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Press Release 12-135
NSF Announces New INSPIRE Awards
Bold, interdisciplinary research grants span science, engineering and education
July 18, 2012
NSF today announced the first set of new awards that will be given out under INSPIRE, which, when all are distributed under this fiscal year, will total about $30.4 million. Eleven awards were released today, and the total number of awards is expected to reach 40 over the next few weeks. The maximum size for an INSPIRE award this year is $1 million. INSPIRE, which stands for Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education, was established to address some of the most complicated and pressing scientific problems that lie at the intersections of traditional disciplines. "INSPIRE is a great example of the vital role NSF plays in supporting highly innovative research and education projects at the intersections of traditional disciplines in science and engineering," said NSF Director Subra Suresh. "Through INSPIRE and other NSF programs, I encourage our nation's scientists and engineers to submit to NSF their most innovative ideas for interdisciplinary research." In FY12, NSF established INSPIRE to fund interdisciplinary, potentially transformative research. Once fully implemented, INSPIRE will complement other NSF efforts with a suite of new, highly innovative NSF-wide activities and funding opportunities. INSPIRE awards are co-funded between the Office of Integrative Activities and other NSF offices and directorates. INSPIRE aims to widen the pool of prospective discoveries by supporting proposals that may be viewed as falling outside of other NSF programs and funding mechanisms. The awards made under INSPIRE include research on resorbable electronics, modeling and optimization of DNA manufacturing processes, statistical mechanics of natural climate variability, wireless sensor networks in experimental biology research, and scalable toolkit for transformative astrophysics research. A complete list of awards made today is listed below. In FY13, INSPIRE will expand to include larger "mid-scale" research awards up to $3.0 million. This new mid-scale opportunity will provide researchers with a novel funding mechanism to consider research questions that might be beyond the scope of standard NSF programs due to funding limitations. | PI | PI Institution | Title | Amount | Co-funders | | Dankowicz, Harry | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Asynchronous communication, self-organization, and differentiation in human and insect networks
| $999,850 | SBE/BCS, BIO/IOS, ENG/CMMI | | Iskarous, Khalil | University of Southern California | Dynamical Principles of Animal Movement
| $973,963 | SBE/BCS, BIO/IOS | | Kaiser, Hartmut | Louisiana State University | STAR: Scalable toolkit for Transformative Astrophysics Research
| $799,682 | MPS/AST, CISE/CCF | | Minai, Ali | University of Cincinnati | The Hunting of the Spark: A Systematic Study of Natural Creativity in Human Networks
| $999,762 | SBE/BCS, CISE/IIS | | Misra, Satyajayant | New Mexico State University | Towards Ubiquitous Adoption of Wireless Sensor Networks in Experimental Biology Research
| $800,000 | CISE/CNS, BIO/IOS | | Omenetto, Fiorenzo | Tufts University | Resorbable Electronics--Materials, Manufacturing, and Modeling
| $1,000,000 | MPS/DMR, ENG/CMMI | | Onuchic, Jose | Rice University | Molecular Underpinnings of Bacterial Decision-Making
| $1,000,000 | BIO/MCB, MPS/PHY, MPS/CHE, MPS/DMR | | Paerl, Hans | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | An Ecologically-Driven Strategy for Ensuring Sustainability of Anthropogenically and Climatically Impacted Lakes | $450,709 | ENG/CBET, BIO/DEB, OISE | | Peccoud, Jean | Virginia Tech | Modeling and optimization of DNA manufacturing processes
| $999,531 | BIO/DBI, BIO/MCB, ENG/CMMI | | Weiss, Jeffrey | University of Colorado, Boulder | Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics of Natural Climate Variability: Sea-Surface Temperature and Ocean Heat Content
| $709,682 | GEO/OCE, MPS/DMR, MPS/PHY, MPS/DMS | | Woodbury, Neal | Arizona State University | Mimicking the Functional Complexity of Biology with Man-Made Systems
| $999,904 | BIO/MCB, MPS/PHY, MPS/CHE, ENG/CBET |
-NSF-
Media Contacts
Dana Topousis, NSF (703) 292-7750 dtopousi@nsf.gov
Program Contacts
Thomas F. Russell, NSF (703) 292-4863 trussell@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. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, its budget is $7.0 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives over 50,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards nearly $420 million in professional and service contracts yearly.
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