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Descripton at end of newsletter Week of March 18, 2024
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Greetings Dornsife Faculty,
This week our report includes
- Honors for two Dornsife faculty members;
- External success obtained by two faculty members;
- Current external funding opportunities, including three limited submissions;
- Announcement for upcoming Center for Excellence in Research workshop;
- Friendly reminder of office hours for Dornsife Research Office.
Best regards,
Renee J. Perez, Vice Dean, Administration & Finance
Cathleen Crayton, Project Specialist
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Accolades
Fengzhu Sun, Quantitative and Computational Biology, Elected Fellow for his outstanding developments and applications of probability and statistics methods to central biological and biomedical problems, in particular, protein interaction networks and metagenomics, Institute of Mathematical Statistics
Jody Agius Vallejo, Sociology, The 2023 Section on International Migration Award for Public Sociology in International Migration
External Funding Successes
Doug LaRowe, Earth Sciences, Habitability estimates for heterotrophy on Noachian Mars (HabMars), State University of New York at Stony Brook
Mengxiao Wang, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Buddhism and Theatricality in Early Modern China, American Council of Learned Societies
External Funding Opportunities
**Limited Submission***
(1 application per submission)
United States Department of State / Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation
Program: Semiconductor Security Academy
Funding Opportunity Number: DFOP0009897
Synopsis: Supports projects that address national security deficiencies in partner nations’ technology protection mechanisms centering on semiconductor-related technology and intellectual property (IP). Specifically, this project calls for the development and delivery of two (2) workshops of the ITSI Protect Semiconductor Security Academy (IPSSA) for foreign government officials. One iteration will invite working-level officials and the other will invite senior-level officials. The working-level iteration should last for no more than two weeks (i.e., applications may propose a duration anywhere in the range of one to two weeks); the senior-level iteration should not exceed five working days. Sessions shall cover key capacities that governments need to address in safeguarding critical technologies from unauthorized acquisition and misuse, including (partial):
- Strengthening strategic trade control legal-regulatory frameworks;
- Adopting, implementing, and enforcing intangible technology transfer (ITT) and/or military end-use “catch-all” controls;
- Crafting measures to conduct an assessment of risks of foreign direct investment (FDI) into technology sectors with military end-use applications;
- Improving public procurement regulations to protect relevant high-tech and critical infrastructure sectors;
- Conducting outreach to private sector industries operating in the semiconductor space to improve research/IP protections and internal compliance measures.
As well as sessions that elaborate on threats to semiconductor supply chains and identify end-uses and actors that pose potential security, privacy, and ethical concerns. This instruction should be comprehensive and explain how supply chains for legacy chips —especially those centered on assembly, testing, and packaging — must also be protected from exploitation and misuse.
Award details: Maximum award is $1.4M over 2 years.
USC Internal announcement: https://rii.usc.edu/limited-submissions/dfop0009897/
Announcement on website: Semiconductor Security Academy
USC Internal due date: April 1, 2024.
Application due date: May 3, 2024.
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***Limited Submission***
(Up to 4 nominations per university; see details in synopsis)
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Program: NCI Pathway to Independence (K99/00 — Career Transition Award/Research Transition Award)
NOFO #: PAR-23-286
Synopsis: Supports postdoctoral fellows with research and / or clinical doctoral degrees who do not require an extended period of mentored research training beyond their doctoral degrees. The objective of this award is to facilitate a timely transition of these fellows from their mentored, postdoctoral research positions to independent tenure-track (or equivalent) faculty positions. The program will provide independent NCI research support during this transition to help awardees to launch competitive, independent research careers. Researchers in the scientific areas of cancer control sciences, molecular / precision cancer prevention, and cancer data sciences are especially encouraged to work with their institutions to apply. Eligible candidates have not previously held an independent tenure-track faculty position in academia or elsewhere; have no more than 2 years postdoctoral experience in a related field at the time of application; or who have not received an independent research award (R01, R03, R21) or a career independent award (K01, K07 et al.); have not received a peer-reviewed non-NIH award for $100K); or have not served as Project Leaders for subcontract awards for Center grants (P50) or program project grants (P01).
Award details: Mentored phase: Up to $100K per year for salary support; Independent phase: $249K per year for salary support, fringe benefits, research costs, and applicable indirect costs. 75% effort (or 9 person-months) of professional effort required for project. Total project period is 5 years.
USC Internal announcement: https://rii.usc.edu/limited-submissions/par-23-286/
External announcement on website: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-23-286.html
USC Internal due date: April 12, 2024.
External due date: Multiple due dates through 2026. Next due date is June 14, 2024.
