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The Bioeconomy Goes Global Centers!

NSF_BIO2 Comments

Dear Colleague Letter Released Outlining Addressing Societal Challenges through the Bioeconomy as FY2024 Focus of NSF Global Centers Program

The topic for the FY2024 competition of the Global Centers program is anticipated to be Addressing Societal Challenges through the Bioeconomy and may include research from any combination of research disciplines supported by NSF. The Program anticipates accepting proposals for holistic, multidisciplinary projects that demonstrate integration of international teams as well as the relevant scientific disciplines, including educational and social sciences necessary to achieve use-inspired outcomes.

About Global Centers
Global Centers — launched in FY2023 — is a cross-directorate funding opportunity implemented in partnership with international funding partner agencies. Global Centers supports large-scale use-inspired research in collaboration with international partners to address global challenges that cannot be solved by any single country. The Global Centers program funds research centers that maximize the benefits of international, interdisciplinary collaborations through co-development of research and workforce training with diverse kinds of stakeholders impacted by global challenge themes. Funding levels for NSF Global Centers Implementation awards are up to $5,000,000 for durations of four to five years and Design awards are up to $250,000 in total over two years. In the inaugural FY23 competition, funding of both Implementation and Design awards totaled $76.4M across all partner agencies

Read the full DCL, including information on potential subtopics, international partners, anticipated competition schedule, and anticipated number of awards.

View the program page on NSF.gov.

Upcoming Chances to Learn About GRFP

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BIO’s Divisions of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB) and Biological Infrastructure (DBI) will be hosting Program Directors from the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) at their upcoming Virtual Office Hours. To learn more, visit the links below.

MCB:

Wednesday August 9, 2023, 2-3 pm ET

https://nsf.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_EUoEsbz6Rvm_zcbu20UfoQ

DBI:

Tuesday August 15, 2023, 3-4 pm ET

https://nsf.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_gb5OILkZSIqTjrHGBJs09A

Learn about the new tracks in NSF’s Convergence Accelerator

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The NSF Convergence Accelerator has issued a new funding opportunity for three new research track topics: Equitable Water Solutions, Real-World Chemical Sensing Applications, and Bio-Inspired Design Innovations.

Researchers and innovators have two submission pathways to submit their proposals: Solicitation, NSF-23-590, and Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), NSFBAA-CA23-01.

  • Required letters of intent are due by July 11, 2023.
  • Full proposals are due by 5 p.m. local time on August 22, 2023.

More information on the tracks and potential topics can be found on the program webpage.

Opportunities to Learn More: Upcoming Webinars

Join an NSF Convergence Accelerator webinar to learn about the program and the current funding opportunity.

Webinars will be held: May 25, 2023 and June 6, 2023 from 3 – 5 p.m. EDT.

Register now

During the webinars, participants will learn about:

  • the program’s model and fundamentals, including:
    • the program’s phased approach
    • innovation processes used to accelerate basic research into practice
  • the solicitation opportunity and the research track focuses
  • required Convergence Accelerator fundamentals, and important submission information.

The goal of these webinars is to bring awareness of this exciting opportunity to develop use-inspired solutions to have a positive impact on national and societal challenges. 

Optional 30 minute Track Breakouts

At 4:30 p.m. EDT, join us for an optional 30 minute breakout session featuring the three track topics. Here you can ask additional questions and engage with similarly-interested stakeholders and researchers to potentially assist you in forming your team and formulating your proposal.

Join BIO for a Virtual Office Hour on Broader Impacts

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Susan Renoe, PhD

Special Guest: Susan Renoe, PhD, Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS)

Join NSF’s Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) on Wednesday, June 7, 2023, from 2pm to 3pm ET for a virtual office hour on broader impacts. BIO Program Directors and staff will be joined by special guest Susan Renoe, PhD, Associate Vice Chancellor at the University of Missouri and Executive Director of the NSF-funded Center for Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS) (OIA-1810732).

Dr. Renoe will discuss how to make your Broader Impacts plans have impact and provide helpful resources to use when thinking about the broader impacts of your research.

Register for the June 7 VOH

Resources to get you started

If you want to brush up on the topic before the VOH, check out the ARIS website and ARIS Broader Impacts Toolkit.

Previous blog posts on Broader Impacts can be found HERE and HERE.

About ARIS

The Center for Advancing Research Impact in Society seeks to amplify the impacts of research by supporting investigators from diverse fields and partnering with NSF and other organizations aligned with ARIS’s vision to prioritize research impacts for the benefit of society.

