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Press Release 06-146
NSF Awards $76 million for 2006 Science and Technology Centers
Centers will pursue next-generation polymers, advanced climate models, microbial oceanography and monitoring of coastal environments
October 5, 2006
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a total of $76 million over the next 5 years to fund multiuniversity collaborations to support four cross-disciplinary centers to address fundamental questions in the areas of next-generation polymers, climate modeling, microbial oceanography and coastal environments.
"The Science and Technology Centers are among the nation's premiere research hubs," said NSF Director Arden L. Bement, Jr. "They provide a unique environment that allows scientists to push the frontiers of both research and education by developing creative partnerships among disciplines, institutions and walks of life. Investigators are encouraged to think outside the box, to bring fresh, even risky, ideas to bear on problems that have not yielded to conventional approaches."
With the new awards, NSF currently supports 17 Science and Technology Centers that involve nearly 100 academic institutions, national laboratories, industrial organizations or other entities. The centers build intellectual and physical infrastructures within and between disciplines, and bring together the creation, integration, and transfer of new knowledge to the mainstream and industrial communities.
Centers offer the research and engineering community an effective mechanism to undertake long-term scientific and technological research and education activities, to explore better and more effective ways to educate students and to develop mechanisms to ensure the timely transition of research and education advances into service in society.
"Teamwork, strategic planning and implementation, and synergy are key factors in the success of the new NSF Science and Technology Centers," said Nathaniel G. Pitts, director of the NSF Office of Integrative Activities. "Each has multiple partners from different science and engineering sectors, including national and international academia, industry, and federal, state and local government. The partners will enable the centers to take advantage of complex agendas that require special modes of operation."
Each center receives roughly $19 million dollars over 5 years, and if approved, receives an additional 5 years of support following a thorough evaluation.
"The full diversity of the nation's intellectual talent will be engaged," added Pitts, "and the expectation is that new knowledge will be one of the primary products, as will the development of new instrumentation, new technologies, and future scientists and engineers."
Brief descriptions of the 2006 STC cohort follow.
NSF Science and Technology Center for Layered Polymeric Systems (CLiPS)
The NSF Science and Technology Center for Layered Polymeric Systems, headquartered at Case Western Reserve University, will conduct research at the intersection between the physical sciences and polymer science and engineering. The research will center on a layering process created at Case that imparts features on the micro- and nanoscales. The forced-assembly process can combine otherwise incompatible polymers and other materials to produce hierarchical structures.
The center also involves partners at the University of Texas at Austin, Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., the Cleveland Municipal School District, the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Miss., Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind., the State University of New York at Fredonia, the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, N.Y., and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.
Case Western Reserve University press release
NSF Science and Technology Center for Multi-Scale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes (CMMAP)
The NSF Science and Technology Center for Multi-Scale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes headquartered at Colorado State University will create improved climate models for more accurately depicting cloud processes and enhancing climate and weather forecasting.
The prototype model allows scientists to take a 2-dimensional model of a collection of clouds and apply the behavior of those clouds to each of the thousands of grid columns of a global atmospheric model.
The center also involves partners at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., in addition to other investigators and educators around the country and in Canada, Japan, England and Australia.
Colorado State University Press Release
NSF Science and Technology Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE)
The NSF Science and Technology Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education, headquartered at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, will facilitate collaborations among the disparate disciplines of oceanography, microbiology, ecology and genomics.
Researchers will pursue a deeper understanding of the oceans and how they respond to global environmental variability and climate change and the biology, ecology and biogeochemistry of marine microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea, single-celled plants and viruses.
The center also involves partners at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Oregon State University, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the Hawai'i Department of Education.
University of Hawai'i press release
NSF Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction (CMOP)
The NSF Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction, headquartered at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, will use advances in genomics and proteomics to study coastal margins. Coastal margins comprise less than 20 percent of the contiguous United States but support more than half of the U.S. population.
The effort will involve SATURN, a space-age river and ocean observation network that includes boats, buoys, stationary platforms, undersea ocean gliders and even unmanned, bottom-crawling vehicles to continuously collect real-time data on water temperature, salinity, levels of oxygen and organic compounds, presence of microbial communities and other factors.
Scientists will use the data to build computer models and simulations for determining climate change impacts on coastal margins, the roles coastal margins play in the global cycling of environmental carbon, nutrients, gases and other manmade and natural substances, and how far seaward human activities affect ecosystems.
The center also involves partners at the University of Washington, Oregon State University, Portland State University, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the University of Utah.
Oregon Health & Science University press release
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Media Contacts
Joshua A. Chamot, NSF (703) 292-7730 jchamot@nsf.gov
David Karl, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa (808) 956-8964 dkarl@hawaii.edu
Jonathan Modie, Oregon Health & Science University (503) 494-8231 modiej@ohsu.edu
Edward DeLong, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (617) 253-5271 delong@mit.edu
Laura M. Massie, Case Western Reserve University (216) 368-4442 laura.massie@case.edu
Emily Narvaes Wilmsen, Colorado State University (970) 491-2336 Emily.Wilmsen@colostate.edu
Program Contacts
Margaret E.M. Tolbert, NSF (703) 292-8040 mtolbert@nsf.gov
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that
supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and
engineering, with an annual budget of $6.06 billion. NSF funds reach all 50
states through grants to over 1,900 universities and institutions. Each year,
NSF receives about 45,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes over
11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards over $400 million in
professional and service contracts yearly.
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