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**Limited Submission***
(One nomination per major division, e.g., Dornsife Keck, Engineering] per institution allowed — Contact Dean’s Office)
William T. Grant Foundation
Program: 2024 William T. Grant Scholars
Synopsis: Supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The areas of research interest are (1) Reducing Inequality in youth outcomes; and (2) Improving the Use of Research Evidence — studies that advance theory and build empirical knowledge on ways to improve the use of research evidence by policymakers, agency leaders, organizational managers, intermediaries, and other decision-makers that shape youth-serving systems in the United States. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas. In years one through three of their awards, Scholars may apply for additional awards to mentor junior researchers of color. Eligible applicants must be employed in career-ladder positions. For many applicants, such as Dornsife, this may mean holding a tenure-track position.
Award details: $350K over 5-year project period.
USC Internal announcement: https://rii.usc.edu/limited-submissions/william-t-grant-scholars-program/
External announcement on website: https://wtgrantfoundation.org/funding/william-t-grant-scholars-program
USC Internal due date: Contact Dornsife Dean’s office (or Divisional Dean’s office)
Mentor and Reference Letter due date: June 12, 2024.
External due date: July 3, 2024. Award begins July 1, 2025.
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MIT Solve
Program: 2024 Global Learning Challenge
Synopsis: Supports ideas that leverage technology to address equity gaps in learning. MIT Solve will support innovators across any learning area, of particular interest for 2024 are solutions that:
- Ensure that all children are learning in good educational environments, particularly those affected by poverty or displacement.
- Use inclusive design to ensure engagement and better outcomes for learners with disabilities and neurodivergent learners, while benefiting all learners.
- Provide the skills that people need to thrive in both their community and a complex world, including social-emotional competencies, problem-solving, and literacy around new technologies such as AI.
Award details: Solver awards are $10K.
Announcement on website: https://solve.mit.edu/challenges/2024-global-learning-challenge
Application due date: April 18, 2024.
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The Nathan Cummings Foundation (NCF)
Program: Grants and Program-Related Investments
Synopsis: Supports proposals that align with NCF’s priorities of racial justice and economic / environmental justice. Supports projects seeking to decrease regressive policies aimed at disenfranchising and limiting political participation by BIPOC and other marginalized communities; projects that foster public leadership; and projects that encourage policy interventions around democratic ideals.
Award details: Grants typically range from $50K to $250K; PRI funding typically ranges from $200K to $500K
Announcement on website: https://nathancummings.org/apply-for-funding/
Letter of Intent due date: April 30, 2024. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.
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Genentech
Program: 2024 Genentech Health Equity Innovation Fund: Request for Proposals
Synopsis: Supports teams (comprised of patients, communities, and students) focused on measurably and sustainably closing racial/ethnic inequities in healthcare to create a future where (1) All patients — with special emphasis on those marginalized by our healthcare system — define and attain their highest levels of health supported by a system that is accountable for delivering high-quality competent care; and (2) the medical and scientific workforce is diverse, inclusive, thriving and accountable to all patients. Grants can be used to develop and test novel ideas or tools, implement demonstration projects, resource collaboration and partnership, and support research that goes beyond “studying the problem” or builds capacity within a single institution.
Award details: Up to $750K per project for a project period ranging from 18 months to 3 years.
Announcement on website: Genentech Health Equity Innovation Award
Application due date: Initial application due April 15, 2024.
Full application due date: Applicants will be notified in June 2024 when all reviews of the initial applications are completed. Finalists will be invited to submit full applications.
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Burroughs Wellcome Fund
Program: Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants
Synopsis: Supports activities that build connections between basic / early biomedical scientific approaches and ecological, environmental, geological, geographic, and planetary-scale thinking, as well as with population-focused fields, including epidemiology and public health, demography, economics, and urban planning. Also of interest is work piloting new approaches or interactions toward reducing the impact of health-centered activities, such as developing more sustainable systems for health care, care delivery, and biomedical research systems. Public outreach, climate communication, and education efforts focused on the intersection of climate and health in preparation for the impacts of extreme weather and other crises that can drive large-scale disruptions that will immediately impact human health and the delivery of health care are also of interest for support.
Award details: Grants range from $2,5K–$50K
Announcement on website: https://www.bwfund.org/funding-opportunities/climate-change-and-human-health/climate-change-and-human-health-seed-grants/
Rolling Application due dates: April 25, 2024, and July 25, 2024. Online application.
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NOMIS Foundation and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Program: The Nomis & Science Young Explorer Award
Synopsis: Supports early-career scientists that perform research at the intersection of the social and life sciences. Essays written by these bold researchers on their recent work are judged for clarity, scientific quality, creativity, and demonstration of cross-disciplinary approaches to address fundamental questions.
