The
National Science Foundation invites interested parties to participate in a new
endeavor, the NSF Convergence Accelerator (NSF C-Accel) Pilot.; April 15, 2019
With this
DCL, NSF's goals are to: (i) pilot a new NSF
capability (the NSF Convergence Accelerator) to accelerate use-inspired
convergence research in areas of national importance, and (ii) initiate
convergence team-building capacity around exploratory, potentially high-risk
proposals in three convergence topics (tracks).
NSF C-Accel brings teams together to focus on grand challenges
of national importance that require a convergence approach. The teams are
multidisciplinary and leverage
partnerships; the tracks relate to a grand challenge problem and
have a high probability of resulting in deliverables that will benefit society
within a fixed term. NSF C-Accel is modeled on
acceleration and innovation activities from the most forward-looking companies
and universities. The NSF C-Accel Pilot intends to
support fundamental research while encouraging rapid advances through
partnerships that include, or will include, multiple stakeholders (e.g.,
industry, academic, not-for-profits, government entities, and others). The NSF
C-Accel Pilot will bring teams together in a cohort
that are all focused on a common research goal of national importance but which
may be pursuing many different approaches. NSF is planning to fund
approximately 50 Phase 1 awards (up to 9 months and up to $1 million each).
Additional funds will be available for a smaller number of Phase 2 awards. The
first-step to become part of the NSF C-Accel Pilot
is to submit a 2-page Research Concept Outline (RCO), aligned with one of the
tracks described below, with a target submission date of April 15,
2019.
The NSF
C-Accel Pilot consists of three tracks, with each
track aligned with one of NSF’s
10 Big Ideas, namely Harnessing
the Data Revolution (HDR) (track A1) and the Future
of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier (FW-HTF) (tracks B1
and B2).
Track
A1:
Open Knowledge Network- The
overall goal of Track A1 is to enable the creation of a nonproprietary shared
knowledge infrastructure. A knowledge network allows stored data (both
structured and unstructured data) to be located and its attributes and
relationship to other data and to real-world objects and concepts to be
understood at a semantic level. Phase 1 of the Open Knowledge Network NSF
C-Accel Pilot track will support building the
multidisciplinary and multi-institutional teams needed to identify the
development paths for an OKN, with a particular focus on exploiting publicly
available U.S. Government and similar public datasets (see, e.g., https://www.data.gov).
These teams may address "horizontal" challenges that apply to all domains,
addressing challenges such as developing the underlying representation of facts,
querying services that perform reasoning tasks with the data, or developing
secured access capabilities. Teams may also choose to address "vertical"
challenges specific to different topical domains such as geosciences, education,
smart health, finance, and manufacturing. A participatory design approach that
considers the needs and perspectives of the many user communities will be
essential.
Phase
1 of the Pilot will use the Research
Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (RAISE)
mechanism, a mechanism used to submit multidisciplinary project ideas to
NSF.
Proposers
are invited to respond to this DCL through the submission of a two-page Research
Concept Outline (RCO) as a PDF file. The PDF file should be submitted, with a
target date of April 15,
2019.
https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2019/nsf19050/nsf19050.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click