To accomplish its mission, ARIS has several major strategic initiatives in progress, including the Program to Enhance Organizational Research Impact Capacity (ORIC). ORIC brings together cohorts of institutions and organizations chosen through a competitive application process to receive training, resources and mentorship that will allow them to substantially enhance their internal capacity to support research impact.

ARIS has developed a suite of helpful and frequently used planning tools, called the BI Toolkit. The toolkit now includes the BI Guiding Principles document, BI Planning checklist, the BI Wizard, and the BI Evaluation Rubric.

ARIS is also creating a Broader Impacts Certification & MicroCredential program. When complete, the program will include six modules: BI Foundations, writing an Effective BI Plan, Faculty Development in BI, Building Strong Partnerships, Broadening Participation through BI and Evaluating BI.

ARIS also offers custom training for institutions in addition to trainings that are open to all. ARIS shares resources and news with the more than 1,500 community members who subscribe to the ARIS newsletter.

BIO Welcomes New Deputy Division Director in DEB

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Dr. Bernice L. Smith (Credit: Bernice L. Smith)

BIO is pleased to welcome Dr. Bernice L. Smith as the new Deputy Division Director for the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB). Dr. Smith was most recently a Senior Science and Policy Advisor, Planning and Performance Lead, and Justice40 Lead in the Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where she previously held other positions. She also served as a program manager for global climate change research at EPA’s National Center for Environmental Research.  

Dr. Smith is not new to NSF, she previously served on a detail as Acting Deputy Division Director in the Division of Social and Economic Sciences within the Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). During that detail, she co-led the Strategic Review Team that helped modernize NSF’s Merit Review Report.  

She holds a PhD in Environmental Design and Planning from Virginia Tech and a Master of Science degree from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Smith earned her Bachelor of Science from Hampton University. 

BIO wants to thank Dr. Matt Kane and Dr. Katharina Dittmar for their time as Acting Deputy Division Director over the past year. 

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Smith.

Second Virtual Office Hour on New Requirement for Safe and Inclusive Work Environments Plan

NSF_BIO1 Comment

As was noted previously in this blog, several solicitations from the Directorates for Biological Sciences (BIO) and Geological Sciences (GEO) will soon require the submission of a Safe and Inclusive Work Environments Plan (list of those solicitations below) that will be considered as part of the Broader Impacts criteria during the review process.

A virtual office hour was held on February 7. Slides and a recording are available at https://beta.nsf.gov/events/safe-inclusive-working-environments-requirements/2023-02-07.

A second Virtual Office Hour will occur on March 20, 2023 from 3 – 4 PM ET. Program Officers from BIO and GEO will provide an overview of the new requirement and take your questions and comments.

As a reminder, this 2-page supplementary document must address the following four sections:

  1. a brief description of the field setting and unique challenges for the team;  
  2. the steps the proposing organization will take to nurture an inclusive off-campus or off-site working environment, including processes to establish shared team definitions of roles, responsibilities, and culture, e.g., codes of conduct, trainings, mentor/mentee mechanisms and field support that might include regular check-ins, and/or developmental events;   
  3. communication processes within the off-site team and to the organization(s) that minimize singular points within the communication pathway (e.g., there should not be a single person overseeing access to a single satellite phone); and   
  4. the organizational mechanisms that will be used for reporting, responding to, and resolving issues of harassment if they arise.   

If you are planning a submission that will involve off-campus or off-site research, defined as data/information/samples being collected off-campus or off-site including via fieldwork and research activities on vessels and aircraft, we encourage you to join this webinar. 

Register for the webinar HERE

The solicitations that currently include this requirement are:

  • BIO Core Solicitations:
    • Division of Environmental Biology (NSF 23-549) 
    • Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (NSF 23-547) 
    • Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (NSF 23-548) 
  • Biodiversity on a Changing Planet (BoCP, NSF 23-542) 
  • Plant Genome Research Program (PGRP, NSF 23-559)
  • Pathways into the Geosciences (GEOPAths NSF 23-540) 
  • Cultural Transformation in the Geosciences Community (CTGC NSF 23-539) 

See the previous post at https://oadblog.nsfbio.com/2023/01/25/dont-miss-it/.

