National Science Foundation ARRA Information

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NSF Issues Terms and Conditions for Using ARRA Funds

During the week of March 23, NSF posted an updated fact sheet and Q&A document on its ARRA website. We urge you to read these documents for more NSF information. They can be found here: http://www.nsf.gov/recovery/.

During the week of March 20, 2009, National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Arden Bement released a notice about grant applications and the corresponding review processes in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) specifically relating to the National Science Foundation (NSF). The notice can be found here: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/issuances/in131.jsp

If specific NSF opportunities are announced, we will post them on our SUNY stimulus website.

Please note that this document suggests that new grant RFP's from NSF might not specifically state that they are being funded directly by ARRA funds. However, we have noticed an increased amount of NSF grant announcements on grants.gov recently and it is likely that stimulus dollars are being used to supplement some of these competitions. Individual campuses and primary investigators should be vigilant in reviewing these announcements.

Highlights from the Memo

Funding Breakdown:

NSF has developed policies, procedures and a FAQ webpage for use by the awardee community at www.nsf.gov/recovery
NSF is planning to use a majority of the $2 billion available in Research and Related Activities for proposals already "in the pipeline", which will be reviewed and awarded prior to September 30th, 2009.
Other programs that will see funding (whether in the pipeline or through new RFP's):

--Math and Science Partnership program-- $25 million;

--Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program -- $60 million;

--Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction Account --$400 million

--Academic Research Infrastructure (ARI) program --$200 million (Solicitations will be posted this spring.)

--Professional Science Masters program --$15 million (Solicitations will be posted this spring.)

--Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI) --$300 million (Solicitations will be posted this spring.)

"The Foundation currently anticipates that no other solicitations will be posted that are solely in response to the Recovery Act."

Implementation:

All grants issued with Recovery Act funds will be standard grants with durations of up to 5 years. This approach will allow NSF to structure a sustainable portfolio

Funding of new Principal Investigators and high-risk, high-return research will be top priorities.

The will also review declined proposals dating back to October 1, 2008. Reversal decisions will be made based on the quality of the submission and lack of available funding at the original rejection date. PI's that received declines for grant applications on October 1, 2008 or later that also had very highly rated grant applications should follow-up directly with the appropriate NSF Program Officer to determine if their proposal might be reconsidered.

SUNY has been collecting information about how various federal agencies are managing ARRA funds for extramural grant programs. We will try to keep our website as up-to-date as possible to provide you with the latest information available to us, but we urge you to check federal agency websites directly.