrastructures tools and services. Next one is Computing and Communication Foundations, CCF. The Division Director is Dilma Da Silva and Deputy Division Director is Irina Dolinskaya. And this division aims to advance computing and communication theory. Supports algorithms for computers and communication sciences, architecture, design of computers and software. Next one is Computer and Network Systems, CNS. The Director is Gurdip Singh and the Deputy Director is Behrooz Shirazi. CNS supports the immersion of new computing and networking technologies and the improvement of existing technologies. Next one is Information on Intelligence Systems, IIS. The Division Director is Michael Littman and the Deputy Division Director is Wendy Nilsen. And this division is interested in supporting information and intelligence systems, the interrelation between people, and computers, and information. So let’s take a look at CISE by the numbers in fiscal year 2021. So, the budget for CISE was just a bit more than a billion. And we received a bit more than 7,000 proposals, held 461 panels and gave 1,740 awards. These awards supported almost 20,000 people and over 370 institutions. We have funded 50 states and three territories. And the funded personnel was a range of seniorities and, of different kinds of assignments. So, some were postdocs, troll associates, graduate students, undergraduate students, junior and senior researchers and other professionals. We are proud to have served 73 minority serving institutions by giving them awards. And we would like to obviously increase this number. Once again, NSF funds 80%, 80% of the federal funding for academic CS research in the US comes from NSF. So this is a very important portion of CS funding. So, CISE programs, just like other programs of NSF, are aligned with administration and congressional priorities, NSF is a federal government institution foundation. So let’s look at the FY2021 budget priorities memo. Artificial intelligence, quantum information science and computing. Prioritize basic and applied research investments consistent with the 2019 executive order on AI. And the 2019 update of the national AI irony strategic plan. Departments and agencies should work together to explore new applications and support R&D for high performance, future computing paradigms, verification device and architectures alongside sustainable and interoperable software, data maintenance and curation, and appropriate security. So NSF serves U.S interests. But it also serves science and to overlap a great deal and form the basis of the wonderful research that comes out of NSF support. I would suggest that you take a look at the documents on the right, who show government initiatives about research. These form, these are, have followed over the years the strategic directions that NSF has followed. As well as, what NSF has learned from the research community. So let’s look at CISE programs that address such national priorities. These are trusts, they are not individual programs, each trust has led to multiple programs, some exist, some have expired, new ones are coming. So I’m just trying to give a general idea here. So these are in AI, big data, and robotics, cybersecurity, manufacturing and microelectronics, quantum information sciences systems, smart communities, computer science and education, and advanced wireless research. So CISE funded projects have made remarkable impact on the U.S economy. ITA counts for 25% of the US economic growth. And NSF is proud to have funded a lot of the research that have, that has fueled its growth. Development of billion dollar industries in many ways linked very very directly to CISE have been supported by NSF and NSF impact on economic growth and prosperity has been remarkable. So, let’s now look at some programs and pushes that happen within CISE and also across the foundation. So the biggest part of CISE funding comes from the core, which is about 50% of the budget. Who is the main body of NSF? It doesn’t have a particular topic or a push, but it’s the heart of what we do. We are committed strongly to fundamental research. What we do with core is we cast the broad net and let the best ideas, best work surface and this changes over time and leads to wonderful things. We are not prescriptive, but we do engage with the community to develop new directions. Programs come and go, priorities change, but the core has been a big part of our research agenda for a long time and that hasn’t changed, even though the topics within core have changed over the years, depending on various trends. So the following core opportunities, these are handled within each division and within each research area within the division that are aligned typically with what we call clusters. So, the core programs accept proposals for small and medium programs. Most of you probably know that we do not have deadlines for smalls anymore, except for the OAC core which still has deadlines. And we do have deadlines for the mediums. Some notes about recent changes to CISE core is, CCF has now, has recently, not now, established a new cluster called FET, foundations of emerging technologies. And CNS has unified two core programs, CSR and NeTS. HCC and IIS has now, has undergone a name change. And also to keep in mind, OAC accepts only smalls and not mediums. So while the topics seem to be separate, it’s actually common for a proposal to be viewed, reviewed in panels in multiple divisions, across several divisions. And even be funded, co-funded by multiple groups. So for instance, I am part of CCF algorithmic foundations, the first cluster. And we do deal with theoretical side of AI. Whereas robust intelligent IIS deals with the more applied side of AI. So we have over time funded quite a few proposals together with AI, together with IIS, we have co-funded a certain percentage by