Award details: A cash prize of up to US $15,000 will be awarded to essay winners, and their engaging essays will be published in Science. Winners will also be invited to share their work and forward-looking perspective with leading scientists in their respective fields at an award ceremony.
Announcement on website: Nomis & Science Young Explorer Award
Application due date: May 15, 2024.
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National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
Program: Cultural and Community Resilience
Funding Opportunity Number: 20240521-PN
Synopsis: Supports community-based efforts to address the impacts of climate change and COVID-19 by safeguarding cultural resources and fostering cultural resilience through identifying, documenting, and/or collecting cultural heritage and community experiences. The program prioritizes projects from disadvantaged communities in the United States or its jurisdictions, and NEH encourages applications that employ inclusive methodologies
Award details: Applicants may request up to a total of $150K (for both direct and indirect costs) over 2 years.
Announcement on website: Cultural and Community Resilience
Application due date: May 21, 2024. Projects may start between February 1, 2025, and September 1, 2025.
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EPA / Office of Science — Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Program
Program: Advancing Sustainable Chemistry
Synopsis: Supports projects that align with Goal 7, Objective 1 & 2 of EPA’s FY 2022-2026 Strategic Plan: Ensure Safety of Chemicals for People and the Environment, (Objective 7.1): Ensure Chemical and Pesticide Safety, and (Objective 7.2): Promote Pollution Prevention, of the Plan. Specifically this Request for Applications seeks applications to (1) standardize, improve, and operationalize data sharing of chemicals and chemical processing information for sustainable chemistry, (2) incorporate novel methods to develop and evaluate more sustainable chemical alternatives, and (3) apply life cycle analysis to evaluate more sustainable chemical alternatives to reduce and eliminate adverse environmental and public health impacts while integrating the concepts of sustainability into chemical products, processes, and supply chains. Proposals ought to address at least 2 of these areas. The solicitation provides details on the 3 areas.
Award details: Up to $1.5M per award is anticipated. The maximum project period is 3 years.
Announcement on website: EPA-Sustainable Chemistry
Application due date: May 29, 2024.
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NSF / Directorates for BIO, GEO, SBE and CISE
Program: Innovative Use of Scientific Collections (IUSC) via Dear Colleague Letter (DCL)
DCL #: 24-069
Synopsis: Encourages submission of proposals, to programs in the above listed Directorates, that foster IUSC and / or associated digital data for novel research, education, and training applications within and across STEM disciplines. NSF has made significant investments in collections and collections-associated data over the 1 last decade. Collections-focused NSF initiatives in the recent past have included the Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections program and the Collections competitive area of the Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology. Examples of such proposals could include (partial)
- Include as a Broader Impact the use of existing collections to engage students in authentic research experiences;
- Propose innovative use of existing biodiversity, living stocks, geological, anthropological, and/or behavioral collections, images and other digital media, and collections-associated data, including to develop or apply new analytical techniques or to answer new scientific questions beyond the original intention of the collections; and
- Make use of biological, genomic, and/or geological samples and specimens collected by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) from terrestrial and aquatic sites and housed at the NEON Bio repository.
The DCL lists the divisions in the above-listed Directorates that welcome proposals for IUSC
Announcement on website: IUSC DCL
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U.S. Department of Agriculture / National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Program: Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program Education and Workforce Development (AFRI-EWD)
Funding Opportunity #: USDA-NIFA-AFRI- 010693
Synopsis: Supports education and training grants that focus on further enhancing the distinct components of the pipeline for developing the workforce in the food and agricultural sciences. The AFRI EWD Program Area RFA addresses projected shortfalls of qualified graduates in the agricultural, food, and renewable natural resources sectors of the U.S. economy. The AFRI EWD Program Area has four overarching goals, very broadly outlined here, with great detail in the RFA:
1. Growing Agricultural Literacy and Workforce Development for the Future offers
institutional grants to provide K-14 teachers and administrators with increased knowledge of the food and agricultural sciences and help them develop improved curricula to train the agricultural workforce for the future.
2. Training or Retraining of Agricultural Workers provides institutional training grants to develop a technology- and data-savvy workforce ready for the field and industrial jobs.
3. Developing Pathways provides formal or non-formal education experiential learning for students to enter or gain skills applicable to the food and agriculture fields.
4. Advancing Science supports graduate and post-graduate education in food and agriculture disciplines.
Award details: $49M in Program Funds
Announcement on website: AFRI-EWD
Application due date: Varies by priority area.
