(FOA)-Limited Submission – DOE – Energy Frontier Research Centers (DE-FOA-0002204); January 16, 2020

 

Purpose: The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) announces a re-competition of the Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) and encourages both new and renewal applications. Applications will be required to conduct fundamental research to address priority research directions identified by the series of “Basic Research Needs” reports, the scientific grand challenges identified in the report, Directing Matter and Energy: Five Challenges for Science and the Imagination, and the opportunities described in the report, Challenges at the Frontiers of Matter and Energy: Transformative Opportunities for Discovery Science. These multi-investigator, multi-disciplinary centers enable, encourage, and accelerate transformative scientific advances for the most challenging topics in materials sciences, chemical sciences, geosciences, and biosciences.  DOE will consider funding multi-institution collaborations under this funding opportunity. BES is soliciting proposals in four topical areas:

 

1) Environmental Management (new and renewal proposals);

·         Elucidating and exploiting complex speciation and reactivity far from equilibrium

·         Understanding and controlling chemical and physical processes at interfaces

·         Harnessing physical and chemical processes to revolutionize separations

·         Mechanisms of materials degradation in harsh environments

·         Mastering hierarchical structures to tailor waste forms

2) Quantum Information Science (new proposals only);

·         Discover Novel Approaches for Quantum-to-Quantum Transduction

·         Implement New Quantum Methods for Advanced Sensing and Process Control

3) Microelectronics (new proposals only);

·         Flip the current paradigm: Define innovative material, device, and architecture requirements driven by applications, algorithms, and software

·         Revolutionize memory and data storage

·         Reimagine information flow unconstrained by interconnects

·         Redefine computing by leveraging unexploited physical phenomena

·         Reinvent the electricity grid through new materials, devices, and architectures

4) Polymer Upcycling (new proposals only).

·         Master the mechanisms of polymer deconstruction/reconstruction

·         Understand and discover integrated processes to upcycle mixed plastics

·         Design next generation polymers for chemical circularity

·         Develop novel tools to discover and control mechanisms for macromolecular transformations

 

Funding Amount/ Project Period: $2,000,000 - $4,000,000 per year for 4 years

 

Link to Funding Opportunity Announcement

 

Institutional Limit:  2 as lead organization

 

Internal Competition: To participate in the university’s selection process,please upload the following,assembled into a single PDF file, to the Office of the Vice President for Research via this portal with a copy to your Associate Dean for Research by  December 10, 2019:

·         Names and departments or affiliations of the Project Director and other key personnel or partners;

·         Title of program and/or funding opportunity announcement number;

·         Indication of the topical area of interest;

·         Brief project description (2 pages maximum);

·         Brief biographical sketch

 

A committee will be convened to review the material and make a recommendation.

 

For questions or issues with submission through the portal, email the limited submission mailbox (limitedsubmissions@uky.edu), or call 257-2861.

 

Agency Deadline:  required pre-application: January 16, 2020; application: April 7, 2020