CCF,certain percentage by IIS this way. And we appreciate the collegiality that comes out of this collaboration between divisions within CISE. So let’s talk about some funding opportunities. So this comes with a caveat. What I would like to give you is examples of what has been funded in the past. And some of the funding opportunities on this list have deadlines that you will see in their solicitations, some don’t. That’s part of the time because the deadline has passed and the new solicitation is not out, so the new deadline is not known yet. So I would say, stay up to date with what’s going in CISE, I will show you ways of doing that. And even some programs here that may run out of their funding, the push in that particular direction still goes on in other forms, other programs. So if you keep your eyes open, look at the web page, do search on grants, you will find other programs that will be of interest. So please consider this as some examples of funding opportunities that have funded people in the past. Most of them will still fund people in the future. So we have CISE programs that are shared by divisions within CISE, but not our father, outside of CISE, I’m going to talk about some of these later. And now we have multi-directorate programs that involve division, directorates, not only divisions, directorates outside of CISE. But the lead directorate is CISE. And these will be of interest to many of you and I would strongly recommend taking a good look at them. And then there are other multi-directorate programs that are led by, not led by CISE led by another directorate outside of CISE. And some of these again will be of great interest to CISE PIs. We have our early career programs that we are very proud of, we have our education programs that range from pre-k to graduate school. We have infrastructure programs, we have the NSF big ideas that I’m going to talk more about. And we have programs that support entrepreneurship and translation. So let’s first talk about early career programs, because CNS cares very much about supporting the growth and development of early career faculty. So, in this context I’m going to talk about the career program and the CRII program. And what we do to support these two programs. So, let’s first talk about the career program. This is one of NSFs most prestigious awards, the career award and it defines the first few years of the research career of junior faculty. We expect outstanding research and excellent contribution to education from the PI. And we have a requirement that’s unique to the career program which is the integration of education and research. And if you’re writing a career proposal we take this very seriously. Since its inception, more than 200 programs have a vivid career proposals and we have given more than 7,000 Awards. PIs are allowed three attempts. And each attempt, each year you can make only one attempt. To help junior PIs who are getting ready to submit career proposals, we hold proposal writing workshops every spring last, this year’s was in April, so next year’s is likely to be in April or March. And the proposal deadline is what, it going to be in July, it’s in July of every year. CRII is a little bit different, it’s geared towards junior faculty who do not have the resources to support students at the beginning of their career. So this is a smaller award, it’s over two years. And it has to have one month of salary for the PI and two years of full-time student support. And the, this is a fairly new requirement that the PI must document, that their support for students, graduate students is below a certain threshold by their department. So let’s talk about now NSF plan big ideas. So in 2016-17 through engagement with the research community NSF came up with ten big trusts that would shape the research and education in the coming several years. So the research ideas and process ideas there. Six of the big ideas are research ideas, they’re harnessing the data revolution, future of work at the human technology transfer, quantum leap, leading the next quantum revolution, windows and the universe, understanding rules of life and navigating the new Arctic. And the process ideas were mid-scale research infrastructure, NSF-includes, NSF 2026 and glowing convergent research. I’m going to talk about some of these that might be of interest to CISE. But of course the interest of CISE is not limited to those, just consider these as examples. And also I would like to give another caveat here. The funding behind some of these ideas and programs might have run out in some cases, but different programs exist, receiving funding from different sources. So please view these as research trust and look for programs that might suit your interests. So, first one is harnessing the data revolution. In the past decade or two data has become the main computing paradigm and concern. This IDSC’s data at the intersection of many research areas and its goal is to enable new modes of data-driven discovery. To ask and answer fundamental questions relevant to science and engineering. Of course it’s a very broad area and it touches many sub-areas. Next one is quantum leap. The goal of this initiative is to exploit quantum mechanics to observe manipulated control, the behavior of particles of energy and atomic ourselves, resulting in next generation technologies. We do have quite a bit of emphasis and programs dealing with quantum. Mid-scale research infrastructure. Is an initiative that has two trusts, it’s also a program. Generally speaking both of them interact with data-driven computing and aim at developing and providing necessary cyberinfrastructure for data intensive, science and engineering research. The deadlines for this program happen every two years. The first, ri1, track is for small rewards and the deadline for that is January for preliminary and May