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NSF / Across Most Directorates, including BIO, MPS, STEM, SBE, and TIP
Program: Funding Opportunities for Science and Engineering Research with Impact on Women’s Health via Dear Colleague Letter (DLC)
NSF DCL #: 24-068
Synopsis: Responding to the White House Initiative on Women’s Health, NSF encourages the submission of research and education proposals related to women's health. Despite making up more than half of the population, women are historically understudied and underrepresented in health research. The historical exclusion of women from scientific and biomedical research studies, combined with the undervaluation of research that advances knowledge on conditions that uniquely, differentially, or disproportionately affect women, has resulted in significant knowledge and health gaps. Addressing these research gaps will ultimately advance the health, prosperity, and welfare for all. Examples of proposal topics could include (partial)
- Projects that develop a well-informed citizenry and a diverse and capable STEM workforce that will pioneer the next generation of discoveries in women's health.
- Holistic approaches to women's health and development, including aging, by moving beyond diagnostics and disease management to include novel methods for discovery and monitoring. This includes, but is not limited to, wearable devices, and other types of sensing and imaging technologies that improve early detection, as well as telehealth platforms that broaden accessibility and promote women's health.
- Research that seeks to advance knowledge about the processes that shaped biological diversity in living and ancient human species such as effects of life history transitions on women's health; intergenerational effects of violence, stress, and maternal health; and impacts of biocultural context on women's health, reproduction, and epigenetics.
Announcement on website: DCL 24-068
Proposal Instructions: This DCL does not constitute a new competition or program. Proposals submitted in response to this DCL should be prepared and submitted by guidelines in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide and instructions found in relevant NSF funding opportunities. Investigators are advised to contact the cognizant program officer listed in the funding opportunity.
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NSF - The Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) and partnerships with the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA/NIFA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI), United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)
Program: Emerging Mathematical Tools Applied to Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease via Dear Colleague Letter (DCL)
DCL #: 24-067
Synopsis: Supports research that provides a predictive understanding of pathogen transmission dynamics. The program intends to discover of principles of infectious disease (re) emergence and transmission and test mathematical or computational models that elucidate infectious disease systems. Those models can be of any type that advances causal or mechanistic understanding, including, but not limited to, models that use artificial intelligence or machine learning. The Program also encourages projects that take advantage of emerging technologies, such as remote sensing and precision treatment, especially those that will enhance food security. Projects should bring together such areas as anthropology, behavior, bioinformatics, computational science, ecology, economics, epidemiology, evolution, food science, genomics, geography, global health, immunology, mathematics, medicine, microbiology, oceanography, plant science, population biology, sociology, physical environmental sciences, systems science, and veterinary medicine.
Announcement on website: DCL 24-067
Proposal due date for EEID: November 20, 2024.
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NIH / Office of Strategic Coordination
Program: NIH Director’s Innovator Award Program (DP2 — NIH Director’s Award)
NOFO #: RFA-RM-24-003
Synopsis: Supports early-stage investigators of exceptional creativity who propose bold and highly innovative research projects with the potential to produce a major impact on broad, important areas relevant to the mission of NIH. Applications in all topics relevant to the broad mission of NIH are welcome, including, but not limited to, behavioral, social, biomedical, applied, and formal sciences and topics that may involve basic, translational, or clinical research.
Award details: Project period of 5 years: Awards will be in two multi-year segments, the first of 3 years followed by a segment of 2 years; the 3-year segment will have an award budget of up to $900K in direct costs.
Announcement on website: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-RM-24-003.html
Application due date: August 19, 2024.
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Announcements of Interest for Dornsife Investigators
USC OFFICE OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION
Center for Excellence in Research
Upcoming Workshop
Evidence Synthesis Services at USC Libraries for UPC
Systematic review and evidence synthesis is the process of bringing together all the relevant published scholarly information on a specific research question. In this workshop, Presenter will discuss the Non-Medical Science Systematic Reviews (NMSSR) and Evidence Synthesis Services available at UPC, including the service levels offered, a detailed roadmap of how it’s done at USC, and an explanation of how to adapt it to multi-disciplinary studies. This service model is getting national recognition and has been presented at the Association of College and Research Libraries.
Date: April 2, 2024 Time: 9:30 to 11:30 a.m.
Zoom Registration: Check with the Center for Excellence in Research (https://rii.usc.edu/cer/)
Presenter: Jade Winn, Associate University Librarian/Systematic Review Librarian
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DORNSIFE RESEARCH OFFICE
USC Dornsife Research Administrtion
Office Hours on Wednesdays for Help with Research Administration
Dornsife Research Office is offering weekly online office hours on Wednesday afternoon from 3pm-4pm via Zoom. Feel free to drop in with a question and connect with Dornsife research staff.
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Book Cover:Sin Fronteras (English: "Without Borders"): Emg;osj amd Spanish Grammar Guidebook (Amherst College Press, forthcoming May 2024) Carolina Larrea Castillo, et al. Latin American and Iberian Culture
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