NSF is soliciting proposals the new National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI) program. The NNCI is successor to the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN). The solicitation establishes a competition for individual university user facility sites positioned across the nation. A Coordinating Office will then be selected competitively at a later stage from among the selected sites to enhance their impact as a national infrastructure of user facility sites. The ultimate selection of user facility sites will include capabilities and instrumentation addressing current and anticipated future user needs across the broad areas of nanoscale science, engineering, and technology.
Proposing institutions are encouraged to include a broad range of technical capabilities in their individual user facility site proposals, but can also choose to focus on particular subfields within their areas of expertise. Some sites may choose to partner with facilities at regional or smaller institutions that would bring specific capabilities for users and benefits to student training. The Site Director, who is the Principal Investigator for the individual site proposal, will be the key individual for management of the individual site and will work in concert with the other Site Directors and the Coordinating Office, and with the NSF. Read more…
NSF plans to make approximately 10-15 individual awards for shared user facility sites with an anticipated funding amount between $500,000 and $2,000,000.
A US academic institution may submit or participate in only one individual site proposal submitted in response to this solicitation. Therefore, interested applicants are asked to submit a preliminary application to my office by January 5, 2015 (electronic submission to or@research.uci.edu is preferred), with the following information:
• Brief proposal (up to three pages)
• Preliminary budget
• Bio sketch (no more than two pages each) of the primary researcher(s)
• Support letter from the Dean
If several preliminary NNCI proposals are submitted, an ad hoc committee will convene to review them. The selected PI will be notified in time to meet the NSF LOI deadline of February 2, 2015 (full proposals are due April 3, 2015).
For the complete NSF guidelines, including detailed information about the Scalable Nanomanufacturing program, please refer to http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2015/nsf15519/nsf15519.htm. Questions about our internal campus review process may be directed to Greg Ruth at greg.ruth@uci.edu or x4-0372.
John C. Hemminger
Vice Chancellor for Research