• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Office of Research Initiatives and Facilities

University of Southern CaliforniaResearch
  • Funding
  • Limited Submissions
  • Shared Resources
  • Training
  • Announcements
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Archives for Current Limited Submissions

Current Limited Submissions

2023 Sloan Research Fellowships

Slots: Three slots limited to each Department.

Deadlines

Internal Deadline: July 15, 2022

LOI: N/A

External Deadline: September 15, 2022

Award Information

Anticipated Award Amount: $75,000

Who May Serve as PI: Candidates must hold a Ph.D. or equivalent degree in chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, physics, or a related field. Candidates must be members of the faculty of a college, university, or other degree-granting institution in the U.S. or Canada. Candidates must be tenure-track, though untenured, as of September 15 of the nomination year. Candidate’s faculty position must carry a regular teaching obligation.

Link to Award: https://sloan.org/fellowships

Process for Limited Submissions

PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Office of Research Application Portal: https://orif.usc.edu/oor-portal/.

Materials to submit include:

  • (1) Single Page Proposal Summary (0.5” margins; single-spaced; font type: Arial, Helvetica, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 1-page limit will be excluded from review.
  • (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)

Note: The portal requires information about the PIs and Co-PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#, Gender, and Ethnicity. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.

Purpose

The Sloan Research Fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise. These two-year, $75,000 fellowships are awarded yearly to early career researchers in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field. The Sloan Research Fellowship Program recognizes and rewards outstanding early-career faculty who have the potential to revolutionize their fields of study.

Budgetary Requirements: Fellowship funds may be used by the fellow for any expense judged supportive of the fellow’s research including staffing, professional travel, lab expenses, equipment, or summer salary support. Fellowship funds may not be used for indirect costs or overhead charges.

Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.

DE-FOA-0002565: Energyshed – Exploring Place-Based Generation

Slots: 1

Deadlines

Internal Deadline: Friday, July 8, 2022

LOI: N/A

External Deadline: August 1, 2022, 5pm ET

Award Information

Award Type: Cooperative Agreement

Estimated Number of Awards: 2 – 5

Anticipated Award Amount: $10,000,000

Cost Share: The cost share must be at least 20% of the total allowable costs for research and development projects (i.e., the sum of the government share, including FFRDC costs if applicable, and the recipient share of allowable costs equals the total allowable cost of the project) and must come from non-federal sources unless otherwise allowed by law. (See 2 CFR 200.306 and 2 CFR 910.130 for the applicable cost sharing requirements.) To assist applicants in calculating proper cost share amounts, EERE has included a cost share information sheet and sample cost share calculation as Appendices A and B to this FOA.

Link to Award: https://www.energy.gov/eere/funding-opportunity-announcement-energyshed-exploring-place-based-generation

Process for Limited Submissions

PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Office of Research Application Portal: https://orif.usc.edu/oor-portal/.

Materials to submit include:

  • (1) Single Page Proposal Summary (0.5” margins; single-spaced; font type: Arial, Helvetica, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 1-page limit will be excluded from review.
  • (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)

Note: The portal requires information about the PIs and Co-PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#, Gender, and Ethnicity. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.

Purpose

As utilities, local governments, and community-based organizations consider increasing the use of more local, or placed-based, generation to support their community, there are a number of attributes of the electric power system that must be considered. These include the following:
• Resilient: The ability to recover quickly from any situation or power outage
• Reliable: Improved power quality and fewer power outages
• Secure: Increased protection to our critical infrastructure
• Affordable: As measured by a reduction in electricity generation and delivery costs
• Flexible: Responds to the variability and uncertainty of conditions across a range of timescales, including a range of energy futures
• Environmentally Sustainable: Reduces environmental impact of energy-related activities


In addition to the attributes of the electric power system, stakeholders should also consider a range of other key goals that are critical to developing community benefits, especially in disadvantaged communities. This includes addressing:

Equity
• Economic development
• Clean energy jobs and workforce development
• Energy burden
• Environmental exposure
• Clean energy enterprise creation
• Energy democracy and ownership,
• Parity in clean energy technology access and adoption

To understand how locally-based generation impacts each of the criteria listed above, stakeholders must be able to assemble the relevant data from a range of sources and assimilate them in such a way that stakeholders from a range of backgrounds can understand the implications of more (or less) locally-based generation and participate in the decision-making process for planning the future power system.

