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January 2017 Newsletter

Workshop: How to Navigate the Office of Research

The Office of Research has many different offices all tasked with different research related responsibilities. On Friday, Jan. 20 from 9 to 10:30 a.m., Beth Hodges from the Office of Proposal Development will take you through the grant life cycle, discuss how the different offices under the Office of Research work together and explain the process of applying for a grant from start to finish. Representatives from several of the research offices will be available to answer specific questions. Come learn how to better navigate the offices and who to contact for what you need! To learn more and to register, please click here.

Spring Competition: GAP Commercialization Grant

The FSU Office of Commercialization is currently accepting applications for the Spring 2017 GAP competition. This is a competitive program and pre-proposal applications are due by Friday, Feb. 24, 2017.  Don’t miss your chance to join the 60+ FSU professors who have already been GAP winners in the past 10 years of the program. 

Several grants will be awarded. To learn more about GAP and what it takes to qualify and compete, please visit the GAP website at http://www.research.fsu.edu/research-offices/fsu-research-foundation/grants/gap-grant/.

Council on Research & Creativity Updates

Important Note for Spring Submissions: Beginning in January 2017, proposal and nomination submission deadlines will be on their listed dates at 4:59 pm.  This has been changed from the previous time of 11:59 in order to better help faculty with any last-minute submission problems or questions. 

Upcoming Deadlines:  The following grant proposal and honorary nomination submission deadlines are quickly approaching as we gear up for the Spring 2017 semester: 

Arts and Humanities Program Enhancement Grant – January 11

https://www.research.fsu.edu/research-offices/opd/crc/programs/ahpeg/ 

Developing Scholar Award – January 19

https://www.research.fsu.edu/research-offices/opd/crc/programs/dsa/ 

Distinguished Research Professor – January 26

https://www.research.fsu.edu/research-offices/opd/crc/programs/drp/ 

Distinguished University Scholar – February 3

https://www.research.fsu.edu/research-offices/opd/crc/programs/dus/ 

Planning Grant (Spring) – February 13

https://www.research.fsu.edu/research-offices/opd/crc/programs/pg/ 

Fall 2016 CRC Awards:  The Vice President for Research and the Council on Research & Creativity (CRC) congratulate faculty for the following proposals awarded in the Fall 2016 Competition Round: 

Planning Grant Awardees – 

Irinel Chiorescu (Physics) “Study of quantum dynamics of spins strongly coupled to photons by means of a novel on-chip technique” 

Michael Shatruk (Chemistry and Biochemistry) and Nar Dalal (Chemistry and Biochemistry) “Toward Rational Design and Discovery of Organic Ferroelectrics” 

Michael Roper (Chemistry and Biochemistry) “Transcriptomic Profiling of Synchronized Pancreatic Islets” 

Jose L. Mendoza-Cortes (Chemical and Biomedical Engineering) “Understanding Cement using ab initio atomistic simulations towards smart concrete and sustainable cement” 

Qinchun Rao (Food and Nutrition Science) “Quality Assessment of Dairy Bioactive Peptides in Intermediate-Moisture Foods During Storage” 

Michelle Arbeitman (Biomedical Sciences) “Genomic Analysis of the Mammalian Maternal Brain” 

Antonia Nemec (Biomedical Sciences) and Robert Tomko (Biomedical Sciences) “DNA repair gene mutations as biomarkers for breast cancer” 

John Mann (Art) “FLOATSINK- A Lab for Experimental Artist Books” 

Angelina R. Sutin (Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine) “Parent Perception and Child Weight Gain: Identifying Potential Mechanisms” 

Laura Marianne Steacy (Education) “Identifying Malleable Factors Related to Children’s Reading and Spelling of Complex Words: An Item-Level Approach” 

Shamra Marie Boel-Studt (Social Work) “Evaluation of the LIFE Model of Group Care for At-risk Youth” 

Yanchang Wang (Biomedical Sciences) “Identification of Cdc48-involved pathways that promote the degradation of misfolded proteins” 

Small Grants Program Awardees: 

Heidi Louise Williams (Music) “Declamation and the Art of Vocalism” 

