Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2)

Software is an integral enabler of computation, experiment and theory and a primary modality for realizing the NSF's vision for a Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21^st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21) (http://www.nsf.gov/cif21). Scientific discovery and innovation are advancing along fundamentally new pathways opened by the development of increasingly sophisticated software. Software is also directly responsible for increased scientific productivity and significant enhancement of researchers' capabilities. In order to nurture, accelerate and sustain this critical mode of scientific progress, NSF established the multi-tiered Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI²) program, with the overarching goal of transforming innovations in research and education into sustained software resources that are an integral part of the cyberinfrastructure.

Grand challenges in the chemical sciences will be advanced through the provision of enabling and sustainable software that allows researchers to flexibly and rapidly prototype and test new algorithms or methods; leverage new heterogeneous architectures; and  explore new data-enabled scenarios. The NSF seeks to encourage collaborative software activities with foreign investigators which advance software innovation, capabilities, support and sustainability. This SI² solicitation is for international software collaborations addressing grand challenges in the chemical sciences, in partnership with the EPSRC in the United Kingdom.