On Wednesday June 3rd the New Hampshire EPSCoR Conference and Proposal Writing Workshop was held at the Common Man Inn in Plymouth, NH.

EPSCoR stands for Experimental Project to Stimulate Competitive Research, which is not very descriptive of its purpose. The goal of this huge project is to stimulate research in science and engineering in states of the USA, which have lower concentration of research funding than others. Since 2004, New Hampshire also participates in this program. It was started as a project of the NSF (National Science Foundation) but since then other government agencies have also implemented their EPSCoR initiatives (e.g. NASA EPSCoR). As it is known, the NSF and similar institutions provide some of the most important funds for research in the country, therefore EPSCoR is also of vital importance for research labs as ours, Project54.

The conference featured a number of NSF officials who presented the most important funding aids that their institution provides. Dr. Uma Venkateswaran, the national Program Director of NSF EPSCoR gave an introductory presentation, talking about the ways they can help fund research labs in New Hampshire. The main vehicles of funding are Research Infrastructure Improvement, Co-funding with NSF Directorates and Conference and Workshop Funding.

After her, officials of different NSF Directorates held presentations of their fields. For us the most important might be the presentation of Dr. Suzanne Iacono from the CISE Directorate (Computer and Information Science and Engineering). Among other topics, she mentioned the Human Centered Computing initiative at her Directorate which funds projects aiming to improve usability and introduce human values into interaction with computers. Our work on researching in-car user interfaces, handhelds and mutitouch surfaces shares many common ideas with this program.

It is important to mention that NSF provides funding through a grant system awarded to successful proposals. The success rate of proposals is only 25% percent, but as we figured out at the conference one can improve his/her chances by elaborately studying all of NSF’ guidelines and the vast number of different programs. I found the conference to be very informative. It was also very encouraging to hear, that so much is invested in advancing science and technology in the US.

Oszkar

On Tuesday UNH CEPS faculty gathered for a roundtable discussion on navigating the process of submitting research proposals to various federal agencies. The event was organized by Janet Campbell, Associate Dean for Research, and it featured eight panelists. Each panelist was charged with saying a few words about successful strategies for getting funding from a particular federal agency. Janet invited me to be a panelist and address proposals to the US DOJ as our Project54 funding comes primarily from this agency.

The event was very interesting as all of the panelists had interesting observations and suggestions. Julie Bryce talked about proposals to NSF. She pointed out that faculty should pay attention to the divisions of undergraduate education (DUE) and of graduate education (DGE). Funding through these divisions is a natural match for folks like us who wear two hats: educator and researcher. Julie also recommended using the customizable NSF email updates which provide information on upcoming solicitations, deadlines, events, etc.

Ben Chandran discussed submitting proposals to NASA. He emphasized that the proposal has to convince the review panel that the problem addressed by the proposal and the proposed approach are valid and important. He pointed out that, while review panels consist of specialists in the general area of the proposal, none of the people on the panel are likely to be specialists in the exact area the proposal addresses. We as proposal writers have to take this into account as we are to convincingly argue for funding.

The final panelist of the roundtable event was Beth Turner, a program manager at NOAA. In addition to providing a slew of practical advice for the aspiring grant recipient, I’m happy to say that she confirmed my suggestion that having a good presence on the web is important - this is a good way to get yourself onto a review panel for example. Beth also talked about the value of poster sessions for networking.

 

Other panelists participating were Amitava Bhattacharjee who discussed DoE funding, Denny Chasteen, who has a perfect record (!) with NIH funding, Tom Lippmann, who talked about working with ONR and Jo Daniel, who I have to catch up with in order to get her advice on DoT funding.

The event was very well attended (30+) and I certainly enjoyed it a great deal. Thanks Janet for organizing! Also, you can find more pictures from the event on Flickr.

Andrew Kun