Grants for Exclusive - see details - Science and Technology

The Basic Research Office (BRO) within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering seeks proposals to assess and report on Global Competitive Analysis (GCA). The recipient will collaborate with the federal government to deliver comparative analysis assessing the relative science and technology (S) competitive balance between the United States and major global competitors. Given the breadth of the expertise and perspectives likely needed to deliver GCA products at the scale and analytic depth required, BRO expects that recipients would need to form a consortium of FFRDCs, UARCs, universities, non-profits, or other non-governmental entities. This being said, a consortium is not required and other teaming arrangements are eligible for award.The recipient will prepare reports that assess the myriad elements of relative technology leadership, explore the implications of competitors actions, provide a common operating picture of global technological competition, and create a forum to explore policy options. The recipient will serve as a key performer of the GCAT (Global Competitive Analysis Team), a federated interagency mechanism that brings together agencies unique analytic capabilities in order to conduct GCA. The recipient will integrate their independent analysis with agency analysis to deliver products that are more than the sum of the parts.The recipient will take its priorities and guidance from an Executive Office of the President-led Panel (EOP Panel) that includes senior representation from relevant federal agencies. In the first year of the program, initial topics, currently four in number, are provided to set the direction of the recipient, with input from the EOP Panel once the Panel has been established.The recipient is expected to have capability in all of the sub-elements described in Section C. However, to diversify the analysis and ensure that multiple views are represented in each GCA product, the recipient is expected to continuously identify and include external/additional performers possessing strong capabilities in a subset of the described elements, as necessary.

The State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program is the second of three digital equity programs authorized by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, Division F, Title III, Public Law 117-58, 135 Stat. 429, 1209 (November 15, 2021) also known as the Digital Equity Act to promote digital inclusion activities and achieve digital equity. The Digital Equity Act consists of three funding programs: (1) the $60 million State Digital Equity Planning Grant Program; (2) the $1.44 billion State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program; and (3) the $1.25 billion Competitive Grant Program. The State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program will provide funds to States and U.S. Territories to implement the State Digital Equity Plans developed pursuant to the State Digital Equity Planning Grant Program. The State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program NOFO also establishes a competitive program to make both State Digital Equity Planning Grant Program funds and State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program funds available to Native Entities to carry out digital equity and inclusion activities consistent with the Digital Equity Act.Key Dates Complete applications from States (including the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico) must be received through the NTIA Grants Portal (https://grants.ntia.gov) no later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on May 28, 2024. Application materials are available at https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov. Complete applications from U.S. Territories (other than the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico) must be received through the NTIA Grants Portal (https://grants.ntia.gov) no later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on July 31, 2024. The application window for Indian Tribes, Alaska Native entities, and Native Hawaiian organizations (“Native Entities”) will open September 25, 2024, and close on February 7, 2025. All Native Entity applications must be received through the NTIA Grants Portal (https://grants.ntia.gov), by email (digitalequity@ntia.gov), or by mail or courier no later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on February 7, 2025. 2 NTIA expects to begin issuing awards to Eligible States pursuant to this Notice of Funding Opportunity (“NOFO”) no later than August 28, 2024. NTIA expects to make additional awards on a rolling basis.

