funding opportunities, avatol, golife, nsf

1. Funding Opportunities

2. NSF Genealogy of Life (GoLife)
(NSF 15-520)
• Overall Goals:
1. to resolve the phylogenetic history of all life’s diverse forms, and
2. to integrate this genealogical architecture with underlying organismal and
environmental data.
• Full Proposal Deadline(s) (due by 5 p.m. proposer's local time):
– March 25, 2015
– Fourth Wednesday in March, Annually Thereafter
• No more than one GoLife proposal submitted per individual per year
• $10 million in FY 2015 to fund 4-6 projects (either single or collaborative
proposals, standard or continuing grants)
• Given advances in the field, the size and scope of GoLife proposals should
also vastly exceed that of AToL projects.
• revised NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF
15-1). There is a Proposal Submission Modernization (PSM) webinaire on
January 22 (1:00pm - 2:00pm EST)

3. The GoLife program has
four main goals
1. Taxonomic completeness -- containing all described species of a
given clade, including those lineages that are extinct
2. Data completeness -- including diverse underlying data layers (e.g.,
digitized images, specimen collection information, environmental
and habitat data, geographic and stratigraphic distributions,
genomic and phenomic data, developmental data and ontologies),
3. Dynamic and open structure -- allowing the automatic
incorporation of new data and taxa, and mechanisms for
accessibility to the broad scientific and non-scientific communities,
and
4. Training of the next generation of phylogenetic biologists --
integrative training in diverse fields across comparative
evolutionary biology.

4. GoLife program requires:
• Linking to ongoing projects that resulted from the AVAToL ideas lab: Next
Generation Phenomics, Open Tree of Life, Arbor (Revolutionary
Workflows)
• Training of students in phylogenetics – undergraduate, graduate, and/or
postgraduate
• Significant cost efficiency and impact on progress toward the goals of the
program. Priority will be given to innovative projects that fill large gaps in
phylogenetic, taxonomic, character, spatial and temporal data space;
integrate with other ongoing biodiversity efforts; and increase the
efficiency and lower the cost of such activities.
• Integration and standardization of data consistent with three AVAToL
projects [Open Tree of Life, ARBOR, and Next Generation Phenomics].
Other data should be made available through broadly accessible
community efforts (e.g., specimen data through iDigBio, occurrence data
through BISON, etc).

5. Priority will be given to those GoLife
proposals that provide:
1. the most substantial increase in volume of tree space added, and/or
2. the most significant increase in annotated organismal and
environmental data layers. The phylogenetic scope of a GoLife proposal
should vastly exceed that of a typical Phylogenetic Systematics core
program proposal.
– Examples of data layers (not an exhaustive list):
a) Genomic/Phylogenomic
sequence data
b) Genotype-phenotype linkage
and mapping
c) Morphological data
d) Fossil data
e) Geochronological data
f) Developmental data
g) Ontologies
h) Geospatial data
i) Environmental data
j) Digitized voucher specimens
k) Encyclopedia of Life webpages
l) Behavioral data
m) Physiological data
n) Metabolic pathways

6. Other NSF funding opportunities
• Dimensions of Biodiversity (15-533)
– Full Proposal Deadline Date: April 9, 2015
– Goal: transform, by 2020, how we describe and understand the scope
and role of life on Earth.
• Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) (13-569)
– Deadline: Oct 16, 2015; Third Friday in Oct, Annually Thereafter
– to enhance and expand the national resource of digital data and
to advance scientific knowledge by improving access to digitized
information (including images) for vouchered scientific
collections across the United States.
• Collections in Support of Biological Research (CSBR) (14-564)
– Deadline: July 13, 2015; second Monday in July, Annually
Thereafter
– focus: 1) for improvements to secure, improve, and organize
collections that are significant to the NSF BIO-funded research
community; 2) to secure collections-related data for sustained,
accurate, and efficient accessibility of the collection to the
biological research community; and 3) to transfer collection
ownership responsibilities.

7. Other NSF multi-directorate funding
• Opportunities for Promoting Understanding through Synthesis (OPUS)
(14-559)
– aimed at synthesizing a body of related research projects conducted by a
single individual or a group of investigators over an extended period.
• Advances in Biological Informatics (ABI) (12-567) three major types of
proposals:
1. Innovation awards that seek to pioneer new approaches to the application of
informatics to biological problems,
2. Development awards that seek to provide robust cyberinfrastructure that will
enable transformative biological research, and
3. Sustaining awards that seek to support ongoing operations and maintenance
of existing cyberinfrastructure that is critical for continued advancement of
priority biological research.
• Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (14-520)
– Full Proposal Window: June 12, 2015 - June 26, 2015 for SSI proposals
– Scientific Software Integration (SSI): SSI awards target larger, interdisciplinary
teams organized around the development and application of common
software infrastructure aimed at solving common research problems faced by
NSF researchers in one or more areas of science and engineering.
– SSI awards will result in a sustainable community software framework serving
a diverse community or communities.

8. Education-related NSF supplements
• Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Supplements - The
purpose of these supplemental awards is to enable undergraduate
students to participate in NSF supported research. They provide summer
or calendar year stipends for the students and possibly modest supplies
for the undergraduate project. The students must be US citizens or
permanent residents and may not receive REU support after graduating.
Look for guidance from specific NSF Divisions
• Research Experience for Teachers (RET) - facilitate professional
development of K-12 science teachers through research experience at the
cutting edge of science; particularly interested in encouraging its
researchers to build mutually rewarding partnerships with teachers at
inner city schools and less well endowed school districts.
• Research Assistantships for High School Students (RAHSS) - intended to
encourage talented high school students who are members of minority
groups traditionally underrepresented in US science to participate in NSF-
supported research projects.
• Partnership for Undergraduate Life Science Education (PULSE)
www.pulsecommunity.org

9. Other funding opportunities
• Sloan Foundation (http://www.sloan.org/) major program areas:
– Basic Research
– STEM Higher Education
– Public Understanding of Science, Technology, & Economics
– Digital Information Technology
• Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
(http://www.moore.org/programs/science)
– Data-Driven Discovery – Stimulating data science innovation for research
– Plant Science Collaboration with HHMI - strives to transform the field of
plant biology by increasing novel innovative basic research and stimulating
cross-disciplinary synergies
– Science Learning Assessment - aims to demonstrate new techniques and
tools for measuring the most important science learning outcomes.
– Special Projects - Exploring opportunities for short-term investments in a
range of fields.