Santa Clara University

Welcome to Sponsored Projects

National Institute of Health

Reminders Regarding Inclusion of Special Features in Grant Applications

Release Date: July 31, 2008

This Notice provides reminders on appropriate materials in grant applications.

Applicants should use text only for the following two application components:

• Description: Project Summary and Relevance, in the PHS 398 paper application (see PHS 398 instructions in Part I, 4.2.1)
• Project Summary/Abstract and Project Narrative, in the SF424(R&R) for electronic submissions (see SF424 instructions in Part I, 4.4, items 6 and 7)

The information provided in these components becomes part of the Summary Statement that documents the results of the review process. When a grant application is selected for award, the information become publicly available in the Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects database (CRISP). If figures or information not in standard text format are included in these components of application submissions, it is not transferred for the other uses and a blank section will appear. Therefore, it is important that applications consist of text only in these two components.

Applicants should not embed movies or other materials in the PDF attachments of the Research Plan or of other components of electronic submissions. These will not be available to NIH staff and/or reviewers after the transit of the application through the Grants.gov and NIH eRA processing systems. As noted in NIH Guide NOT-OD-08-082 and accompanying Best Practice Guidelines, the Scientific Review Officer should be contacted about such materials.

National Science Foundation

Proposals

For those intending to submit a proposal or proposals to the National Science Foundation, please read the "Dear Colleague" letter for important information on the new criterion for evaluation of NSF received proposals.

America COMPETES Act

America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act

• Signed into law on August 9, 2007
• Shares goals of the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI)
• Focuses on three primary areas of importance:
  • Increasing research investment
  • Strengthening educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics from elementary through graduate school
  • Developing an innovation infrastructure

Highlights:

• Doubles NSF Funding from $5.6 billion in FY 2006 to $11.2 billion in FY 2011
• Authorizes the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from approximately $703 million in FY 2008 to approximately $937 million in FY 2011
• Doubles Department of Energy's Office of Science funding over ten years
• Innovation Acceleration Research Program directs federal agencies funding research in science and technology to set as a goal dedicating approximately 8% of their R&D budgets toward high-risk frontier research
• Directs NASA to increase funding for basic research

NSF Invites Proposals for Pentagon-Sponsored Research Program

From The Chronicle of Higher Education

By DAVID GLENN

The National Science Foundation released a call for proposals on Wednesday in support of the Department of Defense's Minerva Research Initiative, a new university-based program for social-science research on topics of interest to the Pentagon. The solicitation is the first major fruit of a cooperative agreement signed four weeks ago by the Pentagon and the NSF's social-science wing (The Chronicle, July 2).

That cooperative agreement is one of several small signs of a rapprochement between the Pentagon and academic social scientists. The relationship was frayed after a series of Vietnam-era scandals, and some scholars view the new ties as a healthy development. Others remain deeply skeptical of such collaboration.

In its notice, the NSF invites proposals for research projects and workshops on topics including terrorist organizations and ideologies, the strategic effect of religious and cultural change, political and social dynamics under authoritarian regimes, and methodological innovations in the study of conflict and national security.

The proposals will be evaluated by the foundation in accordance with its standard merit-review procedures, but the projects will be financed entirely by the Department of Defense. The Pentagon plans to give the NSF $8-million to support the projects. Letters of intent are due on September 30, and full proposals will be due a month later.

Review and Rigor

The new solicitation at least partly answers one of the concerns raised by skeptics after Robert M. Gates, the secretary of defense, announced the Minerva program in April.

Shortly after Mr. Gates's announcement, the president of the American Anthropological Association, Setha M. Low, released a letter calling for the program to be managed by agencies with a track record of "rigorous, balanced, and objective peer review." She singled out the NSF as one such agency. Ms. Low's wish now appears to have been granted.

According to the NSF solicitation, each proposal is expected to be reviewed by three to 10 external reviewers. The Department of Defense might informally nominate "academically qualified reviewers with substantive expertise" to serve as external reviewers, according to Thomas G. Mahnken, the Department of Defense's deputy assistant secretary for policy planning.

Mark L. Weiss, director of the NSF's behavioral and cognitive-sciences division, said in an interview last month that there was no reason for scholars to fear that the Pentagon would disrupt or dominate the peer-review process. Any reviewers nominated by the Department of Defense will be only a small minority on the panels, he said. (The agreement between the two agencies allows the Pentagon to nominate one or two reviewers per proposal.) The NSF has successfully used similar processes when it has collaborated with other agencies, such as the Department of Health and Human Services, he added.

Not all of the Minerva program is being channeled through the foundation, however. The Department of Defense is also directly soliciting research proposals through a process known as a Broad Agency Announcement. That process has already attracted more than 180 initial proposals, known as "white papers," according to Mr. Mahnken.

"Minerva has generated considerable excitement among scholars in these fields," Mr. Mahnken said in an e-mail message on Wednesday.

In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, Ms. Low, who is a professor of environmental psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, said she was pleased that at least a portion of the Minerva program was being channeled through the NSF's peer-review process.

"If all of the ethical pieces are in place, there's absolutely no reason why an anthropologist couldn't do work with Department of Defense money that is funneled through the NSF, as far as I'm concerned," she said.

But she added that she had general concerns about the potential for government money to distort scholars' research agendas. And she said that she planned to watch closely to see whether the Minerva program kept its promise to make all of its research freely available to the public.

Questions of Independence

One scholar offered a more critical view. Catherine Lutz, a professor of anthropology and international studies at Brown University, wrote in an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Thursday that she fears that the new arrangement "fundamentally compromises the independence of the NSF."

The foundation has historically "been a funder of research ideas generated not by powerful interests within the government but by the independent and best minds in the country," Ms. Lutz said. "Taking directions and money from the Department of Defense puts the NSF in the position of being handmaiden to the Pentagon rather than to a larger national or global interest."

When asked to reply to Ms. Lutz's comment, David W. Lightfoot, the NSF's assistant director for social, behavioral, and economic sciences, said that the new solicitation "was developed by the NSF and the Department of Defense collaboratively, reflecting the fact that there are common interests."

Mr. Lightfoot emphasized that all proposals will go through standard peer review and noted that the topics in the solicitation involve basic research on broad social-science issues, rather than being tied explicitly to, for example, the war in Iraq.

The new arrangement "will enable NSF to fund basic research that we would not otherwise be able to support," Mr. Lightfoot said. "This does not make us the handmaiden of the Pentagon but enables us to fund good work dealing with topics of mutual interest."

Broader Cooperation

The new cooperative agreement between the NSF and the Department of Defense will not be limited to the Minerva solicitation. The two agencies plan to collaborate on conferences and workshops, and it is also likely that the Pentagon will offer supplemental support to pre-existing NSF projects that involve national-security-related topics.

For example, the Department of Defense may be interested in supporting certain research projects in an NSF program known as Human and Social Dynamics, according to Mr. Weiss. In such cases, the researchers will have the option to decline the Pentagon's money.

"We do not want researchers to feel pressured to take [Department of Defense] money, nor will we recommend research for funding which we do not feel is of the highest quality," Mr. Weiss said in an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Thursday. "Therefore, these discussions with DoD will be undertaken so as not to reveal the identity of the [researcher]."

If the Pentagon is interested in financing a project, Mr. Weiss continued, the NSF will ask the researcher if he or she is willing to accept such money. Accepting money from the Department of Defense would not increase the size of the researcher's grant, but it would free up money that the NSF could use to support other research projects in the same program. So the researcher would be asked, in effect, to do a good deed for peers and colleagues.