About this event
On Monday, October 21st, 1 – 2pm ET for DEB held its next Virtual Office Hour: Dear Colleague Letters (DCL). Please note that is a date change from our regular schedule. We discussed Dear Colleague Letters; how they are different from Solicitations; how that may influence your research project; and what current DCLs are available to the community. Upcoming DEB Virtual Office Hours are announced ahead of time on DEBrief, so we suggest you also sign up for blog notifications.
If you can’t make it to this or any future office hours, don’t worry! Come back to the blog afterwards, as we post recaps and the presentation slides of all office hour sessions. Alternatively, visit our Office Hours homepage for slideshows and recaps of past topics. We will also post presentation slides here as well.
Virtual Office Hours are on the second Monday of every other month from 1 – 2pm ET.
Upcoming Office Hours and Topics:
December 9: TBD
Presentation outline
Division of Environmental Biology NSF staff in attendance today:
- Jeremy Wojdak (host) - Population and Community Ecology
- Andrea Porras-Alfaro – Population and Community Ecology
- Betsy von Holle – Population and Community Ecology
- Chris Balakrishnan – Systematics and Biodiversity Science
- Leslie Rissler – Evolutionary Processes
Resources:
- DEB Virtual Office Hour DEB Office Hours: second Monday of each month, 1-2pm Eastern
- DEB Blog posts upcoming topics, registration, and recap posts: https://debblog.nsfbio.com/office-hours/
- Sign up for BIO News and Updates
- Volunteer to review DEB: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DEBexpertise
- Find recent BIO funding opportunities
Dear Colleague Letters
- What is a DCL? What is the differences between a DCL and a solicitation…
- Presentation will highlight specific DCLs of relevance to the DEB community of investigators
Types of Proposals and Solicitations
Solicited vs. unsolicited proposals
- Solicitation describes a specific funding program, including some that are general in topic (i.e., BIO core programs)
- Other proposals are submitted in response to the general NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG)
Dear Colleague Letters (DCLs)
- Usually announce a focus of an existing funding opportunity on a specific program emphasis
Deadlines vs. Target Dates
- Firm vs. flexible deadlines
- Remember: BIO Core Programs don’t have deadlines!
- There are no deadlines for some programs and some proposal types (small grants, workshops, supplements)
DCLs Versus Solicitations: PAPPG
From PAPPG:
Part 1. Chapter 1.C.4
DCLs are intended to provide general information to the community, clarify or amend an existing policy or document, or inform the NSF proposer community about upcoming opportunities or special competitions for supplements to existing awards. They also may be used to announce NSF’s interest in receiving proposals in specified topical areas for the following proposal types contained in Chapter II.E: Planning, Rapid Response Research (RAPID); Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER); Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (RAISE); and Conference.
DCLs Versus Solicitations
- DCLs may be motivated by gaps in proposal submissions, emerging areas of research, or priorities set at the National, Agency, and/or Directorate level.
- A DCL does NOT limit the types of questions programs will review but highlight certain areas of opportunity for the scientific community. If your work falls into one of the areas that is a focus of a DCL, contact a Program Director for more information.
LIFE DCL: Leveraging Innovations From Evolution Dear Colleague Letter
- High global extinction rates and the consequent loss of biodiversity, threatens the opportunity to discover, understand, and capitalize on the diversity of ways evolution has solved environmental challenges, repeatedly over millions of years.
- BIO seeks to catalyze research that leverages the full diversity and complexity of the Tree of Life to understand the diverse molecular mechanisms underlying life’s innovations, especially those that may hold significant potential for applications in the bioeconomy.
- Bottom line: The LIFE DCL seeks to speed discoveries of nature-based solutions that will benefit science and society.
- Novel research teams (and training) encouraged: Bridging fields of molecular and cellular biology, including biochemistry, with systematics and evolutionary biology.
LIFE DCL: Review Criteria
- How might the work advance our understanding of convergent biological innovations?
- Is there potential for applications in the bioeconomy (nature-based solutions)?
- To what degree does this work integrate systematics/evolutionary perspectives with mechanistic studies of gene and genome function?
- How effectively is the tree of life leveraged?
- Is the collaborative team appropriate for the proposed work?