Don’t miss it! Virtual Office Hour featuring the new Safe and Inclusive Work Environments Plan requirement for Off-Campus or Off-Site Research

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Tuesday Feb. 7, 2023 3:30- 4:30 ET

Several solicitations from the Directorates for Biosciences (BIO) and Geological Sciences (GEO) will soon require the submission of a Safe and Inclusive Work Environments Plan (list of those solicitations below) that will be considered as part of the Broader Impacts criteria during the review process. An upcoming Virtual Office Hour listening session will occur on February 7, 2023. Program Officers from BIO and GEO will provide an overview of the new requirement and take your questions and comments.

This 2-page supplementary document must address the following four sections:

  1. a brief description of the field setting and unique challenges for the team; 
  2. the steps the proposing organization will take to nurture an inclusive off-campus or off-site working environment, including processes to establish shared team definitions of roles, responsibilities, and culture, e.g., codes of conduct, trainings, mentor/mentee mechanisms and field support that might include regular check-ins, and/or developmental events;  
  3. communication processes within the off-site team and to the organization(s) that minimize singular points within the communication pathway (e.g., there should not be a single person overseeing access to a single satellite phone); and  
  4. the organizational mechanisms that will be used for reporting, responding to, and resolving issues of harassment if they arise.   

If you are planning a submission that will involve off-campus or off-site research, defined as data/information/samples being collected off-campus or off-site including via fieldwork and research activities on vessels and aircraft, we encourage you to join this webinar.

Register for the webinar HERE

The solicitations that currently include this requirement are:

  • BIO Core Solicitations:
    • Division of Environmental Biology (NSF 23-549)
    • Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (NSF 23-547)
    • Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (NSF 23-548 )
  • Biodiversity on a Changing Planet (BoCP, NSF 23-542)
  • Pathways into the Geosciences (GEOPAths NSF 23-540)
  • Cultural Transformation in the Geosciences Community (CTGC NSF 23-539)

Understanding the Rules of Life: Emergent Networks (URoL:EN) Webinar Announced

NSF_BIO

As noted previously on BIO Buzz, NSF has recently released a revised solicitation under the Understanding the Rules of Life: Emerging Networks (URoL:EN) program. To help inform the community of the changes in and particulars of the new solicitation, the program team will be holding a webinar on Friday, January 7, 2022 from 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. ET.

Program Officers will provide an introduction of the revised cross-Directorate solicitation and will be available for questions.

REGISTER HERE

As a reminder, the new solicitation is part of the Understanding the Rules of Life: Predicting Phenotype, one of ten “Big Ideas” NSF-wide, and builds on previous URoL programs to help increase knowledge and the ability to predict an organism’s observable characteristics—its phenotype—from its genotype.

Proposals under the solicitation should be submitted by March 1, 2022.

For more information, see the previous BIO Buzz post.

For full details and guidance on award types, amounts and other questions, see Understanding the Rules of Life: Emergent Networks (URoL:EN).

BIO-Wide Virtual Office Hours on New PAPPG

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At 3:00 PM Eastern Time on October 26, 2021, join the Directorate for Biological Sciences for a BIO-wide Virtual Office Hour on the changes in the new NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG, 22-1), which will become effective on October 4, 2021.

Representatives from NSF’s Policy Office will present on the changes and be available for questions. 

Register in advance for this webinar:
https://nsf.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_udIs4ENmQxetfQUu4LSpeQ
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

As a reminder, the PAPPG is comprised of documents relating to the Foundation’s proposal and award process for the assistance programs of NSF. The PAPPG, in conjunction with the applicable standard award conditions incorporated by reference in the award, serve as the Foundation’s implementation of 2 CFR §200, Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards.

The to-be-effective PAPPG (22-1) can be found at https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappg22_1/nsf22_1.pdf and a list of changes begins on page 2 of the PDF.”

Webinar: LEAPS for Biology

NSF_BIO

As noted previously on this blog, NSF has recently launched a new opportunity for professional societies to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion — LEAPS (LEAding cultural change through Professional Societies) for Biology. NSF is offering a webinar for the LEAPS program on March 24th at 2 p.m. EST.  We encourage representatives from societies across the biological sciences and those societies focused on broadening participation (SACNAS, AISES, ABRCMS) and/or from the NSF INCLUDES National Network to participate. Individuals from Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and other organizations/institutions serving diverse populations are also encouraged to attend.

If interested, please register in advance at: https://nsf.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_fMuNjibLT4OZeAq4VLQNCg. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

If you have any questions, please contact one of the following Program Officers: