Co-chair: Thomas Russell, Office of Integrative Activities

Co-chair: Richard Behnke, Directorate for Geosciences

INSPIRE

Responding to:

National Academies

National Science Board

Other community and

internal reports

Science Nov. 18, 2011

Article by J. Mervis

http://www.sciencemag.org/co

ntent/334/6058/883.full.pdf

INSPIRE Working Group

Co-chair: Thomas Russell, Office of Integrative Activities

Co-chair: Richard Behnke, Directorate for Geosciences

DeAndra Beck, Office of International Science and Engineering

Deborah Lockhart, Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering

Carmiña Londoño, Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences

Paul Morris, Office of Integrative Activities

Melur Ramasubramanian, Directorate for Education & Human Resources

Sohi Rastegar, Directorate for Engineering

Marc Rigas, Office of Cyberinfrastructure

Neil Swanberg, Office of Polar Programs

Alan Tessier, Directorate for Biological Sciences

Mark Weiss, Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences

Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE)

Goals:

• Demonstrate that NSF is open to unusually novel cross-disciplinary ideas: Welcome groundbreaking or unconventional ideas and approaches, and unusually novel, creative interdisciplinary proposals

• Encourage Program Directors to promote such ideas: Empower PDs with flexibility and new resources and mechanisms to enable cross-cutting collaboration and risk-taking in developing their awards portfolio

FY 2012 budget: $20 million FY 2013 request: $63 million

First pilot INSPIRE award activity for 2012-13: Creative Research Awards for Transformative Interdisciplinary Ventures (CREATIV) [projects henceforth to be designated publicly as INSPIRE awards]

Second pilot under development for 2013: Larger mid-scale projects (responds to NSB Task Force on Unsolicited Mid-scale Research)

First INSPIRE Pilot

• Open to all NSF-supported areas of science, engineering, and education research – unsolicited, no favored topics

• Provides substantial funding, not limited to the exploratory stage (maximum award $1,000,000; maximum duration 5 years)

• Proposals must be interdisciplinary and potentially transformative

• Only internal merit review by program directors is required (stays within established NSF policy allowing up to 5% of $$ w/o external review)

• Not for proposals that are more appropriate for existing mechanisms:

– Primarily advance a single discipline, or

– Can be expected to receive an appropriate evaluation through external review in regular programs, or

– Continue a well-established line of research, leading to the next expected step

Through inquiry process, PI must have at least 2 program directors’ authorizations in advance in order to submit a proposal

The First Year of INSPIRE

• Strong response: about 400 inquiries (short white papers)

• 50 proposals authorized by program directors

• 46 proposals submitted

• 40 awards in process

• $30.7 million (approx) total spending

• All directorates and programmatic offices involved

• Next slides: two glances at the awards and inquiries – In NSF organizational structure

– As unstructured cross-cutting content

Analysis of the INSPIRE Inquiries Received (≈ 400) Text-Driven Classification into 10 Clusters

Clusters of Inquiries and Awards

Summary and Next Steps

• Strong internal and external response

• Attracted out-of-the-box projects with unusual connections – Example 1: Human cognition, linguistics, animal behavior,

dynamical systems engineering

– Example 2: Molecular biology, systems biology, statistical physics, protein chemistry

• 18 of 40 FY 2012 awards have been announced to date

• Remaining awards to be finalized in the coming weeks

• FY 2013: budget request increases to $63 million – Similar level of investment in first INSPIRE pilot

– Second “mid-scale” pilot, internal/external review

The First INSPIRE Awards (1)

PI PI Institution Title Amount Co-funders

Apon, Amy Clemson University Evaluating the Effect of Cyberinfrastructure on

Universities' Production Process

$600,000 SBE/OAD,

OCI

Chrisey, Doug Rensselaer

Polytechnic

Institute

Novel Ceramic Membrane Electrode Assemblies

for High Efficiency Thermo-Electrochemical

Converter

$600,000 ENG/ECCS,

ENG/CBET

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

Davidson, Eric CalTech Paleodevelopmental Evolution in Echinoids $800,000 GEO/EAR,

BIO/IOS

Deisseroth, Karl Stanford Fully-assembled Biology via Light-field

Illumination and Intact-tissue Imaging

$1,000,000 BIO/IOS,

CISE/IIS,

BIO/DBI,

BIO/EF

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

Kuhl, Ellen Stanford University Optogenetic Control of the Human Heart - Turning

Light into Force

$600,000 ENG/CMMI

ENG/CBET

Lin, Bill UCSD Stochastic Processing Calculus: A New

Methodology for Advanced Semiconductor

Manufacturing and Data Center Networking

$750,000 CISE/CNS,

ENG/CMMI

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

The First INSPIRE Awards (2)

PI PI Institution Title Amount Co-funders

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,

Williams, Cranos North Carolina

State University

Dynamic Regulatory Modeling of the Iron

Deficiency Response in Arabidopsis thaliana

$999,758 BIO/MCB,

ENG/CBET,

BIO/DBI,

OCI

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