The National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Polar Programs (OPP) announces a solicitation, and related webinar, on Training-based Workforce Development for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (CyberTraining).
The program seeks to prepare, nurture, and grow the national scientific research workforce for creating, utilizing, and supporting advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) to enable and potentially transform fundamental science and engineering (S&E) research and education and contribute to the nation's overall economic competitiveness and security.
This solicitation calls for innovative, scalable training, education, and curriculum/instructional materials, along with deeper incorporation of CI professionals into the research enterprise—targeting one or more of the solicitation goals—to address emerging needs and unresolved bottlenecks in S&E research workforce development, from the postsecondary level to active researchers to CI professionals. The funded activities, spanning targeted, multidisciplinary communities, should lead to transformative changes in the state of research workforce preparedness for advanced CI-enabled research in the short- and long-term.
The goals of this solicitation are to (i) ensure broad adoption of CI tools, methods, and resources by the research community in order to catalyze major research advances and to enhance researchers’ abilities to lead the development of new CI; (ii) integrate core literacy and discipline-appropriate advanced skills in advanced CI as well as computational and data-driven methods for advancing fundamental research, into the nation’s undergraduate and graduate educational curriculum/instructional materials; and (iii) build communities of research CI professional staff to deploy, manage, and collaboratively support the effective use of research CI, as well as establish career paths for those staff within and across institutions and science and engineering (S&E) disciplines.
Prospective principal investigators (PIs) are strongly encouraged to contact the Cognizant Program Officers in CISE/OAC and in the participating directorate/division relevant to the proposal to ascertain whether the focus and budget of their proposed activities are appropriate for this solicitation.
A related CyberTraining webinar will take place 7 April 2022. The webinar will review the CyberTraining solicitation (NSF-22-574), including all three project classes, and the priorities of the participating divisions. There will also be time for questions.
Solicitation deadline: 16 May 2022.