for full proposals. The deadlines for the larger track, ri2, are not out yet, but they do come out every two years, so be on the lookout for those. So NSF includes NSF inclusion across the nation of communities of learners of underrepresented discoveries in engineering and science. NSF would like to see the stem workforce reflect the diversity of the nation’s population. This big idea aims at making stuff accessible to the population, including underrepresented groups. There are several programs within this initiative, but this is not all. NSF is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, and has various programs and processes to this end. As an example, I will talk about the BPC initiative later on during this talk. So let’s talk about some cross-cutting programs across CISE. These are just examples for a comprehensive list, please go to the link at the bottom of this page. What this link is is, it simulates going to nsf.gov, going to the funding tab and picking CISE as the directorate that you would like to look at. It gives a wonderful overview of what’s available and you can do all kinds of searches. So I’m going to talk about several cross-cutting programs briefly. And again these are just examples and you should look for programs similar to these, all the programs themselves. The deadlines for some of these may not be out yet and a few of these I will mention have expired, but appear in different forms under different funding models. So, AI is of course a big trust of NSF and AI is a trust, it’s not a program, it encompasses multiple programs and multiple initiatives. So AI is seen as an area that ties a lot of different fields together and a lot of directorates deal with AI, they support research in AI. So of course we have had quite a few programs in the few years, this is just an example of what has been done and I would strongly encourage you to take a look at what’s available right now, which programs have their deadlines on the website. I’m going to talk about, because one big one, which is the AI Institutes. The last deadline for this big program is past. So you can’t apply for AI institutes anymore. But we have had a lot of success, we have a number of AI institutes with quite a few partners, both government institutions, private partners, local governments. And they have, they are receiving up to $20 million per institute. And they have strong research and strong broader impact. So, even though the funding behind the main trust of AI institutes is now gone, what we have is an extension of the program called expand AI. The goal of this program is to diversify participation in AI research and reach out to the untapped talent throughout the country. So expand AI is open to minority serving institutions. And to see it exact eligibility criteria please take a look at the solicitation, which has come out fairly recently. This is by invitation only, so you should contact a program officer and consult about whether you should be submitting. There are two types of projects smaller ones are caps, which are aimed at laying the groundwork for research. And expand AI partnerships. So in this one, the institutions, minority serving institutions are expected to partner with an existing AI institute for research and education. You can learn more about this program from a solicitation. Next program that I’m going to talk about is principles and practice of scalable systems, PPoSS. This program supports research across disciplines and scalability. And other issues such as correctness, accuracy, privacy, security of modern application systems and tool chains on heterogeneous, heterogeneous is the key word here, architectures. So the interesting part of this program is expect, it expects projects to span the entire hardware, software stack. It expects to see collaboration ranging from the very theoretical to the very applied. So, it fosters collaboration across scientists dealing with all aspects of CISE. It used to have planning and large proposals, but now at this stage it’s only accepting large proposals, but you do not need to have a planning grant to apply for a large proposal. So next deadline is in January. Next program that I’m going to talk about is cyber-physical systems. The goal of this program is to support research on systems that integrate computation and physical components. This program serves multiple key national priority sector areas. And is cross-directorate and cross-agency. Again, you can learn more from the solicitation. Foundational research in robotics. The NRI program has been archived, so for robotics now we have FRR. Very briefly, this program is focused on developing better robots. So its requirements is that, are that, it should be about, robots and introduced new capabilities or improve existing capabilities. And it should address significant gaps. You should discuss with your program director before submitting to this program. It accepts CAREERs, as well as unsolicited proposals. Secure and trustworthy cyberspace is the broad program that deals with security, to protect the nations critical information technology infrastructure, including the internet from a wide range of threats that challenge is security and reliability. One thing that I’m going to note about this program that we refer to as SaTC, is it requires a broadening participation and computing plan. And it requires it at submission time. I’m going to talk about BPC plans later, but please note that this is different from the mediums that require it at the time of reward. This one requires at the time of submission. Smart and connected communities aims to integrate intelligent technologies with their surroundings. It has a social dimension that needs to be addressed. Again, out of this we expect wonderful collaborations between various widely different areas. Smart health and biomedical