1. National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry
Angela K. Wilson
Division Director
Division of Chemistry
Conference on High Impact Research, May 15, 2017
American University

2. Strategies for Success
Always contact the program officer well in advance of proposal submission.
Contact via . Schedule a phone call.
Sometimes it is difficult to know who is the appropriate program officer. Do not hesitate to guess. Provide a sentence or two (via ) about what you would like to talk about and ask the program officer if he/she is the best contact, or if there is someone else to contact.
Do not take time to ask questions that you can find answers to in the NSF documentation. Know the solicitation; know the grant proposal guidelines. However, if anything is not clear, do not hesitate to ask clarifying questions.
Check the NSF Awards database for prior awards funded in that program.
Aim for >3 months prior for a discussion.

3. Strategies for Success
Discussion with program officer
Would your proposal ideas be suitable for that particular program/solicitation?
If possible, provide several routes for investigation.
What is the program officer saying? Open-minded listening is critical.
If you have other funding, particularly if it is NSF funding, do indicate this.
Very briefly overview your broader impacts (if you have any doubts).
What are their expectations for the data management plan? Postdoctoral mentoring plan (if you plan to budget for a postdoctoral fellow)?
Have a budget in mind. Ask if that would be appropriate.

4. Strategies for Success
Contemplate and pursue next steps
If a proposal was not encouraged, then consider is a different idea needed? Is it an interesting idea (to the program officer), and the timing was just not suitable.
If the proposal was not discouraged, then begin work early. Set your target date for full completion at least 7-10 days prior to due date.
It is best to plan for good draft at least 4-6+ weeks prior. Let others in the field (or near fields) go through it to provide feedback.

5. Strategies for Success
Preparation
Pay attention to the NSF Proposal & Awards Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) – This replaces the Grant Proposal Guide.
Each January, there is usually an update with new guidelines.
Proposals can be returned without review if they do not follow the guidelines.
Proposals can be returned without review for a number of reasons.

6. Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts
Merit Review Criteria
Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts
The Intellectual Merit criterion encompasses the potential to advance knowledge
The Broader Impacts criterion encompasses the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes.

7. Questions Review Elements
The following elements should be considered in the review for both criteria:
1. What is the potential for the proposed activity to:
a. advance knowledge and understanding within its own field or across different fields (Intellectual Merit); and
b. benefit society or advance desired societal outcomes (Broader Impacts)?
2. To what extent do the proposed activities suggest and explore creative, original, or potentially transformative concepts?
3. Is the plan for carrying out the proposed activities well-reasoned, well- organized, and based on a sound rationale? Does the plan incorporate a mechanism to assess success?
4. How well qualified is the individual, team, or institution to conduct the proposed activities?
5. Are there adequate resources available to the PI (either at the home institution or through collaborations) to carry out the proposed activities?

8. Questions Review Elements
The following elements should be considered in the review for both criteria:
1. What is the potential for the proposed activity to:
a. advance knowledge and understanding within its own field or across different fields (Intellectual Merit); and
b. benefit society or advance desired societal outcomes (Broader Impacts)?
2. To what extent do the proposed activities suggest and explore creative, original, or potentially transformative concepts?
3. Is the plan for carrying out the proposed activities well-reasoned, well- organized, and based on a sound rationale? Does the plan incorporate a mechanism to assess success?
4. How well qualified is the individual, team, or institution to conduct the proposed activities?
5. Are there adequate resources available to the PI (either at the home institution or through collaborations) to carry out the proposed activities?

9. Broader Impacts can be demonstrated by:
Building STEM talent -- From training the next generation of high-tech manufacturing employees to crafting inclusive STEM curricula, NSF-funded researchers help build America’s STEM workforce. Projects find creative ways to broaden participation in science, ensuring everyone has an opportunity to succeed in all fields of science and engineering. Think broadly about who might be underrepresented in STEM. Such groups might include racial and ethnic minorities, first generation college and low income students, women, veterans, and people with disabilities.
Innovating for the future -- Broader impacts are often intrinsic to fundamental research. Studying thermochemical dynamics can help transform sunlight into fuel; using computer modeling to analyze biochemical reactions sheds light on the mechanics that govern our world. Fundamental research both expands the limits of human knowledge and uncovers insights that could save lives.
Improving our society -- Scientific discovery can be a tool for societal progress. Think of adaptive technologies – bionic eyes and next generation sensors -- that improve the lives of people with disabilities or those in need of frequent medical monitoring, or how harnessing powerful supercomputers can help fight HIV. When research tackles societal challenges, lives can be shaped for the better.

10. Broader Impacts can be demonstrated by:
Reaching beyond borders --The impacts of NSF research extend beyond the borders of an institution or country. Analyzing responses to Ebola helps halt its deadly spread, while recycling agricultural waste benefits our environment and developing nations. International partnerships fuel pioneering science while preparing the next generation of globally engaged scientists and engineers.
Engaging a wider audience -- Science education and exploration are not limited to the classroom or the lab. They happen on the coasts of America’s northwest and in the rainforests of Puerto Rico, in museums, and libraries. Engaging citizens in research helps increase public understanding of science and the scientific process itself.