The government seeks research and technical support for watershed management modeling and analyses for water quantity and quality, impacts to aquatic species, and effects of extreme rainfall events to take place at the Fort Leonard Wood, MO area. Details of primary tasks are as follows: Task 1: Watershed modeling SWAT+ modeling will be completed for the Big Piney River (a HUC 12 watershed) and Roubidoux Creek (part of the Upper Gasconade HUC 12 watershed). The area around FLW is a karst landscape. Models will be calibrated using USGS stream gages and TSS sampling data supplied by FLW and ERDC-CERL. Task 1 consists of 2 (two) subtasks. a) Model(s) will incorporate existing climate and watershed/management conditions, b) model(s) will incorporate the recommended areal coverage of BMP types and management practices into the SWAT+ models to estimate change to water quality and discharge under existing climate conditions, Note: ERDC-CERL will assist with creating recommended BMPs and management practices. Task 2: Assess model output and determine management prioritization Interpretation and evaluation of model results to prioritize watersheds to target with proposed BMPs and management. Analyses will include statistical methods to justify periodization. The cost of BMP implementation and ongoing operations and management cost and the potential water quality and quantity impacts will also be included. Standard maintenance plans for all recommended BMPs will be required. Task 3: Develop a Watershed Management Plan Develop a Watershed Management Plan with recommended preliminary designs and locations for future development of LID features and BMPs to protect imperiled aquatic species, reduce infrastructure maintenance costs, and support current and future land usages. The final Watershed Management Plan will be included in the FLW Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan (INRMP) and used by land management groups on FLW including the Directorate of Public Works (DPW), Training, Mobilization Security (DPTMS), and Integrated Training Area Management (ITAM) as well as the adjacent Mark Twain State Forest.

The IDA promotes ideas that have the potential to yield high-impact findings and new avenues of investigation. This award mechanism supports conceptually innovative research that could ultimately lead to critical discoveries in TSC research and/or improvements in patient care. Research projects should include a well-formulated, testable hypothesis based on strong preliminary data and scientific rationale. The following are important aspects of the IDA: Impact: Applications should articulate both the short- and long-term impact of the proposed research. High-impact research will, if successful, significantly advance TSC research and/or patient care. Innovation: Innovative research may introduce a new paradigm, challenge existing paradigms, look at existing problems from new perspectives, or exhibit other uniquely creative qualities that may include high-risk/potentially high-gain approaches to TSC research. Research that is merely an incremental advance (to the next logical step) is not considered innovative. Preliminary Data: Unpublished results from the laboratory of the Principal Investigator (PI) or collaborators named on this application, and/or data from the published literature that are relevant to TSC and the proposed research project, are required. New-to-the-Field Investigator (NFI): The FY24 TSCRP IDA mechanism encourages applications from investigators in the early stages of their TSC research career. The NFI Option is designed to support the continued development of promising independent investigators that are early in their faculty appointments and/or the transition of established investigators from other research fields into TSC research. Applications to the NFI Option will compete separately from Established Investigators submitting to the regular IDA. PIs applying under the NFI category are strongly encouraged to strengthen their applications through collaboration with investigators experienced in TSC research and/or possessing other relevant expertise as demonstrated by a record of funding and publications. See Attachment 8: Eligibility Statement.

This grant provides funding for research partners in the North Atlantic Coast Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit to analyze global flood impacts and develop a comprehensive database to improve flood resilience across various sectors.

This grant provides funding for research on vegetation and soil health on military lands in Oregon, aimed at helping land managers combat invasive species and improve land management practices.

The Inflation Reduction Act Technology Commercialization Fund (IRA TCF) - Collaborative Alignment for Critical Technology Industries grant is a $15 million funding program by the U.S. Department of Energy aimed at promoting the commercialization and adoption of low-carbon technologies in the chemicals, cement, and metals industries to achieve deep decarbonization.

With this solicitation, NIJ seeks a proposal for rigorous research to support the development of objective and independent knowledge and validated tools to reduce violence against women and children, promote justice for victims of crime, and enhance criminal justice responses. For that reason, this solicitation seeks an application for grant funding to conduct research on a project titled Safe Transitions for Teens: Assessing the Impact of Intimate Partner Transitional Housing on Adolescent Residents.

This funding opportunity is designed for research partners focused on developing care and propagation techniques for soft corals affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, supporting coral restoration efforts in the Gulf Coast region.

With this solicitation, NIJ seeks proposals from qualified applicants to establish and operate a Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCOE) to support NIJs research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT) process and technology transition activities in all areas of forensic science.