research in the area of artificial intelligence and advanced data science. This is a program that’s an example of how AI interacts with other areas as I mentioned before. The goal is to transform healthcare through IT. It supports research involving a range of our areas such as networking pervasive computing, sensor integration, advanced analytics, privacy and security modeling of social behavioral and cognitive processes, and system. And process modeling you can see that a variety of research areas can be involved in a proposal to this program. Designing accountable software systems supports research investigating the relationship between IT and society. So it supports collaborations between researchers in software design and researchers in law and the social behavioral and economic sciences. So, this is again a wide operating area for this proposal, for this program. Cyberinfrastructure for all of science and engineering is a program that spans a large number of directorates and supports the cyberinfrastructure ecosystem. Through two infrastructure grants. More on infrastructure, CCRI, CISE community research infrastructure investments another infrastructure program that I would encourage you to consider. And another infrastructure program is CISE research infrastructure investments cloud bank. So this is a supplement if you have a CISE, ask for a supplement to fund your cloud needs through this program. So let’s take a look at our education and workforce programs. As I said NSF supports K-12 undergraduate and graduate education. So the graduate research fellowship program, supporting students in the early graduate training has existed for a long time. There’s a new graduate fellowship program that supports bachelor’s degree recipients who are working in industry and now would like to start graduate school. And for undergraduates we have research experiences for undergraduates, REU. So there are two tracks if you will to this program. The first one is REU sites, which funds typically in summer. A cohort of roughly eight to ten undergraduate students in the same location. REU supplements a smaller scale, one to two students and for PIs who hold a CISE grant they can ask for a supplement to support, again usually over the summer, is one or two students involving them in their research. If you’re writing a proposal to CISE in your first year you can embed your REU request into your proposal. But afterwards you have to ask every year for a supplement. Those were at the undergraduate and graduate level, at the k through, pre-k through 12th level. NSF is invested in making computing, CS education available to everyone, all students, of all levels. So CSforAll supports research and research practitioner partnership between educators, researchers and computer scientists to make CS education ubiquitous in the country. So, let’s talk a little bit about broadening participation, which NSF is of course very much invested in. Help broaden participation, we now have this notion of a broadening participation in computing program. Which says that medium and large projects in core and SaTC must have an approved plan for meaningful activities to broaden participation in computer science. And this has to be given as a plan. So, we require a culture change in the computing community and we need to make computer science accessible to everyone through increased exposure and engagement and that’s the goal of this plan. So, these plans are supposed to be in place and approved by your program officers by the time your reward, your proposal has been awarded. Except for SaTC, again, for SaTC they have to be ready by the time that the proposal is submitted. There are various resources for developing these and also some departments are developing these plans for their faculty. And please consult ppcnet.org for some of these resources. So let’s look at five partnerships briefly. NSF partners with different kinds of stakeholders. And the objectives are to deepen and grow research and innovation, make available, makes research infrastructure available and develop the workforce of the future. So we partner with industry and private sector, federal agencies, international agencies, local and state governments, of course universities, and foundations. and non-profits. An example of a partnership that has had so many partners, as you can see is Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research. And you can see the partners won’t even fit into the bottom of the page. This program is not accepting proposals anymore with except supplement requests from existing awards. So why do we value industry partnerships? What do we get as NSF out of them and what does the industry get out of these partnerships? So NSF, this helps NSF accelerate discovery and leverage resources through financial expertise and infrastructure. Accelerate translation of discovery to the deployment, it helps grow workforce capacity, increase NSFs visibility to audiences. So NSF benefits in many ways. And some of these ways the industry also benefits in the same way. They get access to national research community, they get access to the merit review process. They, it accelerates discovery and it helps leverage resources, accelerates translation of discovery to deployment. Helps them, gives them access, better access to future workforce and help for, with potential intellectual property. So I have talked about some examples of what NSF does, what CISE does and what resources are available to get funding. And, let’s look at the resources to learn about funding resources, funding sources. So where should you go after this? I have given general information, where should you go for more specific information. So for junior faculty I strongly recommend checking out the workshops, such as the career writing workshop to help with the proposal writing. Individual