11. Declinations Making the most of them Absorb the comments.
Cross out all of the positive comments in the panel summary (if there is one), reviewer comments, and program officer comments. Focus on what remains.
Wait two weeks. Contact the program officer for a discussion.
Do not try to convince the program officer why your proposal should be funded or argue about the reviews. Find out what should be done differently for the next submission and learn whether or not a follow-up effort on that topic should be done.
Craft a new or revised proposal, implementing change resulting from the feedback.

12. Challenges and Opportunities in Chemistry and Beyond
NSF Ideas for the Future - “Big Ideas”
Harnessing Data for 21st Century Science and Engineering
Shaping the New Human­ Technology Frontier
Navigating the New Arctic
Understanding the Rules of Life: Predicting Phenotype
The Quantum Leap: Leading the Next Quantum Revolution
Windows on the Universe: The Era of Multi-messenger Astrophysics
RESEARCH
Growing Convergent Research at NSF
Mid-scale Research Infrastructure
NSF 2050 The Integrative Foundational Fund
NSF INCLUDES: Enhancing Science and Engineering through Diversity
PROCESS
Hot Topics! La Habana, Cuba, Friday, January 6, 2017

13. INCLUDES (NSF ) (Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoveries in Engineering and Science)
NSF INCLUDES is a comprehensive initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in science and engineering discovery and innovation by seeking and effectively developing STEM talent from all sectors and groups in our society. Over several years, NSF will invest in alliances and build a national network to achieve significant impact in transforming STEM education and workforce pathways.

14. Harnessing Data for 21st Century Science
Pursuit of fundamental research in data science and engineering, the development of a research data infrastructure, and the development of a 21st-century data-capable workforce.
What new information can be obtained from better utilization of data (including data from multiple laboratories, techniques, and/or chemical systems)?
How can this lead to new research directions?

15. Harnessing Data: Chemistry Examples
Accelerate the discovery of more efficient or selective catalysts
Advance the predictive design of new chemical species and/or synthetic reactions
Forecast synthetic conditions and elucidate structure/property relations based on existing chemical datasets
Enable real-time chemical data collection and processing for rapid identification and correlation of key events during chemical measurements
Identify novel ways of sharing and utilizing chemical data derived from multiple instruments, datatypes, and locations
Develop innovative approaches for integrating, correlating, visualizing, analyzing, or mining chemical simulation or measurement data to provide new chemical insights.

16. Understanding the Rules of Life:
Predicting Phenotype
How do living systems, from cells to organisms, get to be the way they are (the “phenotype”) through the complex interplay of the information contained in the genetic blue print (the “genotype”) and the environment?
By understanding the “Rules of Life”, we will expand our fundamental understanding:
How do our characteristics emerge from the interaction of genes with the environment?
How does life respond to the dynamics of our changing planet?

17. The “Quantum Leap”
Technology achievements of the 20th century such as digital computing and optical fiber communications, are dependent upon semi-classical properties of light and matter, but as devices shrink and quantum effects dominate, existing strategies will fail.
What is needed? New approaches that move us toward a “quantum economy” – capitalizing on the quantum behavior of many-body systems.

18. The “Quantum Leap”
Address fundamental questions about quantum behavior and develop the means of accessing and manipulating quantum systems … couple together experiment, computation, and theory:
How do we prepare and manipulate complex or dynamic quantum states?
How do we control material-light interactions to create new quantum phenomena?
What are the mathematics that describe emergent quantum behavior?
How do we design systems that use quantum states effectively?
Towards developments: quantum sensors, quantum computing, quantum communication

25. The National Science Foundation
National Science Board (NSB)
Office of the Director (OD)
$ 744 M
$ 1319 M
$ 1349 M
$ 880 M
$ 935 M
$ 916 M
$ 272 M
FY 2016
Biological Sciences (BIO)
Geosciences (GEO)
Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS)
Engineering (ENG)
Education & Human Resources (EHR)
Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)
Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE)

26. NSF Supports Academic Basic Research
Source: NSF/ Center for National Science and Engineering Statistics, FY 2013
All Science and Engineering Fields
Fraction of Federal Support
Environmental Sciences
Engineering
Biology (excluding NIH)
Computer Science
MPS
Physical Sciences
Mathematics

27. IIA = Individual Investigator Award
Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS)
Chemistry (CHE)
Materials Research (DMR)
Mathematical Sciences (DMS)
Astronomical
Sciences
(AST)
Physics (PHY)
$ 244M
$ 307M
$ 232M
$ 275M
81%
IIA,
Small Teams
82%
IIA,
Small Teams
59%
23%
IIA,
Small Teams
62%
26%
Facilities
55%
20%
IIA, Small Teams
57%
16%
Facilities
63%
30%
IIA, Small Teams
55%
32%
Facilities
IIA = Individual Investigator Award
(Other categories not called out are centers, shared instrumentation, education and workforce)
Five divisions
Very different facilities needs among them
Balance needs of all fairly