The Center for Nanoscale Science invites proposals for the 2024 Seed competition. This competition focuses on nucleating potential new Interdisciplinary Research Groups, looking forward to the upcoming MRSEC re-competition cycle in 2025–26.
“Seed-IRG” proposals should aim to coalesce world-leading interdisciplinary teams focused on an emerging high-risk/high-reward area of materials research, and should seek to demonstrate key results that could underpin a successful IRG in the upcoming NSF MRSEC competition. A town hall on April 23, during and immediately following the Millennium Cafe, will provide a venue to discuss the qualities of a successful Seed-IRG proposal.
Seed-IRG proposals contain three parts: (1) a project description not to exceed 5 pages total (12 point font, 1” margins; the page limit does not apply to references), (2) a very brief budget description, and (3) CV's of the principal investigators, of any reasonable length. The format of the budget statement is flexible.
Seed-IRG projects are anticipated to be funded at 100 to 150K in direct costs over ~18 months. The MRSEC anticipates to support from one to three Seed-IRGs. The MRSEC Executive Committee will oversee the review of proposals, coordinating with the External Advisory Board. The Executive Committee will solicit the advice of anonymous reviewers as needed, and will recuse as appropriate to mitigate any conflicts of interest.
Note that the NSF generally prefers to avoid substantial overlap between the research topics of different IRGs across the MRSEC program, so strong overlap with an existing MRSEC IRG elsewhere should be avoided. Information about these programs can be found at http://www.mrsec.org. If such overlap exists for your Seed-IRG topic, this should be addressed in your writeup.
Proposals should be submitted in a single self-contained pdf file to vhc2@psu.edu. The deadline for submission is 5pm on Monday, May 20.
2023-2024 Seeds
Exploring Exploring Designer Topological Phases in Multi-Terminal Josephson Junctions
Lead by: Morteza Kayyalha and Nitin Samarth
Shaping Light Using 2D Polar Metal Metasurfaces
Lead by: Ken Knappenberger, Josh Robinson, Doug Werner, and Lei Kang
Nonlinear Materials for Quantum OptoElectronics
Lead by: Zhiqiang Mao, Jun Zhu, and Venkat Gopalan
Exploring Non-Reciprocal Superconducting Transport via Van der Waals Heterostructures
Lead by: Chao-Xing Liu, Morteza Kayyalha, and Cui-Zu Chang
Carbon Nanothread Materials
Lead by: Beth Elacqua, Adri van Duin, and Vin Crespi