The objective of this program is to develop replicable, customizable processes, along with methods and tools to measure resilience and conduct resilience assessments across communities in a watershed scalable to the application across the Nation. Reconciling community needs and methodological gaps should result in methodological advancement. An understanding of the interdependencies of individual projects to achieve critical functions in support of watershed objectives is of paramount importance. This work will address specific threat scenarios acting on individual vulnerabilities of specific communities and multiple compounding threats acting at watershed-wide scale. This work will interface with and possibly be combined with efforts being developed by ERDC as a part of technology transfer to others to customize and use. This project will include the delivery of products in a form that may be included in a playbook for watershed jurisdictions to customize and replicate. Objective 1: Develop methodological toolbox for resilience quantification and decision support for watershed-level mitigation efforts. For this objective, ERDC will conduct field-campaigns to collect data on critical functions that are applicable to watershed-level mitigation efforts. The recipient/awardee will use the supplied data in analyses to identify interdependencies and vulnerabilities for development of a methodological toolbox for resilience quantification and decision support for water-shed level mitigation efforts. For consistency, the assessment should coincide with existing ERDC published work in resilience and, as such, should focus on the Resilience Matrix, an organizing framework on three phases of resilience (absorb, recover, adapt) against three domains of resilience (physical, information, social). Activities associated with Objective 1 will include the following: (i) process to identify and prioritize the critical infrastructure in local community and watershed levels; (ii) an analysis of the most vulnerable critical infrastructure to all forms of threats (primary focus in the Savannah River Basin); (iii) an assessment of the supply and demand of critical functions supported by the highest priority infrastructure in the watershed; (iv) replicable process to conduct an analysis of interdependencies across primary functions and infrastructure in the basin; (v) methods and tools to conduct a consequence assessment of critical functions at the local and watershed level; (vi) a screening tool to visualize vulnerabilities on potential failures of critical infrastructure; (vii) process to apply screening tool applications in a collaborative setting between public and private stakeholders. Objective 2: Support the development of collaborative approaches to build a shared vision of resilience, scalable to all levels of a watershed. This objective will advance research activities focused on the development of decision support tools to connect local priorities with challenges across the watershed for scalable watershed resilience. Similar to Objective 1, ERDC will collect data and provide the data to the recipient/awardee use in complex analyses. The analyses will result in a deliverable that describes the methods and tools needed to prioritize decisions in the watershed in a way that will enhance resilience. Activities associated with Objective 2 will include the following: (i) methods for identification of objectives and priorities in the watershed; (ii) assessment of priorities across the watershed to identify potential areas of conflict and synergy in the basin; (iii) methods to help communities identify and leverage government resources; (iv) process to generate and articulate scenarios for collaborative decision-making decision support tools; (v) development of serious gaming sim city like applications to run scenarios against potential resilience strategy alternatives. .

Quantum information science [https://quantum.gov] has emerged as a promising area for the development of disruptive computing technologies. Since 2015, ASCR has organized several workshops that have indicated the potential of quantum computing for scientific applications [2 -5] and has supported basic research to improve all layers of the quantum software stack including algorithms, programming languages, error mitigation, and compilers. The progress has been remarkable, however, practical applications of quantum computing that improve time-to-solution, or power-to-solution, or accuracy of the results with respect to the best classical system have not yet been deployed. The 2023 Basic Research Needs Workshop in Quantum Computing and Networking [6] identified several priority research directions (PRDs); this FOA targets end-to-end software toolchains to program and control quantum systems and networks at scale (PRD1), quantum algorithms delivering quantum advantage (PRD2), and resilience through error detection, prevention, protection, mitigation, and correction (PRD4). These are key components for the development of a software ecosystem that must be ready to account for modularity and interoperability on one side, and for specialization and performance on another. Research proposed in response to this FOA must primarily focus on addressing one of the two topics described below: Topic 1 Modular Software Stack: The diversity of quantum computing architectures and hardware technologies is expected to persist into the foreseeable future; this is an important consideration that guides the advancement of computer science sought in this topic. The development of an integrated computational ecosystem requires a general-purpose quantum software stack that is adaptable to, and takes advantage of, multiple kinds of quantum hardware. We seek basic research in computer science and applied mathematics that: Addresses practical and fundamental bottlenecks that hinder modularity and potential synergy among selected hardware technologies; Pursues general approaches to integration that may remain relevant for future technologies; Devises ways to embed quantum processors in parallel and distributed computing models; and Integrates error management across the software stack. Topic 2 Quantum Utility: This topic aims to advance the research towards achievement and demonstration of quantum utility [1] by developing new algorithms and fine-tuning all levels of the software stack for a selected portfolio of promising problems within the ASCR mission. Applications should: Choose generalizable application-inspired target problems; Develop algorithms for optimized math kernels and math primitives for selected current (NISQ) and future quantum systems that significantly advance state-of-the-art performance for the selected target problems; Adapt, if needed, any level of the software stack for the specific target problems; and Estimate quantum resources by employing important complementary metrics, including energy-to-solution. Verification protocols and tools are important for both Topic 1 and Topic 2 and should be discussed in the application. Applicants must choose and specify Topic 1 or Topic 2 as the focus of their application. In the choice of Topic 1 or 2, proposed research is encouraged to consider multiple metrics, such as qubit count, gate fidelity, and qubit connectivity.

The Pennsylvania Shooting Range Improvement Grant Program (SRIP), managed by the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC), aims to provide financial support for the state's aging shooting range infrastructure. The program's core mission aligns with the PGC's pride in Pennsylvania's hunting and shooting heritage, seeking to ensure a bright future for the next generation of hunters and shooters by revitalizing existing facilities and creating opportunities for increased access. This initiative is a strategic move to foster community engagement and support for shooting sports. The target beneficiaries of the SRIP grant are existing shooting ranges, shooting clubs, recreational shooting organizations, archery clubs, and education groups that can demonstrate public use of their facilities. Retail ranges are explicitly excluded. The program's impact goals include increasing public access to private and club-type facilities, enhancing the availability and quality of shooting ranges for the public, improving public safety and environmental stewardship, and bolstering facilities for the Pennsylvania Hunter-Trapper Education Program. A key priority is also to provide funding to facilities that have not previously received grants, thereby broadening the reach of support. The program focuses on bringing life into aging infrastructure and creating opportunities for new members. This is achieved through a tiered funding structure (Tier One, Tier Two, and Tier Three) based on grant amount and project useful life, with each tier having specific deliverables. These deliverables include PGC signage of program funding, a certain number of youth field days or hunter/shooter education classes, and a specified number of public days per calendar year for matches, tournaments, sight-in days, or open house events. Eligible projects include rifle, handgun, shotgun, skeet, trap, and archery ranges, which should be designed to established industry standards or mirror PGC state game land ranges. Expected outcomes and measurable results are directly tied to the program's goals and deliverables. For example, increased public days directly measure enhanced public access, while the number of youth field days and hunter/shooter education classes demonstrate an enhancement of educational opportunities. The program anticipates increased use of state lands, decreased firearms-related vandalism, local citizen support and appreciation, increased generated funds for ranges, and enhanced user support of hunting and shooting sports. These outcomes collectively contribute to the PGC's strategic priority of preserving and promoting the state's outdoor heritage through accessible and well-maintained facilities.

This grant provides funding for research organizations with expertise in Everglades ecology to study and monitor the unique ridge and slough landscapes of the Florida Everglades, supporting efforts to restore and protect this vital ecosystem.

This funding opportunity supports the development of user-centered decision-support tools that utilize advanced Earth science models to improve environmental decision-making across various sectors.

This funding opportunity provides up to $2 million for federal, state, tribal, and academic partners to conduct research on public lands and assess geological, water, mineral, and biological resources in alignment with USGS priorities.

This funding opportunity is designed for research institutions in Alaska and Colorado to monitor salmon populations, which are crucial for the conservation of the endangered Cook Inlet Beluga Whale at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

This funding opportunity provides financial support for existing partners in the Rocky Mountain Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit to develop tools that improve the federal environmental review and project authorization process.

This grant provides funding for research institutions to study the endangered Everglade snail kite's demographics, movement, and habitat in relation to water management practices in Florida's Everglades ecosystem.

Freshwater ecosystems provide direct and indirect contributions to human well-being, impacting our survival, quality of life, and National security. These systems are jeopardized by the continued establishment and spread of aquatic invasive plants (AIP), including harmful algal blooms (HAB), throughout the Nation. These nuisance species pose an existential threat to ecosystem services, impacting drinking water supplies, irrigated food and fiber production, fish and wildlife habitat, flood control, navigation, industrial water use, economic and social benefits. The future sustainability of key freshwater resources in the U.S. mandates innovative and holistic strategies to manage infestations of AIP in an accelerated timeline for their restoration and conservation. To expedite and ensure a scientifically sound process, ERDC is developing and evaluating AIP management with on a national scale. The recent establishment and spread of hydrilla biotypes in the Eastern US, giant salvinia populations along the Gulf Coast, and flowering rush stands in the Pacific Northwest require expansion of capabilities, geographical footprint, and technical partnerships to address these plant infestations, and provide science-based solutions for species-selective and large-scale management activities to protect major waterways. The USACE ERDC is seeking a partner institution to identify opportunities for the development and evaluation of multi-scale AIP management techniques and strategies in major regional watersheds that are infested with plants such as hydrilla, giant salvinia, and flowering rush, among others. Year one (1) will establish the initial structure of the project and includes tasks that support the following objectives. If funded, years two (2), three (3), four (4), and five (5) would continue to expand major elements of the research project and build a diverse portfolio of collaborative projects and work efforts. Objective 1: Project Locations and Initiation of Data-based Evaluations for Management Strategies. This objective prioritizes initial research activities that are focused on identifying, ground-truthing, and documenting project locations and specific sites for the collection of new data to evaluate site-specific management techniques including: (1) biotic and abiotic characterization of evaluation sites (quantitative vegetation assessments - AIP and non-target plants); 2) presence of listed species; 3) acreage of site, average water depth, water exchange processes); and 4) key water quality parameters (temp, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity). At least one site should be selected primarily from the Eastern U.S. region. Secondary sites would be from the Gulf Coast and Pacific Northwest. Objective 2: Experimentation to Close Data Gaps. This objective focuses on empirical research to close data gaps and transfer results through technology transfer mechanisms. Part of this objective is to organize interdisciplinary technical teams to plan and conduct studies during year one of the project. Joint teams will comprise scientists to partner with ERDC in the development and evaluation of environmentally compatible strategies to selectively manage AIP. These strategies include: 1) the use of chemical herbicides; 2) bio-suppression techniques; 3) mechanical/physical methods, and 4) integration of selected approaches 1 through 3. Additionally, education and outreach activities on the need, methods, and benefits for managing AIP in public waters will be conducted at the conclusion of each study. These activities will be undertaken as technical webinars, workshops, training sessions, field tours, reports, peer-reviewed journal articles, sponsor briefings, and presentations at professional meetings. Education/outreach and technology transfer audiences will include the public, agencies, legislators, industry, media outlets, and all other stakeholders and practitioners. Deliverables: Upon completion of Objectives 1-2, the selected academic institution will develop a report that documents the project locations and includes a summary of the management strategies that were identified, considered and/or ultimately recommended during the research effort. The report will also include information explaining the management strategies and their limits, and the potential effects of implementing such strategies to restore, manage, and/or preserve selected project locations in major watersheds, focused on the Eastern US, Gulf Coast, and Pacific Northwest regions initially, and may expand to other regions as opportunities become available.