UC-HIPACC Director Joel Primack announces a call for proposals in 5 categories: small travel grants, working group grants, matching grants for astrocomputing equipment purchases, innovative initiative grants, and undergraduate summer astrocomputing projects.
Online application will open: Friday, September 16, 2011
Online application will close: Friday, November 4, 2011
Funding for this Call for Proposals begins: December 1, 2011
Two Funding cycles — Spring/Summer ~$40K and Fall/Winter ~$40K
What is UC-HIPACC? It’s a multi-campus research institute, supported by a five-year grant 2010-2014 from the UC Office of Research and Graduate Studies, linking research groups at the University of California campuses and at the three affiliated Department of Energy national laboratories (LANL, LBNL, and LLNL). NASA’s Advanced Supercomputer (NAS) center at NASA Ames Research Center is also involved, through the NASA Ames – UCSC University-Affiliated Research Center (UARC).
What funds are available now? UC-HIPACC will support focused working groups of UC scientists from multiple campuses to pursue joint projects in computational astrophysics by providing funds for travel and lodging. At the heart of UC-HIPACC are working groups. These groups will typically consist of collaborations of two to a dozen people, in practice mostly graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, from two or more UC campuses or DOE labs. Periods will typically range from a few days to a few months. UC-HIPACC funding can provide career-shaping opportunities for students in which they learn from other leading faculty members, master skills not taught on their own campus, line up writers for crucial letters of recommendation, and form other contacts and alliances that can powerfully shape their future careers. Some collaborations will also bring together senior astrophysicists with computer scientists and engineers to extend the state of the art in computation and data analysis.
Note: Funding of these proposals is of course contingent on availability of funds to HIPACC.
1. Small travel grants enable scientists, including graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, to travel easily and spontaneously between Center nodes. UC-HIPACC Director Primack will fund travel grant proposals submitted by faculty members, senior scientists, or postdocs up to $1000 on a first-come-first-served basis with a simple application describing the plan and purpose of the travel. (Funds will be provided for approved proposals upon submission of appropriate post-travel forms with receipts, as required by UC policy.)
2. Grants above $1000 to support larger working groups or participation in scientific meetings will be evaluated by the UC-HIPACC Executive Committee via email or electronic meetings.
3. Up to $10K as matching grants for equipment purchases to support astro-computing projects. Only proposals with at least equal matching funds will be considered. The purpose of the proposed equipment purchase needs to be desribed in some detail and the source of matching funds must be specified.
4. Innovative initiative proposals for other purposes that are consistent with the goals of UC-HIPACC will be considered by the Executive Committee. Such purposes could include meetings or workshops, software development expenses, or education and outreach, for example. Note that the approved HIPACC proposal (http://physics.ucsc.edu/~joel/MRPI-HIPACC-Proposal.pdf) did not include funding for salaries.
5. Up to $5K each for University of California undergraduate summer astrocomputing projects. Such proposals should be submitted by the proposed faculty advisors. Each proposal must include the name and CV of each student and a proposal document. Proposal documents should be about one or two pages in length for each student, and include the topic and brief description of the research to be pursued, and a brief explanation of why this student's preparation is appropriate for the proposed project. Faculty advisors will be required to send HIPACC a brief progress report at the end of the funding period, and a final progress report (for example, the resulting senior thesis or, in really successful cases, the submitted paper) when the work is completed.
The criteria for evaluating proposals will include
Intellectual Merit: How important is the proposed activity to advancing knowledge and methods? How well qualified are the researchers? How well conceived and organized is the proposed activity? To what extent does the proposal explore original or potentially transformative concepts? How well is the proposed activity aligned with the goals of UC-HIPACC?
Broader Impact: Does the project broaden participation of individuals or disciplines in the research across or between campuses or labs?
Does the project exploit special capabilities of available resources or broaden such capabilities?
Is the project likely to attract extramural funding or participation by industry?
What is the potential for involving students? Applicants must also state whether they have previously received UC-HIPACC funds and if so document the benefits that were realized.
Applicants must also state whether they have previously received UC-HIPACC funds, and if so, document the benefits that were realized.
Applications will only be accepted online.
Proposers applying for funding in categories 1-4 (small travel grants, working group grants, matching grants for astrocomputing equipment purchases, innovative initiative grants) must fill out the cover page and title sheet at: http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/html/SmallGrants_Fall2011.php. All other documents should be uploaded according to the directions on the site.
Proposal Checklist:
• Title page (fill out the online form including name of applicant, UC or lab affiliation, address, email, work and cell phones, title and brief abstract of proposed project)
• Narrative description of proposed project (limited to two pages, uploaded as pdf file)
• Curriculum Vitae and Current & Pending Support including federal and other grants (uploaded as pdf files)
• Proposed budget and justification (uploaded as pdf file)
Applications for the funding of Undergraduate Summer Astrocomputing Projects must be submitted at the the following url: http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/html/SmallGrants_Undergrad_Fall2011.php
Every effort will be made to notify applicants by December 1, 2011.