MRSEC Directors Meeting Focus on MRSEC Working Groups NSF, Thursday June 24, 2010 Sean Jones, Tom Rieker, and Charles Ying MRSEC Program Directors

Focus on Working Groups Broadening Participation (Rubner) - Follow-up to previous MRSEC Dir. meeting, PREM Communication (Sarikaya) - brochure, website Education (Clark) - assessment, post-doc mentoring, website Facilities (Hawker) - MRFN, facilities workshop Industry (Lodge) - website, study?, connecting with industry MRSEC Leadership elections before lunch

Today Education Assessment / Education Coordinators – Christine Jones and Christine Broadbridge MRSEC participation in the Human Resources Division Joint Annual Meeting (JAM) Recent PREM PI meeting, April 26, 2010 – Idalia Ramos –Next PREM competition anticipated in 2011 SBIR / STTR program and opportunity in Functional Materials – Ben Shrag

Class of 2005 MRSEC site visits w/ panels completed Nov Class of 2008 MRSEC site visits by Program Directors complete June –Overall MRSEC program continues to be very strong –One observation – less frequent meetings of external advisory committees –Experiment to take a couple of experts to the 5 new MRSECs was well received and we believe will help get the new centers off to a good start Class of 2008 MRSEC site visits w/ panels anticipated, Fall 2011 – Spring 2012 MRSEC Business

David Weitz – Elected to the National Academy of Science Craig Hawker – Elected to The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge Congratulations!

Materials Research Centers and Teams Solicitation Two Types of awards: Centers of Excellence for Materials Research and Innovation (CEMRI) Materials Interdisciplinary Research Teams (MIRT) One proposal per institution - decide between CEMRI or MIRT based on number of interdisciplinary research groups

Centers of Excellence for Materials Research and Innovation –2-5 Interdisciplinary Research Groups (IRGs) in each center –Support Seed funding to respond to high risk/high impact and broadening participation opportunities. –Broad Center based activities in interdisciplinary education –Support for Shared Experimental and Computational Facilities –Collaborations with industry, international, and national labs –Changes: Encouraged to pursue a limited number of education activities Greater emphasis on broadening participation Greater role in maintaining materials research infrastructure in the US: Facility network International collaboration is now a requirement Awards: –$2M to $5M annual budget per center, 6 year awards –FY 2011 Budget Estimate: $20-$24M to support 8-10 awards

Materials Interdisciplinary Research Teams –1 Interdisciplinary research group –Encouraged to pursue emerging area of interdisciplinary materials research to advance science frontiers –Support for equipment and computational instrumentation –Support for REU activities Awards: –$0.7M to $1.5M annual budget per team, 3 year awards –FY 2011 Budget Estimate: $10-$12M to support 8-12 awards

Review Process – Center and Team pre-proposals will be reviewed together by topical panels. Note: proposals from existing centers will compete with new proposals. –Full proposals are by invitation only for both Center and Teams. Mail review of full proposals. – Reverse site visit review for Center proposals.

Proposal Submission - All proposals must conform to the instructions provided in the solicitation and the NSF Grant Proposal Guide. - NSF may return without review proposals that are not consistent with these instructions. - Proposal submission several days before the due date is strongly encouraged. Preliminary Proposals Are Due: Centers (CEMRIs): September 1, 2010 Teams (MIRTs): September 3, 2010 Full proposals Are by Invitation Only and Due: Centers (CEMRIs):January 11, 2011 Teams (MIRTs):January 13, 2011

Summary – Change in the Center program is in response to the National Academy Report – CEMRIs and MIRTs awarded based on the most transformative and highest impact materials research – MIRTs are intended to broaden institutional participation in materials research