The goal of this funding opportunity is to develop the tools and processes to help a broad set of stakeholders including utilities, local governments, and community-based organizations; understand the implications and participate in the development of locally-based energy generation in their community. To achieve this goal, applicants will assimilate data from a variety of sources into novel tools, “dashboards,” or other applications that will assess the impacts and tradeoffs, including potential benefits and challenges of locally-based energy generation. These tools should be accessible and easy-to-use to a wide array of stakeholders that are not necessarily electric power system experts. Achievement of this goal should accelerate deployment of renewable energy towards an equitable de-carbonized grid, and it will come through pursuit of several concurrent objectives in successful system design.

Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.

Library of Congress – Of the People: Widening the Path: Community Collections Grants to Organizations

Slots: 1

Deadlines

Internal Deadline: July 1, 2022

LOI: N/A

External Deadline: August 1, 2022

Award Information

Award Type: Grant

Estimated Number of Awards: 10

Anticipated Award Amount: up to $50,000 per grant.

Who May Serve as PI: To be eligible, projects must involve new, original cultural documentation of contemporary cultural life and activities from existing communities within the United States. This award is not intended to support research projects undertaken for the completion of university degrees.

Link to Award: https://loc.gov/programs/of-the-people/collect-and-preserve/community-collections-grant-application/

PDF of Award available here.

Process for Limited Submissions

PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Office of Research Application Portal: https://orif.usc.edu/oor-portal/.

Materials to submit include:

  • (1) Single Page Proposal Summary (0.5” margins; single-spaced; font type: Arial, Helvetica, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 1-page limit will be excluded from review.
  • (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)

Note: The portal requires information about the PIs and Co-PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#, Gender, and Ethnicity. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.

Purpose

Through a gift from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Library will support a multiyear initiative that entails public participation in the creation of archival collections. Specifically, the Library of Congress seeks to award grants to support contemporary cultural documentation focusing on the culture and traditions of diverse, often underrepresented communities in the United States today. These projects will result in archival collections preserved at the American Folklife Center and made accessible through the Library of Congress’ web site. The major goals of this grant program are to enable communities to document their cultural traditions, practices, and experiences from their own perspectives, while enhancing the Library’s holdings with materials featuring creativity and knowledge found at the local level. As such, successful proposals will come from applicants within or closely affiliated with the community they propose to document.

Funding through these grants can be used to cover travel, equipment rental or purchase, and other expenses associated with cultural documentation fieldwork. American Folklife Center folklorists and archivists can assist successful applicants in providing support for specific aspects of cultural documentation activities, such as sharing expertise or training in fieldwork methods, archival practices, and associated digital technologies. Library staff will be available to provide technical advice, and work with successful applicants to facilitate a cohort for sharing knowledge and lessons learned. In consultation with American Folklife Center staff during the award process, awardees have the option to develop public programs connected to their projects in their home communities, as potentially supported by additional funds (see Section A.4.1 of Link above). The American Folklife Center is seeking to build long-term relationships with grantees and to give grantees the opportunity to present their work in a forum at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. 

The following list is meant to inspire, but not limit, possibilities with regards to cultural documentation projects applicants might propose. Projects should include a combination of interviews, still photography, digital video, field notes, or other forms of documentation:

• Exploration of a community festival or other culturally-meaningful celebration through interviews with organizers and participants, audio-visual documentation of activities affiliated with the event (including planning, set up, and post-event activity), and any ephemera or material culture

• Seasonal or periodic documentation of institutions or gathering places, such as farmers markets, informal social hang-outs, craft fairs, or other periodic spaces that might serve as anchors or markers of community

• Community-centric reflection on emergent cultural traditions or practices that have developed as responses to shared collective experience of widespread recent phenomena such as the COVID-19 pandemic, social justice movements, or economic change

• Broad examination of community-specific cultural practices that can serve as markers of various aspects of identity, such as practices around death or bereavement, life milestones, or transition into different modes or phases of living; transmission of language or other intangible aspects of heritage; or informally learned aspects of communication that help cohere a social group 

• Community history of a neighborhood or other type of geographically-delimited collective space that tracks change and continuity from the perspective of current residents, both long-term and newly arrived, via multi-format documentation

• Documentation focused on temporality, such as tracing traditions and their changes over time, which can include multi-sited projects, but do not need to be delimited geographically.

