Funding Opportunities forGI Science

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National Science Foundation

Nina Lam 02/04/00

NSF Mission

• To promote the progress of science

• To advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare

• To secure the national defense

Major Activities • Initiate and support, through grants and contracts,

scientific and engineering research• Support educational programs at all levels• Foster international interchange of scientific

information• Provide information on science and engineering

appropriate for development of national and international policy

• Increase diversity

A Science Management Agency• Response to input from scientists and institutions on

broad civilian scientific needs• Over 4.0 billion/year budget• 1,200 full-time employees• 30,000 proposals/year• 60 advisory groups (6,000 members)• 250,000 reviews (50,000 reviewers)• 9,000 new awards/year to universities, non-profit,

small business

Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA)

• Discoveries at and across the frontier of science and engineering

• Connections between discoveries and their use in service to society

• Diverse, globally-oriented workforce of scientists and engineers

• Improved achievement in mathematics and science skills needed by all Americans

NSF Organization Chart

Current Funding Opportunities

• Within program

• Between programs (co-reviews)

• Within Directorate

• Cross-Directorate

• Foundation-wide

• Interagency

Example Projects by

Geography and Regional Science • An important area of focus in GRS • NCGIA; Varenius project• “The geography of English dialect features by self-

organizing maps”• “Searching on remotely sensed imagery”• “Geographic categories: An ontological investigation”• “Methods for monitoring spatial patterns”• “A spatially-distributed GIS-based analysis of

temperatures in a stream network”

Example Projects byGeography and Regional Science

• “An ordinary least squares solution to handling spatial autocorrelation latent in georeferenced data”

• “Soils, geomorphology, GIS and paleolakes in Northern Michigan”

• “CORONA and the secret mapping of the U.S.”• “Off-route strategies in non-visual navigation”• “The social construction of GIS: software, data, and

results”• “International workshop on GIS and Modeling”

Directorate for Social,Behavioral and Economic Sciences

• Enhancing infrastructure for the SBESix current awards:

1. “Center for spatially enabled social science”

2. “TalkBank: A multimedia database of communicative interaction”

3. “The national FMRI data center”

4. “Dynamic employer-household data and the social data infrastructure”

Directorate for Social,Behavioral and Economic Sciences

5. “Finding aids, bibliographic references, expert training, and integrated hyperlinks”

6. “International integrated microdata access system

Deadline: Aug. 1, 2000; 4-8 awards

not less than $500,000/year, 3-5 years

Other Crosscutting and Interdisciplinary Programs

• Digital Libraries (e.g. Alexandria Digital Earth...)• CAREER: Faculty Early Career Development Program• POWRE: Professional Opportunities for Women in

Research and Education• SBIR: Small Business Innovation Research• IGERT: Integrative Graduate Education and Research

Training• KDI (Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence)• Water and Watersheds (NSF/EPA/USDA)

Major Initiatives (>$50 mil.)

• Biocomplexity

must be multidisciplinary (as many as possible); large-scale; across scales; biological, physical and social systems; model driven

Full proposal: March 1, 2000

• Workforce in the 21st Century

Major Initiatives (>$50 mil.)

• ITR: Information Technology Research ($90M) areas include:

software; information technology education and workforce; human computer interface; information management; computational science; scalable information infrastructure; social and economic implications; revolutionary computing

Major Initiatives (>$50 mil.) -Information Technology Research

• Proposals > 500K

930 preproposals submitted;

recommend about 120 for full proposals

• Proposals <500K

1800 Letters of intent received!!

• Encourage your participation!!

Upcoming Funding Opportunities

• Y2001 proposed budget and its impacts to GI Science:

- Significant increase in ITR (~ 223 mil+)

- Could a portion be devoted to GI Science?

- Within BCS, 1.6 mil increase for basic research in GI Science

Upcoming Funding Opportunities

• Another major foundation-wide initiative based in SBE?

Spans the interests of most NSF directorates;includes most of the programs in SBE;

challenges the scientific communities

productively;

has broad-based support from communities

and politics

• Need input from the UCGIS community

Miscellaneous Comments

• Think Big: How to develop successful collaboration?

• New research challenges in a cohesive manner, instead of a laundry list?

• Educational challenges: are we creating basic-level technicians only?