Brian Graves (Communication and Information) “My First Drag Show” 

Equipment and Infrastructure Enhancement Grant Awardees: 

Branko Stefanovic (Biomedical Sciences), Robert Tomko (Biomedical Sciences), Akash Gunjan (Biomedical Sciences), Yanchang Wang (Biomedical Sciences), Ewa Bienkiewicz (Biomedical Sciences), Yoichi Kato (Biomedical Sciences), Yi Ren (Biomedical Sciences), Yuan Wang (Biomedical Sciences), Eric Laywell (Biomedical Sciences), Henry Bass (Biological Science), James Fadool (Biological Science), Fanxiu Zhu (Biological Science), Hong-Guo Yu (Biological Science), Hong Li (Chemistry and Biochemistry), Qing-Xiang Sang (Chemistry and Biochemistry), and Raed Rizkallah (Biomedical Sciences) “High content imaging multi-mode reader” 

Norman B. Schmidt (Psychology), Thomas Joiner (Psychology), Arielle Borovsky (Psychology), Neil Charness (Psychology), and Paul Conway (Psychology) “Virtual Reality Equipment for Advancing Psychological Study” 

Karen McGinnis (Biological Science), Henry Bass (Biological Science), and Alan Lemmon (Scientific Computing) “Purchase of a Boom Sprayer, Expanded Irrigation and Pole Barn”

Multidisciplinary Support Awardees: 

Amy R. Baco-Taylor (Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Science), David Meckes (Biomedical Sciences), and James Olcese (Biomedical Sciences) “Use of next-generation sequencing methods to assess human parasites” 

Anke Meyer-Baese (Scientific Computing) and Adrian Barbu (Statistics) “ProstateCAD: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Designing the First Comprehensive Intelligent Prostate Diagnosis System”

Several Humanities and Social Science Workshops Set for Spring

The Office of Faculty Development and Advancement will host several workshops this spring to assist faculty with upcoming Fellowship and Award opportunities.

  • NEH Fellowship Application Workshop: Jan. 20 - 10:30 – noon; Strozier Instructional Classroom. (Application due 4/28)
  • Social Science Policy Awards Workshop:  March 24 - 10:30 – noon; Strozier Instructional Classroom (Includes Woodrow Wilson Fellows and Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellows)
  • Fulbright Scholar Application Workshop:  April 14 - 10:30 – noon; Strozier Instructional Classroom (Application due 8/1)
  • Summer Focus on Humanities Fellowship Applications:  April 21 10:30 – noon; Strozier Instructional Classroom (Includes all TARU fellowships due in Fall:  NEH Fellowship, National Humanities Center Fellowship, ACLS Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Getty Scholars in Residence)

For more information about these activities, please contact Peggy Wright-Cleveland at mwrightcleveland@admin.fsu.edu.

Two Upcoming Grant Opportunities for Early Career Researchers Due this Spring

The Cottrell Scholars Award  is available to early career faculty at U.S. research universities and primarily undergraduate institutions. Eligible applicants are tenure-track faculty members whose primary appointment is in a department of astronomy, chemistry or physics that offers, the minimum, a bachelor’s degree. For the 2016 proposal cycle, eligibility is limited to faculty members who started their first tenure-track appointment anytime in calendar year 2013. Pre-proposals will be done May 16.

The DARPA Young Faculty Award’s objective is to identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions at U.S. academic institutions and introduce them to Department of Defense needs as well as DARPA’s program development process. The YFA program provides funding, mentoring and industry and DoD contacts to awardees early in their careers so they may develop their research ideas in the context of DoD needs. The program focuses on untenured faculty, emphasizing those without prior DARPA funding. The long-term goal of the YFA program is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers and mathematicians in key disciplines who will focus a significant portion of their careers on DoD and national security issues. The deadline has not yet been posted but is usually around April.

NSF PAPPG Webinar 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is pleased to announce that it will offer a final NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) Update Webinar broadcast live to the research community on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2017. There is no cost to participate. 

The webinar will provide an overview of significant changes and clarifications to the PAPPG that will take effect on Jan. 30, 2017. The PAPPG details NSF's proposal preparation and submission guidelines, and provides guidance on managing and monitoring the award and administration of grants and cooperative agreements made by the Foundation. 