Budgetary Requirements: Under this NOFO there is no mandatory cost share or matching requirement, however proposals that include matching or cost sharing elements may be rated more highly. Examples of types of cost sharing may include salaries, space or studio rental costs, equipment not part of an existing indirect cost rate calculation, or supplies. Cost sharing includes contributions, both cash and in-kind, which are necessary and reasonable to achieve program objectives and which are verifiable from the recipient’s records.

Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.

Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship Fall 2022

Slots: 1

Deadlines

Internal Deadline: July 15, 2022, 5pm PT

LOI: N/A

External Deadline: September 23, 2022. Submission will be completed through our online grant management portal, Fluxx.

Award Information

Award Type: Grant

Award Amount: Fellows will receive:  (1) the equivalent of one academic year’s salary, (2) two summers of additional support, each at the equivalent two-ninths of the previous academic year salary, and (3) tuition or course fees or equivalent direct costs associated with the fellows’ training programs.  To permit flexibility in meeting individual scholars’ needs, these funds may be expended over a period not to exceed three full academic years following the date of the award.  The award normally can be delayed for a maximum of one year, if circumstances require it.  The Foundation also expects the fellow’s home institution to use budgetary relief resulting from the award for academic purposes, preferably in the fellow’s department.

Supplemental Funding: In an effort to recognize and address travel and access constraints related to the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic:
• Supplemental funds up to $15,000 will be available for scholars who require access to collections that have not yet been digitized and cataloged, or who require the paid support of a librarian or archivist to assist with research where collections are closed to outside visitors because of the pandemic. For example, payments from this supplement may be budgeted for library or special collections partners who would work closely with the New Directions fellow to identify and define archival or library collections that can be digitized and made available for study by the fellow and—when feasible–to members of the general public.
• All applicants should include a concise plan of no more than two paragraphs outlining alternative arrangements should research activities be constrained by the long-term continuation or a resurgence of the COVID-19 or other pandemic.

Who May Serve as PI: Eligible candidates will be faculty members who were awarded a doctorate in the humanities or humanistic social sciences within the last six to twelve years and whose research interests call for formal training in a discipline other than the one in which they are expert. Such training may consist of coursework or other programs of organized study.  It may take place either at fellows’ home institutions or elsewhere, as appropriate.  Although it is anticipated that many fellows will seek to acquire deeper knowledge of other fields within the broadly defined sphere of the humanities and humanistic social sciences, proposals to study disciplines farther afield are eligible.

Link to Award: https://mellon.org/programs/higher-learning/regranting-programs/new-directions-fellowships/

Process for Limited Submissions

PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Office of Research Application Portal: https://orif.usc.edu/oor-portal/.

Materials to submit include:

  • (1) Single Page Proposal Summary (0.5” margins; single-spaced; font type: Arial, Helvetica, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 1-page limit will be excluded from review.
  • (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)

Note: The portal requires information about the PIs and Co-PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#, Gender, and Ethnicity. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.

Purpose

These fellowships provide support for exceptional faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who received their doctorates between 2010 and 2016. Fellows pursue systematic training and academic competencies outside their own special fields to advance a cross-disciplinary research agenda. This fellowship does not aim to facilitate short-term outcomes, such as completion of a book. Rather, it is a longer-term investment in the scholar’s intellectual range and productivity.

• Priority will be given to applications that manifest 1) a strong focus on issues of race, ethnicity, and migration, or 2) a focus on filling in the gaps left by more traditional narratives in the history of the Americas.
• The second field of study must be a foray into a new area of intellectual inquiry/subject and not just an enhancement of skills to go further in the primary field. Language study, technical training, or skills acquisition such as GIS mapping do not, by themselves, constitute a new direction.