programs have webinars that are very very helpful. Do not hesitate to contact your friendly program directors, we’re always happy to help, be happy to consult, meet with you, go over what you need to do, help you out. NSF has various newsletters ListServes, please try to subscribe to the ones that are relevant to you and you will get important information, including upcoming deadlines and new programs out of those sources. Panels, especially for junior researchers, but for everyone. We would strongly encourage you to volunteer to serve on panels. For junior researchers this is invaluable, you get to see the merit review process, you’ll learn information that helps you so much for your own proposal writing. And for everyone in general, we appreciate the help that you give us with the panelist, we realize it’s a lot of work. And this is help for both the community and NSF and we’re very thankful for you attending the panels. And we do hope that the processes that you observe during the panels are helpful for the proposal writing, even if you’re a senior researcher. Your professional organizations will be helpful in learning more about what’s available, what you can do. Solicitations, dear colleague letters and all of these are once again accessible from www.nsf.gov. If you go to the funding website, the funding tab you can search for all kinds of resources, all kinds of solicitations and DCL’s about what your, where your interests might lie. And you can get information about deadlines and whether the program is it good for you, good fit for you or not. This is a very exciting time to be in CISE, computing is everywhere and we engage with so many different communities. And everything is rapidly expanding and changing, the tremendous opportunities, we’re very glad to be here during a time like this. And we would like to see you be a part of this endeavor. Speaking of resource here is the main CISE-Announce email, but divisions and clusters within CISE have their own lists. So you can start off by sending an email to this address to join the mailing list. And you can follow NSF on the web, at these, from these links. Thank you very much for listening to me. I appreciate that you are here to hear what NSF has to say. And I’ll be happy to take questions. Thank you. >> Jeremy Leffler: Okay thank you Funda for that. Like to welcome you back for our Q&A session and before we get into the questions, Funda I know there was something you wanted to address before we get into the questions, about something in the presentation. >> Funda Ergun: Yes thank you so much, can you hear me? >> Jeremy Leffler: Yes. >> Funda Ergun: So I wanted to make a one small correction when I was talking about the CRII, the program for junior faculty. This was in the context of career and CRII. I gave a little bit of outdated information, because the eligibility criteria have changed. I said something about having limited resources given to you as a startup grant. That is not the criterion anymore. What we use, there are a bunch of criteria, please go to the solicitation to see what the up-to-date criteria are. But the main one that has replaced the one that I mentioned is you, cannot be from an r1 institution, so you cannot be a major research institution. And you can look up the list of r1 institutions anywhere, especially I think it’s even on Wikipedia. So, and then there are quite a few more criteria, so you should look them up, thank you. >> Jeremy Leffler: Yeah and it’s a good point to refer folks to the solicitations, because there are always eligibility criteria that are outlined there. And eligibility not only for the institution that is submitting the proposal, but also for the PI as well. So make sure that you’re looking at the eligibility criteria for the solicitations and make sure that you’re looking at the most recent one that’s come out. So, we’ve got a few minutes for some of these questions, Funda so I’m just going to go from the top down here. We had a question about the submit, a submission limit for the CISE core programs. Do you want to touch bit, touch a little bit on that? >> Funda Ergun: Yes. So the submission for the core regardless of whether it’s a smaller, medium or large one, large applies, maybe in the future is, two submissions per any 12 month period. So, it’s not 12 months starting in January ending at the end of the summer, it’s the sliding window. So, for any 12 month period starting whenever you cannot have more than two submissions to the core. >> Jeremy Leffler: Okay great. And you talked about the CISE career proposal writing workshops that are done in the spring. How would somebody find out about those? Is there a way to sign up for them? Oh go ahead. >> Funda Ergun: I’m going to post a link in a second. >> Jeremy Leffler: Okay. >> Funda Ergun: So I think there are multiple questions about these and this link is going to answer them better than anything else. I’m, where can I post it, can I? >> Jeremy Leffler: You can put that in the chat and just change the recipients to everyone. >> Funda Ergun: Okay, let me do that. >> Jeremy Leffler: And while you’re doing that I’ll note that there was a question of whether only faculty or could grant writers attend that? And I’m sure that is open to anybody who would like to register for those sessions, when they, when they are out there. >> Funda Ergun: So I wasn’t sure about that actually, I looked it up and what I saw it says, people who are eligible throughout career grants are eligible to apply for the workshops, that might be for the numbers. I would say check out the link and there is eligibility there. I don’t want to give incorrect information. >> Jeremy Leffler: Yeah check out the information that you posted and see what the instructions say for that. >> Funda Ergun: And there’s actually ans agenda there too, for the, this is