(210c) NSF Special Solicitations: Proposal Submission Considerations

In addition to support for core programs, NSF issues several special solicitations that focus on themes of emergent and national interest. For example, NSF and the Engineering Directorate support advances in data sciences, resilient manufacturing, resource-efficient industrial technologies, synthetic and engineered biology, imaging and biosensing, and tissue engineering and biomanufacturing. These solicitations often span various NSF divisions or directorates, or even other federal agencies. Special solicitations in CBET include NSF and Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, Inc. (NSF-CASIS) (NSF 24-502 and NSF 24-522), Future Manufacturing (FM) (NSF 24-525), NSF-NIH collaboration on biomedical technologies (Biomedical Research Initiative for Next-Gen BioTechnologies - SynBio Control (BRING SynBio)) (NSF 24-603), and ECosystem for Leading Innovation in Plasma Science and Engineering (ECLIPSE) (PD 24-110Z). This session will focus on how to submit proposals in response to special NSF solicitations. CBET Program Directors will highlight some current solicitations of interest to researchers, the key differences compared to regular (unsolicited) proposals, addressing solicitation-specific review criteria, common pitfalls encountered, and other important considerations to prepare competitive proposals.