The principal criteria for selection are:  (1) the overall significance of the research, (2) the case for the importance of extra-disciplinary training for furthering the research, (3) the likely ability of the candidate to derive satisfactory results from the training program proposed, and (4) a well‑developed plan for acquiring the necessary training within a reasonable period of time. 

Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.

Department of Energy DE-FOA-0002759: Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce for High Energy Physics (RENEW-HEP)

Slots: 3

Deadlines

Internal Deadline: Contact ORIF.

LOI: N/A

External Deadline: August 15, 2022

Award Information

Award Type:

Estimated Number of Awards: Depends on number of meritorious applications.

Anticipated Award Amount: $50,000/year award floor and $500,000/year award ceiling for 3 years.

Who May Serve as PI:  Individuals with the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to carry out the proposed research as a Principal Investigator (PI) are invited to work with their organizations to develop an application. Individuals from underrepresented groups as well as individuals with disabilities are always encouraged to apply.

The PI on an application may also be listed as a senior or key personnel on separate submissions without limitation.

Link to Award: https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=340642

Process for Limited Submissions

PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Office of Research Application Portal: https://orif.usc.edu/oor-portal/.

Materials to submit include:

  • (1) Single Page Proposal Summary (0.5” margins; single-spaced; font type: Arial, Helvetica, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 1-page limit will be excluded from review.
  • (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)

Note: The portal requires information about the PIs and Co-PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#, Gender, and Ethnicity. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.

Purpose

The DOE SC High Energy Physics (HEP) program hereby announces its interest in receiving applications for the REaching a New Energy sciences Workforce for High Energy Physics (RENEW-HEP) initiative. This program is intended to support training and research experiences in support of particle physics for members of underserved communities, with the dual goals of : (1) increasing the likelihood that participants from underrepresented populations, such as those present at minority serving institutions (MSIs)1, will pursue a career in a Science, Technology, Engineering or Math (STEM) related field; and (2) supporting investigators and building research infrastructure at institutions that have not traditionally been part of the particle physics portfolio.

This program is informed and influenced by the recommendations in recent reports including the American Institute of Physics TEAM-UP report (AIP TEAM-UP Report webpage, n.d.) . Applicants to this FOA should be aware of factors identified within that report that may influence the success or failure of trainees funded through this FOA. Some of the most relevant factors include the creation of an environment conducive to the development of a sense of belonging amongst participants, success in fostering a strong sense of physics identity among the participants, and the availability of support to “help students advance academically while earning money”. In addition, the longer duration of the traineeships envisioned here can provide opportunities for more senior participants to help mentor incoming participants, an activity that can support the desire to give back to one’s community and further bolsters physics identity.

Awards for traineeships are expected to include support for research in the particle physics portfolio as articulated in DE-FOA-0002546. Applications from MSIs are particularly sought, though it is anticipated that groups from research institutions where substantial research infrastructure is already in place may play an important role in recruiting and hosting participants or cohorts of participants from neighboring institutions, either directly or through partnering arrangements.

This FOA will support a program in which the concept of traineeships to broaden diversity in particle physics will be evaluated. Applicants are cautioned that renewal funding, subject to the availability of future appropriations, is contingent on the success and achievements of the overall traineeship initiative. At present, HEP does not expect, encourage, or prohibit any recipient under this FOA from submitting future applications for renewal funding.

Program Objective
The goal of this program is to help broaden and diversify the high energy physics community. We want to draw from the broadest possible pool of STEM talent within the U.S, at both the individual and institutional level to thereby help ensure the continued success of our mission. Historically, our community has been drawn primarily from a pool of potential talent that is less diverse than the general U.S. population, and has been concentrated at larger, research-intensive academic centers. For example, African American and Hispanic students are underrepresented within the ranks of students receiving a Ph.D. in particle physics by a factor of five or more compared to their numbers in the general U.S. population. The particle physics program also seeks to develop stronger connections to programs and activities at Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities as one of our high priority future facilities is partially located in the Black Hills. Applications from Professional Societies are expressly encouraged for their potential ability to meet these objectives.

