NSF Chemistry Division awards 6 planning grants to broaden participation, form new partnerships

The U.S. National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry (NSF CHE) is investing $1.2 million in six new awards designed to grow diversity and participation in the U.S. science, technology, engineering and mathematics workforce. The two-year awards are planning grants provided by the NSF Partnerships for Research and Education in Chemistry (NSF PREC) program, which supports partnerships between minority-serving institutions and the agency's chemical research centers, institutes and facilities located at research-intensive institutions across the U.S.

"These investments are aimed at catalyzing productive and lasting collaborations between institutions by funding the substantial planning work required to launch a large, fully developed partnership," says NSF CHE Division Director David Berkowitz. "The awardees of NSF's PREC program continue to show how these sorts of partnerships can enhance and grow the chemical research ecosystem in every part of America by increasing talent recruitment, retention and degree attainment — including among groups underrepresented in chemistry research."

The planning grants will be used by the awardee institutions to lay the groundwork necessary to submit a competitive proposal for a larger, longer-term award from the PREC program. Since its inception in 2022, the program has made three such awards through two funding tracks providing up to $900,000 and $1.8 million per award, respectively. Each award supports a minority-serving institution partnering with a research-intensive institution housing one of the following: an NSF Center for Chemical Innovation, the NSF Chemistry and Material Sciences Center for Advanced Radiation Sources, the NSF Molecular Sciences Software Institute or the NSF Molecule Maker Lab Institute.

The new awardees and their partners are:

• California State University, Fullerton (in partnership with the NSF Center for Computer Assisted Synthesis at the University of Notre Dame).
• Howard University (in partnership with the NSF Chemistry and Material Sciences Center for Advanced Radiation Sources at the University of Chicago).
• Morehouse College (in partnership with the NSF Center for the Chemistry of Molecularly Optimized Networks at Duke University).
• University of Texas at El Paso (in partnership with the NSF Center for Synthetic Organic Electrochemistry at the University of Utah).
• University of California, Merced (in partnership with the NSF Center for Synthetic Organic Electrochemistry at the University of Utah).
• University of California, Merced (in partnership with the NSF Molecular Sciences Software Institute at Virginia Tech).

To learn more visit the PREC webpage and the invitation to submit planning proposals.