- Are there integrative training initiatives?
ULTRA-Data DCL: Using Long-Term Research Associated Data Dear Colleague Letter
- What: Encourages submission of proposals for projects that use/reuse long-term environmental data to advance understanding of ecological and evolutionary questions.
- Where: DEB, IOS, OCE and OPP
- When: Deadline/no deadline according to participating programs’ solicitations
- How: Submit to the relevant participating program with the prefix "ULTRA-Data:“ & at the end of the Overview section of the Project Summary, include a sentence indicating that the proposal is being submitted in response to this DCL.
Responsive proposals have projects that include, but are not limited to:
- Synthesis, comparison, and/or combination of long- and short-term datasets to advance understanding of ecosystem and environmental dynamics, ecology, and evolution;
- Conducting new modeling activities, including ecological or environmental forecasting;
- Increasing the interoperability of data sets that are available from public repositories/databases;
- Workshops for both researchers and data scientists on accessing and using long-term data sets, with dissemination of the products to the scientific community (e.g., ESIIL).
- Principal Investigators should contact program officers in the participating areas of NSF listed on the prior slide about the suitability of submission to an individual program in response to this DCL, and to discuss the scope and size of potential proposals.
IUSC DCL: Innovative Use of Scientific Collections Dear Colleague Letter
- What: Encourages the submission of proposals that foster Innovative Use of Scientific Collections and/or associated digital data for novel research, education, and training applications within and across STEM disciplines
- Where: DBI (Capacity: Biological Collections), DEB (EP, ES, PCE, SBS), CISE (IIS), GEO (EAR, OCE, OPP), and SBE (BCS, SES)
- When: Deadline/no deadline according to participating programs’ solicitations
- How: Submit to relevant participating program with the prefix “IUSC:”
Examples include, but are not limited to, proposals that:
- Propose innovative use of existing biodiversity, living stocks, geological, anthropological, and/or behavioral collections, images and other digital media, and collections-associated data, including developing or applying new analytical techniques or answering new scientific questions beyond the original intention of the collections
- Integrate the use of existing collections and collections-associated data in fields that traditionally have made little use of collections
- Create partnerships to use existing collections and collections-associated data in research, training, and education by PUIs, MSIs, and other under-resourced institutions
- Make use of biological, genomic, and/or geological samples and specimens collected by NEON and housed at the NEON Biorepository
- Use existing collections to engage students in authentic research experiences
BIOxAI DCL: Advancing Research at the Intersection of Biology and AI/ML Dear Colleague Letter
- What: Dear Colleague Letter encouraging proposals that incorporate or advance AI/ML approaches across the research supported in all the Divisions of the BIO Directorate.
- How: Proposal titles should begin with “BIO-AI:”
- When: Deadline/no deadline according to participating program’s solicitations
- Where: Specific questions about fit of research to this DCL should be directed to contact cognizant program officers in the NSF/BIO program(s) most relevant to your project prior to submission.
- Questions: General questions about this DCL may be submitted to bio-ai@nsf.gov
BIO-AI DCL Areas of Interest and Key Considerations:
Areas where AI/ML approaches may be used include, but are not limited to:
- Implementing existing AI/ML methods to solve pressing questions in biology
- Developing new AI/ML models to derive biological insights
- Validating and/or comparing results from AI/ML methods against results from traditional analytical methods, theoretical models, and/or experimental approaches
Key considerations:
- Partnerships between biologists and experts in AI/ML are encouraged
- Advancement of both biological discovery and AI/ML research
- Generating well-curated and labeled AI/ML training datasets, creating software and tools for the community, and developing a workforce trained in AI/ML approaches are appropriate to incorporate into intellectual merit and/or broader impacts
- Sole focus on generating new data is not sufficient
PBRT: Post-Baccalaureate Research and Training Supplemental Funding Opportunity
- Who: Current NSF awardees seeking to provide research experiences and training of post-baccs who faced barriers to participation in research experiences as undergrads
- What: Supplemental funding to support up to 12 months of research experience and training
- When: Requests should be submitted by May 19, 2025, to be considered for FY2025 funding
- How: Submission through Research.gov and registration in NSF ETAP. See the DCL for complete submission requirements.