Slots: 1
Deadlines
Internal Deadline: Friday, May 17th, 2024, 5pm PT Contact RII.
LOI: June 18, 2024, 5pm PT
Preliminary Proposal Due Date: August 6, 2024, 5pm PT
External Deadline: February 11, 2025
Award Information
Award Type: Cooperative Agreement
Estimated Number of Awards: The overall number of awards will be determined by the number of high-quality proposals received and the availability of funds appropriated by Congress. NSF Engines can be funded for up to ten years, with an initial award for the first two years and subsequent awards for years 3-5 and 6-10, based on performance reviews and evaluations.
Anticipated Award Amount: See Section V (Full Proposal Preparation Instructions) of this solicitation for additional information about the allowable maximum annual budget for years one through ten of each award.
Each NSF Engine can receive funding for up to 10 years. The initial two years of funding will support a ramp-up period. Continued support for an NSF Engine will be contingent upon its overall performance, including meeting its annual performance goals.
During the ramp-up period, an NSF Engine can be funded for a total of $15,000,000 over two years. The total amount of an NSF Engine award will not exceed $160,000,000 from NSF (over a period not exceeding ten years).
Beyond Year 1, NSF will annually conduct a comprehensive assessment of the NSF Engine’s performance, which will inform subsequent-year funding. A determination that the NSF Engine has failed to perform during an NSF annual review may result in termination of the award.
The budget distribution among the lead and core partners should be appropriate for the scope of work and activities planned for each of the key drivers of ecosystem change, as defined in Section II.B.3 of this solicitation.
Who May Serve as PI: The Principal Investigator (PI) must be a senior member of the submitting organization’s leadership and will also serve as the full-time CEO for the NSF Engine. At the time of proposal submission, this role may be filled by an interim CEO until a full-time CEO is named or recruited. The designation of a full-time CEO must occur within the first six months of the start date of the award.
Individuals who are a party to a Malign Foreign Talent Recruitment Program are not eligible to serve as a senior/key person on an NSF proposal or award.
Link to Award: https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/nsf-regional-innovation-engines-nsf-engines-0/nsf24-565/solicitation
Process for Limited Submissions
PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Research Initiatives and Infrastructure (RII) Application Portal: https://rii.usc.edu/oor-portal/. Use the template provided here: RII Limited Submission Applicant Template
Materials to submit include:
- (1) Two-Page Proposal Summary (1” margins; single-spaced; standard font type, e.g. Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 2-page limit will be excluded from review. You must use the template linked above.
- (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)
Note: The portal requires information about the 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
The mission of the NSF Engines program is to accelerate the development of sustainable, inclusive, and geographically diverse regional innovation ecosystems that advance key technologies and address pressing regional, national, societal and/or geostrategic challenges. The program is designed to catalyze thriving place-based innovation ecosystems that function as interdependent networks, characterized by a coalition of stakeholders who benefit from their proximity and intentional coordination within both their topic area and region of service. This is different from a collection of siloed assets co-located within a geographic region.
To accomplish such an ambitious mission and goals, the program is looking to fund NSF Engines led by a full-time CEO and a multi-sector coalition of partner and stakeholder organizations, (e.g., government, industry, entrepreneurs, capital investors, academic institutions, non-profits, community and labor organizations) with the explicit goal of accelerating technology development for broad use and societal impact that benefit entire regions. Each NSF Engine is expected to center on a strong R&D and technology topic area and have a coalition in place that will function as an interdependent network to support R&D and technology innovations, trusted knowledge-sharing, resource expansion, strategic workforce development, and continuous and growing capital inflow. The NSF Engines program is particularly interested in increasing the nation’s latent capacity for innovation by creating new business and economic growth opportunities in regions of America and within untapped populations and under-served communities that have not yet fully participated in the technology boom of the past several decades.
Unlike traditional NSF funding models, the NSF Engines program aims to catalyze and deepen the interactions among regional stakeholders with the explicit goal of catalyzing the establishment of a sustainable and inclusive ecosystem. The NSF Engines program is not intended to focus on support for individual investigator-driven research projects, startup ventures at a specific stage in their entrepreneurial journey, or academic research infrastructure within a topic area or state/region. Instead, the intent is to create the holistic foundation for a place-based innovation ecosystem with a support infrastructure that will leverage key drivers of change to create translation pathways that drive equitable economic and societal impacts.
Each NSF Engine must demonstrate a strong commitment to inclusively leverage the full spectrum of diverse talent that society has to offer along several dimensions (e.g., perspectives, geographies, race, ethnicity, gender, types of organizations, and community type). In support of these objectives, the NSF Engines program seeks to expand the breadth of institution types that take on leadership roles and the related regional-scale activities, such as historically Black colleges and universities, Tribal colleges and universities, minority-serving institutions, community colleges, institutions in EPSCoR jurisdictions, for-profit industry, state and local governments, Tribal nations, and other organizations not supported by NSF as often. Efforts driven by the needs and aspirations of rural-based, rural-focused stakeholder groups are encouraged, as well as projects based in metropolitan areas with evidence of strong leadership participation from suburban and/or rural partners and buy-in from a range of communities and industries in the region of service.
Funding for this program will prioritize funding for regions with less-established innovation ecosystems. Of particular interest are the establishment of NSF Engines in regions of the country where organizations, resources, and capabilities exist, but where the ecosystem is not yet functioning as an efficient, fully interdependent system. These should be regions that could benefit from NSF investment to become a national leader in their topic area with high levels of economic activity and business creation that in turn attract consistent and meaningful support from public and private sources of capital. While participating organizations in each NSF Engine should largely comprise organizations from within the NSF Engine’s region of service, partners from outside of that geographical area could be appropriate to augment the resources available within the region of service. All partnerships should be relevant to the goals of the NSF Engine and their roles in the region of service must be justified. For example, mentoring from experienced organizations is encouraged, and organizations operating in existing mature innovation ecosystems are welcome to partner with lead organizations that are based in the region of service to provide support if the benefits of such partnerships remain within the NSF Engine’s region of service.
Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.