Register for the webinar here. Login information for the webinar will be emailed to registrants on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2016. Note: If you do not receive an email with login information, please check your junk mail and/or visit nsfgrantsconferences.com the day of the event for access information. 

DoD SBIR/STTR Program Opportunities 

The DoD SBIR 17.1 and the STTR 17.A Broad Agency Announcements (BAA) have been pre-released on the DoD SBIR/STTR Small Business Portal. You may view the topics here: https://sbir.defensebusiness.org/topics.

DoD BAA/Solicitation Changes:   
The Small Business Administration, through its SBIR/STTR Policy Directive, purposely departs from normal Government solicitation formats and requirements and authorizes agencies to simplify the SBIR/STTR award process and minimize the regulatory burden on small business.  Therefore, consistent with the SBA Policy Directive, the Department of Defense is soliciting SBIR 17.1 and STTR 17.A as Broad Agency Announcements.

About Pre-Release
For SBIR 17.1, the Army, Navy, Air Force, CBD, DARPA, DHA, DLA, and USSOCOM invite small businesses to propose innovative solutions to topics in this Announcement. For STTR 17.A, Army, Navy, Air Force, and DHA invite small businesses and research institutions to jointly propose cooperative research and development efforts in response to topics in this Announcement.

During the pre-release period you may contact the topic authors directly to ask technical questions about specific solicitation topics (contact information is listed with the topic). The DoD will begin accepting proposals on January 10, 2017, and will close to proposals on February 8, 2017, at 6:00 a.m. ET. Plan ahead and submit your proposal early to avoid heavy traffic on the site during the final week.

Important Dates

SBIR 17.1 and STTR 17.A Pre-release: November 30, 2016

SBIR 17.1 and STTR 17.A Open: January 10, 2017

SITIS Q&A Close: January 25, 2017

SBIR 17.1 and STTR 17.A Close: February 8, 2017

Website Updates:
As an organization that supports innovation, we are constantly making updates to our website which we think will help enhance the overall user experience. Visit our 'What's New' section and the updated FAQ section for step-by-step processes and answers to frequently asked questions.

DoD SBIR/STTR Help Desk
The DoD SBIR/STTR Help Desk is prepared to address general questions about these Announcements, proposal preparation, electronic submission process, and other program-related areas. The Help Desk may be contacted from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, at 1-800-348-0787 or by email at sbirhelp@bytecubed.com.

Florida Sea Grant 2017 Call for Research Proposals is Now Open

Florida Sea Grant’s 2017 call for new research proposals that support coastal community and ocean-themed science and education is now open. Projects will be funded at $100K/year for two years ($200K total). Please refer to the following link https://www.flseagrant.org/funding/open/biennial_call_for_proposals/ for instructions on how prospective investigators can qualify for this funding and for instructions on how to submit a proposal. For this 2018-2020 funding cycle we are soliciting applied projects in four focus areas: Healthy Coastal Environments, Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture, Resilient Communities and Economies, and Environmental Literacy and Workforce Development. Within these areas we identify a number of research priorities, listed below:

Healthy Coastal Environments

  • Develop methods, tools or policies to more efficiently and effectively enhance coastal habitats and/or water quality.
  • Acquire new actionable information about how altered freshwater flow now and in the future affects coastal ecosystems and their services.
  • Acquire new actionable information about the effects of point and non-point source nutrient pollution, for example urban storm water runoff and agricultural runoff, on coastal ecosystems.
  • Predict the impacts of climate change on coastal habitats, water quality and human uses, or develop new approaches to more effectively evaluate those impacts.

Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture

  • Develop new models, tools and technologies for sustainably managing fisheries resources or more effectively protecting at-risk species.
  • Develop and test stakeholder engagement processes to support fisheries management - at local levels and evaluated for use at broader geographic scales.
  • Develop new tools, technologies, methods and approaches to support cost-effective, sustainable and environmentally-friendly aquaculture and the harvest, processing and sale of wild aquatic products.
  • Develop and test new tools, methods, technologies and approaches to evaluate the source, identity, product quality and safety of seafood products.
  • Develop new aquaculture products that can tolerate adverse conditions in coastal waters, for example rising water temperatures that are occurring due to climate change.

