Slots: 1
Deadlines
Internal Deadline: Contact RII.
LOI: February 15, 2023
External Deadline: May 25, 2023
Award Information
Award Type: Continuing Grant
Estimated Number of Awards: 15
Anticipated Award Amount: $20,000,000
Who May Serve as PI:
The PI must hold a full-time administrative or faculty position at the proposing institution. Part-time administrators, adjunct faculty, and temporary hires are not eligible to serve as PI.
Preliminary proposals must identify up to three individuals from the submitting institution (including the PI) to participate in the EPIIC workshops, and at least one administrator is required to serve on this team. See Section II for details about the workshops. See Section V.A. for more details about the make-up of proposing teams.
Link to Award: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2023/nsf23528/nsf23528.htm
Process for Limited Submissions
PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Office of Research Application Portal: https://rii.usc.edu/oor-portal/.
Materials to submit include:
- (1) Single Page Proposal Summary (0.5” margins; single-spaced; font type: Arial, Helvetica, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 1-page limit will be excluded from review.
- (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)
Note: The portal requires information about the PIs and Co-PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#, Gender, and Ethnicity. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.
Purpose
A. Intent
The Enabling Partnerships to Increase Innovation Capacity (EPIIC) program is intended to broaden participation in innovation ecosystems by supporting capacity-building efforts at institutions of higher education interested in growing external partnerships. Establishing innovation ecosystems requires broad networks of partners working together to create a virtuous cycle of use-inspired research, translation of those research results to practice, and the development of a skilled workforce. Further, diverse and inclusive innovation ecosystems that contribute to the long-term community economic health of a region require the engagement of all interested IHEs within a region to participate and contribute their unique set of skills and expertise. However, IHEs not currently classified as R1 or R2 institutions according to the 2021 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education lack the infrastructure and resources needed to grow external partnerships and effectively contribute to innovation ecosystems, even though they are expected to play key roles within their region. This solicitation aims to provide these institutions with the support necessary to become equitable partners in innovation ecosystems.
The creation of this program is motivated by NSF’s, including TIP’s, commitment to accelerating scientific and technological innovation nationwide, particularly through the new NSF Regional Innovation Engine (NSF Engines) program. Importantly, participation in this solicitation is not predicated on an existing partnership with organizations submitting proposals under an NSF Engines solicitation. Furthermore, it is expected that the capacity-building efforts funded under this solicitation will provide significant innovation partnership opportunities irrespective of future participation in an NSF Engine.
MSIs, PUIs, and two-year institutions interested in using this capacity-building opportunity to develop the infrastructure needed to participate in an NSF Engine are especially encouraged to apply.
B. Desired Activities
Capacity-building efforts supported by this solicitation should focus on the resources, infrastructure, and expertise required for an institution to establish meaningful partnerships with external organizations to facilitate participation in the regional innovation ecosystem. Such efforts may include, but are not limited to:
- Growing corporate, community, and/or local government relations;
- Building external partnerships for nimble workforce development programs responsive to regional needs;
- Growing external partnerships to advance technology commercialization, especially those relevant to the regional innovation ecosystem; and/or
- Expanding the institution’s research enterprise (e.g. research development, research administration, research leadership, etc.) through external partnerships.
Awards made in response to full proposals under this solicitation will provide funding to support a range of activities that are currently hard to accomplish within the institution, such as award management, relief time for faculty and staff for developing external partnerships, infrastructure, and resources to facilitate participation in future NSF solicitations.
C. Funding Process
Because participation in NSF funding opportunities may represent significant logistical challenges for this solicitation’s intended audience, this program is employing a three-phase process to provide proposing teams guidance and mentorship generating project ideas and proposal development.
Phase 1. Submitting Preliminary Proposals: Phase 1 requires the submission of a brief preliminary proposal. Proposing teams will be selected to participate in Phase 2 based on their institution’s need for capacity-building for innovation partnerships as supported by the preliminary proposal. See Section V.A. for instructions on writing preliminary proposals and Section VI.A. for details on the selection criteria.
Phase 2. EPIIC Workshops: The workshops will include virtual and in-person meetings designed to create an interactive and free-thinking environment where participants from a range of academic institutions immerse themselves in collaborative thinking processes to construct impactful approaches to identifying and improving infrastructure limitations that impede an institution’s ability to meaningfully engage in cross-sector partnerships to advance efforts in workforce development, R&D, and translation of R&D results to practice.
The workshops will be led by a facilitator whose role is to assist in defining the institutional challenges and foster fruitful discussions among participants. The facilitator will be joined by a small number of mentors who are selected by NSF based on their expertise. The facilitator and mentors will take full part in the workshops, but they will not be eligible to receive funding under this collaborative activity.
The EPIIC workshops will include:
- Virtual Orientation: The workshops will begin with this 1.5-hour virtual kick-off meeting.
- Challenge Identification Workshops: This series of four half-day virtual events will allow participants to define the scope of the institutional challenges associated with partnership building.
- In-Person Solution Development and Cohort Formation Event: This three-day, in-person workshop will be used for solution ideation, solution selection and stewarding, and cohort building.
- Virtual Synchronous Feedback Session: This virtual meeting will allow participants to receive additional feedback from their peers shortly after the in-person event.
- Proposal Development: Teams invited to submit full proposals will receive additional mentor support to develop their proposals.
At the workshops, representatives from each participating institution will be expected to engage constructively in dialogue with one another, the facilitators, and mentors to develop collaborative proposals. They will work together to identify the impediments to developing successful partnerships and the strategies for ameliorating those impediments; and to develop, in cohorts, capacity-building projects.
Specific outcomes of the EPIIC workshops are expected to include:
- The specific challenges to establishing and growing partnerships with industry, state, local, and/or tribal governments, non-profits, etc. are identified;
- Meaningful, actionable solutions to these challenges are developed, and;
- Participating institutions self-organize to create cohorts based on common capacity-building goals and/or potential solutions.
Phase 3: At the conclusion of the workshops, a subset of teams will be invited to submit collaborative full proposals. Invitations to submit full proposals are conditioned upon full participation in the workshops by the proposing team.
Full proposals will be reviewed by NSF Program Officers and external reviewers following the merit review criteria outlined in the PAPPG and in Section VI.A. of the link above.
Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.