Research NewsletterIssue: ORN-2022-11

Call for Proposals

2022 Provost Undergraduate Research and Innovation (URI) Summer Fellowship Program

Online Submission Deadline: April 18, 2022

Access to Call for Papers

Undergraduate research provides students a unique opportunity to learn necessary and important skills to research and innovate towards taking a leadership role in the society. As a student-centered research institution, NJIT is committed to providing opportunities for research participation beginning at the undergraduate level.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM: The NJIT Provost Undergraduate Research and Innovation (URI) Summer Fellowship Program is a 10-week program that provides summer stipend support ($3,000 each) to undergraduate student awardees from all disciplines to pursue research under the guidance of a faculty advisor on a competitive basis. Eligible undergraduate students should apply online with their proposals following the instructions provided below. The program concludes with presentations at the NJIT International Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium on July 28-29, 2022. 

Areas of Research:

There are several fellowships available for the 2022 Provost Undergraduate Research and Innovation (URI) Summer Fellowship Program. Students have the ability to apply for up to two (2) fellowships. There are multiple fellowships available in each category.

• NIT URI Provost Summer Fellowship - applications from any discipline will be accepted and considered.
• Hearst Foundation Fellowship - this fellowship welcomes applications focused on STEM topics. This fellowship is particularly focused on providing opportunities for EOP students as well as underrepresented students from low to moderate income backgrounds.
• Robert Sydney Needham Fellowship - this fellowship welcomes applications focused on STEM topics. 
• Ward Family Foundation Fellowship - this fellowship is limited to the fields of immunology, cell therapy, gene therapy, and related fields of biomedical research.

Program Period: This 10-week program begins on May 23, 2022 and ends on July 29, 2022.

Application Deadlines:  All application material, including the online application form, research proposal and faculty letter of support with lab schedule are to be submitted online via supplied links (please see below) by 11:59 p.m. EST on April 18, 2022.

SUBMISSION FORMS/APPLICATION LINKS

Students: Application Form

Faculty: Faculty Letter of Submission

Questions: Frequently Asked Questions

Program Information: Undergraduate Research Program Summer Provost Fellowship

For additional information, please visit the URI website http://centers.njit.edu/uri/programs/provost-fellowship.php. Any questions should be directed to Ms. Kathleen O’Neill at ko86@njit.edu

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NSF establishes new Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships

https://beta.nsf.gov/tip/latest

For more than seven decades, the U.S. National Science Foundation has been at the forefront of the research, innovation and education that has transformed American lives, powered the economy, and elevated the nation's competitiveness on the global stage. NSF investments have given the world Doppler radar, bar codes, the modern internet, web browsers, magnetic resonance imaging, laser eye surgery, DNA analysis and synthetic biology.

Enter "TIP," Technology, Innovation and Partnerships — a new NSF directorate that creates breakthrough technologies; meets societal and economic needs; leads to new, high-wage jobs; and empowers all Americans to participate in the U.S. research and innovation enterprise. TIP is a unique opportunity that engages the nation's diverse talent in strengthening and scaling the use-inspired and translational research that will drive tomorrow's technologies and solutions.

Learn More About TIP

• More About TIP
• TIP Resources
• Funding Opportunities
• Stay Informed with our Newsletter
• Careers

TIP Programs

• America's Seed Fund
• Convergence Accelerator
• Innovation Corps (I-Corps™)
• Partnerships for Innovation
• Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems

In addition, NSF is repositioning much of its extensive portfolio of innovation and translation programs within the TIP Directorate. For example, the NSF Lab-to-Market Platform comprising the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps™), Partnerships for Innovation (PFI), and Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR and STTR) programs, along with the NSF Convergence Accelerator, are now in TIP. You should not see any operational changes to your existing NSF award or to these programs.

NSF has selected Dr. Erwin Gianchandani to be the inaugural Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, leading the TIP Directorate. Dr. Gianchandani previously served as the Deputy Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering for six years, and has been my Senior Advisor for Translation, Innovation and Partnerships for the last year. 

More information about TIP can be found at https://beta.nsf.gov/tip/latest

NSF: Design for Sustainability in Computing; Facilities for Atmospheric Research and Education (FARE); Earth Sciences Instrumentation and Facilities (EAR/IF); Incorporating Human Behavior in Epidemiological Models (IHBEM); Inviting Proposals Related to Information Integrity to the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Program; Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (PEOSE)

NIH: NEI Research Grant for Vision-Related Secondary Data Analysis (R21); Bioengineering Partnerships with Industry (U01); BRAIN Initiative: Exploratory Team-Research BRAIN Circuit Programs - eTeamBCP (U01); Team-Based Design in Biomedical Engineering Education (R25); Development of Biomarkers or Biomarker Signatures for Neurological and Neuromuscular Disorders (R61/R33)

Department of Defense/US Army/DARPA/ONR: DoD Peer-Reviewed Medical Research Program (PRMRP) Investigator-Initiated Research Award; Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) Office-wide; DOD Epilepsy, Idea Development Award; Air Force Young Investigator Program (YIP); ERDC Broad Agency Announcement; Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Department of Defense Multidisciplinary Research Program of the University Research Initiative (MURI); Science & Technology for Advanced Manufacturing Projects (STAMP); Strategic Technology Office (STO) Office-wide; Information Innovation Office (I2O) Office-Wide; Long Range Broad Agency Announcement for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology

Department of Transportation: Competitive Academic Agreement Program (CAAP)

