The Children's Research Initiative: Integrative Approaches (CRI)

The National Science Foundation is announcing a grants competition in the areas of children's research. Child development research needs to become more integrated in focus and draw relevant fields together for interdisciplinary collaborations (see Investing in our Future: A National Research Initiative for America's Children for the 21st Century. Executive Office of the President, OSTP, April 1997). The purpose of this solicitation is to inform the research community that support for developmental science will now receive added emphasis at the National Science Foundation via funding through the Children's Research Initiative (CRI) to support research centers and collaborations. This solicitation will also enable scientists to form research partnerships through planning or incubation grants, workshops, and small conferences in the areas of human sciences. It is important to expand research foci so that scientists can work together on problems that require larger-scale science from multiple perspectives. In recognition that some areas of human science need to be pursued on the smaller scale of individual research projects, however, NSF will also support individual investigator projects under this solicitation.

One funding opportunity is for collaborators to create research centers for purposes of conducting multidisciplinary, integrative research on scales larger than would be possible through individual research projects. Centers will provide rich environments that combine research perspectives from multi-disciplinary areas related to children's research. In addition to describing how their research frameworks will form a unifying set of research objectives, the centers will be required to show how they 1) enhance the content knowledge of the field; 2) build an intellectual infrastructure within and among disciplines; and 3) build a program of research in relevant aspects of developmental, learning, and human sciences.

A second funding opportunity for developing this area of emphasis will be to provide support for incubation or planning grants so that research groups can plan proposals that will enable them to conduct collaborative and large-scale, center research projects. Such planning grants are intended to help institutions build capacity and coordinate with potential collaborators.

In addition to planning grants and center grants, the current solicitation also welcomes proposals for workshops and small conferences that will enhance the purpose of this program; namely, to build capacity for integrative, multi disciplinary research in this area.

Fourth, individual investigators are also invited to submit standard research proposals that address the research issues related to the Children's Research Initiative.