Some of the barriers identified to diversity and equity in HEP include: lack of sufficient mentoring , support networks, or recruitment, outreach and professional culture of inclusion at “traditional” HEP research institutions; lack of research infrastructure and support at institutions that have not traditionally received HEP funding, possibly disadvantaging them in the competitive review process; the need for additional support for faculty at institutions with large teaching loads; and general financial barriers to students pursuing degrees in STEM fields. Applications should specifically address how they will address these barriers via mentoring plans, outreach and inclusion strategies, support for research infrastructure, and/or adequate student or faculty support, as appropriate.

Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.

Department of Energy DE-FOA-0002757: Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) – Earth and Environmental Systems

Slots: 2 slots are still available.

Deadlines

Internal Deadline: Contact ORIF.

LOI: June 26, 2022

External Deadline: August 24, 2022

Award Information

Award Type: Grant

Estimated Number of Awards: N/A

Anticipated Award Amount: $3,000,000: $800,000 award ceiling and $300,000 award floor.

Who May Serve as PI: Individuals with the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to carry out the proposed research as a Principal Investigator (PI) are invited to work with their organizations to develop
an application. Individuals from underrepresented groups as well as individuals with disabilities
are always encouraged to apply.

Link to Award: https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=340631

Process for Limited Submissions

PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Office of Research Application Portal: https://orif.usc.edu/oor-portal/.

Materials to submit include:

  • (1) Single Page Proposal Summary (0.5” margins; single-spaced; font type: Arial, Helvetica, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 1-page limit will be excluded from review.
  • (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)

Note: The portal requires information about the PIs and Co-PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#, Gender, and Ethnicity. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.

Purpose

The DOE Office of Science (SC) program in Biological and Environmental Research (BER) hereby announces its interest in receiving applications for RENEW grants that will target building capacity in climate and environmental science-relevant programs, particularly at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and minority-serving institutions (MSIs). Funding may be requested to support experiential training, mentoring, and institutional capacity building activities in partnership with DOE national laboratory Scientific Focus Areas (SFAs) supported within BER’s Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD). BER has a goal to broaden and diversify institutional representation in the EESSD portfolio. BER recognizes there are many academic scientists at institutions not currently supported by BER who have limited familiarity with EESSD programs and research support; BER further recognizes that such barriers to engagement in research and student training can be surmounted by fostering partnerships and collaborations with BER-supported SFA research at the DOE national laboratories. To help provide technical assistance to build capacity and achieve the goal of broadening institutional participation, this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) will provide training and research funding for institutions to: 1) develop new partnerships with the BER-supported EESSD SFAs at the DOE national laboratories, to enable sustained undergraduate and graduate student participation in EESSD-relevant research; 2) facilitate undergraduate and graduate student participation in EESSD research programmatic and user facility outreach and training activities; and 3) foster the development of climate and environmental science training capacity and research at under-represented institutions.

Program Objective: The mission of BER is to support transformative science and scientific user facilities to achieve a predictive understanding of complex biological, Earth, and environmental systems for energy and infrastructure security, independence, and prosperity. Within BER, EESSD supports fundamental science research projects and capabilities that enable improved understanding and predictability of the climate, environmental, and Earth system. To address the EESSD mission, the Division is organized into three research activities. The Atmospheric System Research (ASR) activity focuses on using observations to study the interdependence of clouds, atmospheric aerosols, and precipitation processes that impact the Earth’s energy and water cycles. The Environmental System Science (ESS) activity supports fundamental research from the bedrock to the atmosphere to provide a robust and scale-aware predictive understanding of terrestrial ecosystems and watersheds and facilitate their representation in Earth system models. The Earth and Environmental Systems Modeling (EESM) activity develops and applies high-fidelity models representing Earth system changes to improve understanding of the significant drivers, feedbacks, and uncertainties within the integrated Earth system, including both natural and human components.

Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.

Next Page »


Office of Research Initiatives and Facilities
Third Floor, 3720 Flower St, Los Angeles, CA 90007
orif@usc.edu

University of Southern California   Content managed by ORIF
  • Privacy Notice - Notice of Non-Discrimination