Department of Agriculture: Conservation Innovation Grants New Jersey State Program; Announcement for Program Funding for NRCS’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP)

Department of Labor: Growth Opportunities

Department of Commerce/EDA:  Precision Measurement Grant Program (PMGP); FY2021 to FY2023 NOAA Broad Agency Announcement (BAA)

EPA: FY 2022 - FY2023 Pollution Prevention Grant Program Fy 2022 - Fy2023 Pollution Prevention Grant Program Funded By The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

Department of Energy: Mining Innovations for Negative Emissions Resource Recovery (MINER); Research Development and Partnership Pilot (RDPP); Chemical and Materials Sciences to Advance Clean Energy Technologies and Low-Carbon Manufacturing; Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Battery Materials Processing and Battery Manufacturing Funding Opportunity Announcement

NASA: ROSES 2022: Applications-Oriented Augmentation for Research and Analysis; ROSES 2022: Heliophysics Tools and Methods; ROSES 2022: Space Weather Science Application Research-to-Operations-to-Research; ROSES 2022: Solar System Observations; ROSES 2022: Heliophysics Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning-Ready Data; ROSES 2022: Heliophysics Innovation in Technology and Science

National Endowment of Humanities: Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grants; Research and Development; Humanities Initiatives

Private Foundations: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) Grants

White House Initiatives For Energy Independence, Climate Health With Nuclear Fusion Technology: The Biden-Harris White House announced a new commitment in commercial fusion as a means to a cleaner energy economy with a historic summit, featuring the private and public sectors’ commitment to furthering the U.S. fusion energy industry.  Fusion energy is produced with the combination of atoms to create larger, heavier atoms that act as a means to generate electric power. Current nuclear power plants operate through fission, or splitting atoms, which has the drawback of creating unstable waste material. Fusion doesn’t have this problem.

Launching the summit on Thursday was Alondra Nelson, the deputy director for Science and Society in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She described the administration’s new initiatives to further solar and wind power cultivation to provide electricity for American consumers. 

“We believe that when it comes to fusion, the time is now,” Nelson said. “And the time is now because we have in President Biden a leader who's been clear that we will decarbonize our economy by 2050. This is why fusion is one of a much larger suite of clean energy game changers that will help America reach that goal commensurate with the scale of the climate change that climate change requires.” More information is posted on the NextGov website.

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NIST Advocates Human-Centric Focus of AI Tech: Federal agencies and officials utilizing artificial intelligence systems need to vigilantly monitor and control for systemic and racial biases included in machine learning technology, according to a new report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This recommendation comes from an extensive report on how organizations and enterprises, both private and public, can cultivate better trust in artificial intelligence.

“Bias is neither new nor unique to AI and it is not possible to achieve zero risk of bias in an AI system,” the report begins. The document then categorizes biases in artificial intelligence in three groups: systemic, statistical and human. It then discusses mitigating each of these through testing, evaluation methods and other human factors.  “AI systems do not operate in isolation. They help people make decisions that directly affect other people’s lives,” said Reva Schwartz, the principal investigator for AI bias at NIST and one of the report’s authors. “If we are to develop trustworthy AI systems, we need to consider all the factors that can chip away at the public’s trust in AI. Many of these factors go beyond the technology itself to the impacts of the technology, and the comments we received from a wide range of people and organizations emphasized this point.” The main approach NIST researchers advocate in the publication is called a “socio-technical” approach, which looks at machine learning as behavior patterns derived from datasets and algorithms but also feature human interaction. More information is posted on the NextGov website.

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Senate's Approval of a $1.5T Omnibus Package: The Senate on Thursday approved a $1.5 trillion omnibus funding bill, sending the measure boosting agency spending across government to President Biden’s desk just one day before the deadline for a shutdown. Congress approved the bill nearly halfway through the fiscal year, after Biden signed three previous stopgap measures into law. Lawmakers moved with unusual speed after appropriators unveiled the long-awaited spending package early Wednesday morning, leading the House to pass it later that day. The measure will provide a 6.7% funding increase to non-defense agencies and a 6% boost to the Pentagon.

“This bill makes bold investments in critical areas that went underfunded or even neglected in the previous administration, including education, childcare, healthcare, the environment, science and research, and many more,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and one of the chief architects of the bill. “It is unquestionably in the interest of the American people that the House and the Senate act quickly to pass this bill and send it to the president.” Nearly every federal agency would see a funding increase under the measure, though some are set to receive larger bumps than others. Biden had pushed to keep spending at the Homeland Security Department flat in fiscal 2022, but Congress instead opted to provide an 11% increase. As the Transportation Department begins implementing much of the recent Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, it is set to receive a 17% funding increase. Lawmakers set aside more than $20 billion for research and resilience efforts related to climate change and $1 billion to stand up Biden’s proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. Read more on the biggest impacts the omnibus will have on federal agencies here.

Question:       Can I change project start and end dates after I have submitted for approval?

Answer:         When a proposal is routed for approval certain information is locked to ensure that the information at the various approval levels (department, college, and university) remains constant.  This is intended to guarantee that the authority of academic leadership (e.g., chairs and deans) is recognized in the system.

The start and end dates are included in the data that is locked.  If you need to change the dates of a proposal already submitted for approval, you will have to recall the proposal, make the necessary changes, and resubmit for approval.

More FAQs on Streamlyne: Please visit https://research.njit.edu/streamlyne