NSF Call for Proposals: Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems in the U.S.

Deadline: 6 March 2017

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is currently seeking applications from eligible entities for its program titled ‘Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems (INFEWS)’.

Humanity is reliant upon the physical resources and natural systems of the Earth for the provision of food, energy, and water. It is becoming imperative that we determine how society can best integrate across the natural and built environments to provide for a growing demand for food, water and energy while maintaining appropriate ecosystem services. Factors contributing to stresses in the food and energy and water (FEW) systems include increasing regional and social pressures and governance issues as result of land use change, climate variability, and heterogeneous resource distribution. Interconnections and interdependencies associated with the FEW nexus create research grand challenges for understanding how the complex, coupled processes of society and the environment function now, and in the future.

To meet these grand challenges, there is a critical need for research that enables new means of adapting to future challenges. The FEW systems must be conceptualized broadly, incorporating physical processes (such as built infrastructure and new technologies for more efficient resource utilization), natural processes (such as biogeochemical and hydrologic cycles), biological processes (such as agroecosystem structure and productivity), social/behavioral processes (such as decision making and governance), and cyber-components (such as sensing, networking, computation and visualization for decision-making and assessment). Investigations of these complex systems may produce discoveries that cannot emerge from research on food or energy or water systems alone. It is the synergy among these components in the context of sustainability that will open innovative science and engineering pathways to produce new knowledge, novel technologies and predictive capabilities to solve the challenges of scarcity and variability.

The overarching goal of INFEWS is to catalyze well-integrated interdisciplinary and convergent research to transform scientific understanding of the FEW nexus (integrating all three components rather than addressing them separately), in order to improve system function and management, address system stress, increase resilience, and ensure sustainability.

Objectives

The NSF INFEWS initiative is designed specifically to attain the following goals:

Significantly advance our understanding of the food-energy-water system through quantitative, predictive and computational modeling, including support for relevant cyberinfrastructure;
Develop real-time, cyber-enabled interfaces that improve understanding of the behavior of FEW systems and increase decision support capability;
Enable research that will lead to innovative solutions to critical FEW systems problems; and
Grow the scientific workforce capable of studying and managing the FEW system, through education and other professional development opportunities.

Funds Available

The total estimated funding amount allotted to this program is $40,000,000, with the award ceiling of $2,500,000.

Eligibility Criteria

Proposals may only be submitted by the following:

Non-profit, non-academic organizations:
- Independent museums, observatories, research labs, professional societies and similar organizations in the U.S. associated with educational or research activities.
- Universities and Colleges
- Universities and two- and four-year colleges (including community colleges) accredited in, and having a campus located in, the US acting on behalf of their faculty members. Such organizations also are referred to as academic institutions.

For proposals to be considered for funding under USDA/NIFA:

Eligible applicants for the grant program implemented under INFEWS include:
- State agricultural experiment stations;
- colleges and universities (including junior colleges offering associate degrees or higher);
- university research foundations;
- other research institutions and organizations;
- Federal agencies,
- national laboratories;
- private organizations or corporations;
- individuals who are U.S. citizens, nationals, or permanent residents.
Eligible institutions do not include foreign and international organizations.
Award recipients may subcontract to organizations not eligible to apply provided such organizations are necessary for the conduct of the project.