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.

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.

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/.

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.

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).

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.”

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 24^th 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:

• Dan Marenda (dmarenda@nsf.gov) 
• Wilson Francisco (wfrancis@nsf.gov)
• Jodie Jawor (jjawor@nsf.gov)
• Maureen Kearney (mkearney@nsf.gov) 

The Directorates for Biological Sciences (BIO); Computer Information Science and Engineering (CISE); Engineering (ENG); Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE); and the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) have jointly supported a series of interdisciplinary workshops to engage research communities around the topic of Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention.

The fourth and concluding workshop will be held on March 22-23, 2021 and examine how human attitudes, social behavior, and the drivers underlying both contribute to disease transmission through their determination of policy and behavioral obstacles and supports. We encourage investigators across the biological sciences involved in infectious disease-related research to participate as the workshop will provide an opportunity to network with researchers in akin areas across the sciences and engineering. You can register at https://nsf.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_p3YtA1RwQPCV6z1wWZAx7g.

Previous workshops have focused on the ability to rapidly detect and assess the threat of emerging pathogens; an understanding of how the global behavior of an organism is related to interactions between components at the molecular, cellular, and physiological scales; and the identification of pre-emergence and the prediction of rare events.

The goal of the series is to bring together interdisciplinary experts in the biological, engineering, computer, and social and behavioral sciences to start conversations and catalyze ideas on how to advance scientific understanding beyond state-of-the-art in pre-emergence and emergence forecasting, real-time monitoring, and detection of inflection point events in order to prevent and mitigate the occurrence of future pandemics. As per our mission, these NSF supported workshops will focus on the foundational knowledge and capabilities needed to inform future infectious disease outbreak prediction and pandemic prevention.

Each of these workshops is expected to have up to 50 invited active participants. The community can participate in a listen-only mode and interact through chat and Q&A functions.

 More information on the series can be found at https://www.nsf.gov/events/event_summ.jsp?cntn_id=302023&org=CISE.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact both researchers and research infrastructure alike. Despite the negative effects, the research community has continued to advance our knowledge, spur innovation, and make discoveries. You also continue to serve as reviewers and panelists, for which we thank you.

Throughout the past year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has supported the research community by providing guidance, funding flexibilities, and deadline extensions. This support will remain a top priority for NSF as we seek to recover from the pandemic. Up-to-date information on these offerings continues to be added to the agency’s Coronavirus Information page.

As we continue to assess the ongoing impact the pandemic is having on the scientific workforce, NSF and the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) recognizes that it is particularly affecting individuals at critical career points and those at historically under-resourced institutions. While broad support for the community continues to be our priority, including in the opportunity to request supplements to existing awards, BIO wants to highlight the below programs that can support these specific groups. 

Researchers across the biological sciences should review these opportunities and share within their networks. In order to answer any questions you may have about these efforts, or the support available to the wider community, we held a BIO-wide virtual office hour on Tuesday, March 2 from 11AM to 12 PM Eastern. A recording of the session is available (Access Passcode: ++6ZM*=i).

On behalf of BIO and all of NSF, I thank you for your continued work and support during these trying times.

Sincerely,

Joanne Tornow
NSF Assistant Director, BIO

Postdoctoral Research Fellows
As we did in FY 2020, BIO intends to increase the total amount of funding available through the Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB) Program to support early-career scientists as they embark on research projects investigating life from the genome to the ecosystem level.  

Early-career Investigators
BIO plans an increase to the number of Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards across the Directorate, sustaining the enhancement of these awards within BIO in FY 2020.

Mid-career Researchers
Through the Transitions to Excellence in Molecular and Cellular Biosciences Research  (Transitions) program in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB) and the NSF-wide Mid-Career Advancement (MCA) program, BIO will support researchers at the Associate Professor stage or equivalent, to substantively enhance and advance their research program through mutually beneficial partnerships. Transitions also supports those at the Full Professor stage, or equivalent.

Undergraduate Biology Education
BIO recently published a Dear Colleague Letter encouraging proposals for the Research Coordination Networks for Undergraduate Biology Education (RCN-UBE) Program, which seeks to improve undergraduate biology in different areas, including through the use of virtual learning, by leveraging the power of a collaborative network.