Design for Environmental Sustainability in Computing (DESC) Solicitation Informational Webinar

The National Science Foundation CISE Directorate has issued a new program on Design for Environmental Sustainability in Computing (DESC) (NSF 23-532).  The purpose of DESC is to encourage the submission of novel and high impact proposals that advance sustainability in all aspects of computing broadly.  DESC seeks proposals that look well beyond power/energy efficiency of computing.  Design for sustainable computing approaches with carbon and other sustainability metrics as first order optimization criteria are a particular goal of this program.  For example, DESC encourages a full lifecycle analysis approach that considers computing across its lifecycle including embodied impacts from manufacturing, impacts from supply chains, reuse, recycling, and disposal, all of which go beyond the supply chain.  DESC is open to diverse notions of environmental sustainability, presuming they can be quantified and will provide impact.  Sustainability solely for economic and/or societal impacts are out of scope for DESC.   Moreover, DESC is not soliciting proposals that solely seek to advance energy efficiency, performance, or other traditional computing metrics or develop computing to support sustainability in other domains.  It is specifically focused on design for environmentally sustainable computing. 

This 60 minute information webinar will provide an overview of the DESC program including context for the topic, the topic areas of interest and those excluded, and a question and answer session with NSF Program Directors responsible for this solicitation.