Resilient Communities and Economies

  • Develop or apply existing tools and field-test them to evaluate risk and increase resilience of coastal communities to extreme weather, storm surge and sea level rise.
  • Determine the potential extent of damage to infrastructure from extreme weather, storm surge and sea level rise.
  • Develop new planning tools and policies to promote access and sustainable use of waterfronts and waterways.

Environmental Literacy and Workforce Development

  • Develop innovative new immersive learning programs to educate children and young adults about the actions that they can avoid and take to protect the health of the coastal zone, including for example apps and video games with embedded learning attributes.

FSU Coastal & Marine Laboratory Updates

The FSU Coastal & Marine Laboratory has several updates that stakeholders may be interested in learning more about.

Fall 2016 NSF Grants Conference Webcast – Now Available

The Fall 2016 National Science Foundation (NSF) Grants Conference webcast is now available on YouTube, and may be accessed here.

Topics include: Types of NSF Funding Opportunities, Proposal Preparation, Award Management, the Merit Review Process, the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program, and more.

Presentations are also available on the conference website.

FSU Recruiting African-American Dementia Caregivers for Faith-Based Project

Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias are tough on patients, but also on caregivers, and Rob Glueckauf, an FSU College of Medicine professor, and his health-service team are offering a new approach that they hope will benefit numerous caregivers. And it’s free.

For this project, he and his team are recruiting African-American adults who provide direct care for a loved one with dementia at least six hours a week and have a strong need to reduce their own stress. They’ll be involved in the program for 12 to 14 weeks and receive up to $90 for their participation. Trained faith community workers, or “lay pastoral care facilitators,” will help the caregivers with:

  • Communicating effectively with doctors and family members
  • Dealing with their loved one’s difficult behaviors, wandering and general safety
  • Managing the stresses and worries of caregiving
  • Increasing their self-care, rest and relaxation

Glueckauf and his health-service team hope to get more than 130 caregivers to participate in the project.

TO REGISTER: Qualified caregivers may call 850-274-4945 (Tallahassee), 866-778-2724 (toll-free) or go to www.ACTS2Project.org.

TO SUPPORT ACTS 2: Rob Glueckauf and his team want to make this faith-based program available to more Floridians. Although it’s free to caregivers, the recruiting, training and evaluation efforts all require money and time. That’s why they're seeking additional support. Interested donors may visit http://spark.fsu.edu/Project/215 to make a financial contribution online.

Issuance of Revised NSF Award Terms and Conditions

The National Science Foundation’s entire suite of Award Terms and Conditions (see full listing below) has been revised to align with changes to the Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF 17-1).  All references to the Grant Proposal Guide (GPG) and Award & Administration Guide (AAG) have been replaced with references to the PAPPG.  Each set of terms and conditions is accompanied by a summary of changes made to that document.

The revised Terms and Conditions will apply to all new NSF awards and funding amendments to existing NSF awards issued on or after Jan. 30, 2017. 

Revisions have been made to the following documents:

  • Grant General Conditions (GC-1);
  • Cooperative Agreement Financial & Administrative Terms and Conditions (CA-FATC);
  • Cooperative Agreement Supplemental Financial & Administrative Terms and Conditions for Managers of Large Facilities;
  • Cooperative Agreement Supplemental Financial & Administrative Terms and Conditions for Managers of Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCS);
  • International Research Terms and Conditions;
  • Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I Grant General Conditions; 
  • Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase II Grant General Conditions; and
  • Administration of NSF Conference or Group Travel Grant Special Conditions (FL 26). 

If you have any questions regarding these changes, please contact the DIAS Policy Office on (703) 292-8243 or by email to policy@nsf.gov.

FSU Awards Report

A monthly awards report is available online. This report will allow interested faculty, staff and others to learn more about who has been recently awarded research grants. Access the latest report here.

Funding Opportunities

Please click here to access some of the latest funding opportunities available for the arts, humanities, social sciences, STEM disciplines and medicine.