NSF provides several opportunities for additional grants for faculty involved in I/UCRC’s. These can be taken advantage of to leverage the project funding provided by the industry members of the Center. Several of these grant opportunities require a commitment of industry involvement in order to submit the proposal, and so the faculty member needs to involve the Center’s industry members during the development of the proposal.
The grants available for proposal submission are:
§ Veteran's Research Supplement (VRS)
Engages veterans in research at I/UCRCs
§ Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)
Engages undergraduate students in research at I/UCRCs
§ Research Experience for Teachers (RET)
Engages K-12 STEM teachers and community college faculty in research at I/UCRCs
§ Grant Opportunity for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALi)
Promotes university-industry partnerships by making project funds or fellowships / traineeships available to support an eclectic mix of industry-university linkages. Special interest is focused on affording the opportunity for:
- Faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and students to conduct research and gain experience in an industrial setting;
- Industrial scientists and engineers to bring industry's perspective and integrative skills to academe; and
- Interdisciplinary university-industry teams to conduct research projects.
The proposal is submitted via the GOALI solicitation to the Core Program that funds the research most closely related to what is being proposed. The I/UCRC Program Director then needs to be informed of the submission to coordinate the proposal within NSF.
§ I/UCRC Clusters for Grand Challenges
NSF seeks to enable active I/UCRCs to leverage each other's expertise, research results, resources and existing networks and partnerships to establish a cross-center cluster that will tackle a cross-disciplinary, cross-sector portfolio of research projects that hold the potential to catalyze technology breakthroughs and advance national priorities. Participation and support from the industry members is very important for a successful proposal.
§ Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Teams Program
This program identifies NSF-funded researchers who will receive additional support, in the form of mentoring and funding, to accelerate innovation that can attract subsequent third-party funding. The grant gives the project team access to resources to help determine the readiness to transition technology developed by previously-funded or currently-funded NSF projects.
§ Partnerships for Innovation: Accelerating Innovation Research
This program is intended to accelerate the translation and transfer of existing research discoveries into competitive technologies and commercial realities by leveraging the investments NSF has made in research consortia and catalyzing academic based innovation ecosystems. The goal is that these synergistic partnerships and collaborations between government, academia, and other public and private entities will result in new wealth and the building of strong local and regional economies.
§ Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity
This program supports academe-industry partnerships which are led by an interdisciplinary academic research team collaborating with a least one industry partner to integrate technologies into a specified human-centered service system with the potential to achieve transformational benefits, satisfying a real need by making an existing service system smart(er) or by spurring the creation of an entirely new smart service system.