the previous one, the one that we had this past spring and there’s an agenda of what happened there, I was there actually I talked to a bunch of young researchers. And that should answer the question about what it’s like, what kind of activities there are. >> Jeremy Leffler: Great. There’s a question about which programs count towards the limit for core programs in CISE. And this one was asking about the model plus. >> Funda Ergun: So this question is, yeah it’s a little bit more involved than it sounds. So, the core is smalls, mediums and larges, that’s that’s all there is in the core. So if you’re submitting one of these it counts towards the core. Now model, it used to be model, that it became scale model, now it’s model plus. During the time that it was model and scale model it had its own funding source. Model plus gets funded by the core. So to submit the model plus, which by the way is wrapping up, let’s just say, but it’s still, the the DCL is still valid. So that you have to submit to the core and then mention that this is also a submission to model plus, so that when you’re evaluating it we know that. But it’s essentially going to be a core submission as well, so that will count towards the core. >> Jeremy Leffler: Okay, we had a couple of questions about the foundational research and robotics program and career. Perhaps you could explain the difference between those and if there’s any connection between the two. >> Funda Ergun: Yeah there’s a connection between the two. So FRR, the foundational robotics, that is a topic, it’s a program, again with its own funding, everything is tied to some kind of funding and that’s how these classifications are done. So FRR supports various types of awards, one of them being careers. So you could get a career out of FRR, which means the money is going to come from FRR. You could get a career from somewhere else and in which case your funding could come from the general funding allocated, shared by the core for instance. So there are two orthogonal things if you will. They’re not the same. One is a program, one is in some sense a topic. >> Jeremy Leffler: Okay. Let’s see. There’s some, I don’t know Funda if you’re prepared to answer eligibility questions about the career program. But this it, there’s a question about being able to extend the 10-year limit for the PI. I think you, for this question you really need to look at the program solicitation. And if your question isn’t there, there is a email alias that you can send your question to within the program solicitation. Generally I think those eligibility restrictions are pretty hard and fast and they’re not exceptions made. But I would check with the solicitation and then send a, send your question to the email alias if you have anything else for that. Yeah. >> Funda Ergun: In general, another thing you might want to do, I’m sorry Jeremy, didn’t mean to interrupt you. >> Jeremy Leffler: No it’s okay. >> Funda Ergun: You shouldn’t be shy about contacting program directors, we get emails about things like this all the time. And they might even have a conversation with you and see if there any other options for you. It’s much better than just looking at a short piece of writing or asking somebody like me who is more of a generalist at this point. >> Jeremy Leffler: Okay we have a question about the REU program and whether there is a, I guess a prescribed dollar amount for one to two students. And I don’t believe that there is within the REU solicitation. I think you should be asking for what you need to, for those REU students to do the work that you’re expecting them to do. >> Funda Ergun: So that is true. Again some programs, some groups have a set amount on their minds, but it’s not, it’s not covered in stone, but they will navigate you towards that problem, I would still talk to your program director. We do recommend certain amounts in my cluster and other clusters might have different amounts in mind. >> Jeremy Leffler: Right, I mean and it’s gonna, it’s gonna vary across the foundation, because budgets are different across all of the programs and all of the directorates. >> Funda Ergun: It might even vary year to year depending on again budget situation. >> Jeremy Leffler: Okay . There is an email, somebody saying that they tried to join the that ListServe that you mentioned and it mentioned that it was not found. I don’t know how to answer that question. >> Funda Ergun: CISE IT might be able to help with that. Let me see if I can, if I can get CISE IT email in five seconds. Otherwise I’m not gonna answer anything. >> Jeremy Leffler: Yeah, I don’t know if that’s going to work for us today in the short amount of time that we have. >> Funda Ergun: That’s probably not the best way, yes, of doing it. But check out CISE IT help and they might be able to help with the ListServe. >> Jeremy Leffler: That’s great. If there are other questions please send them now, because we do just have a couple of minutes left and I don’t see, I think we’ve answered all of the ones that I’m seeing here. So, if we don’t have any other questions. Funda is there anything else you wanted to add before we before we say goodbye to everyone today? >> Funda Ergun: I would like to stress, I know I’ve said this many many times. But, as someone who has access to a lot of insight NSF information, I still go to www.nsf.gov to get information about funding opportunities, or information about awards and programs. So that’s a great place to go. >> Jeremy Leffler: Okay, well thank you Funda for an excellent presentation and for answering these questions. And I want to thank everyone for joining us today. And do have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you all so much. >> Funda Ergun: Thank you very much for coming and thank you Jeremy for having me here. >> Jeremy Leffler: Thank you, take care.(republichub.in)