RFP Example 2: Instructions

Introduction

Advanced computing and big data analytics are increasingly at the center of scientific and engineering innovation and economic prosperity. In the near future, access to advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources within a comprehensive and highly interoperable ecosystem will be commonplace. Ubiquitous cloud-based services will provide tailored access to application-specific heterogeneous resources, including resources for training and education. The CyberTraining program intends to address the innovations required in preparation and career growth of the scientific workforce that constitutes the backbone for development, maintenance and utilization of such an advanced cyberinfrastructure ecosystem. For the purpose of this solicitation, advanced cyberinfrastructure is broadly defined as the resources, tools, and services for advanced computation, data handling, networking and security.

There are three communities of concern for the CyberTraining program.

These are

i. CI Professionals: research cyberinfrastructure and professional staff who develop, deploy, manage and support effective use of research CI;
ii. CI Contributors: computational and data scientists and engineers who are researchers and developers of new CI capabilities; and
iii. CI Users: scientists and engineers who effectively exploit the advanced

CI capabilities and methods. CI Professionals include the non-faculty information technology professionals, scientists, and engineers who provide support to the computational and data-enabled scientific research and development enterprises at various universities, supercomputing and other centers, and research laboratories. CI Contributors include both computing as well as domain faculty and other scientists and engineers who develop new scalable models and simulations, as well as algorithms, software at various levels of scientific software stack, and robust capabilities related to data, hardware, networking, and security aspects of CI.

NSF anticipates proposals for informal training, retraining, cross-training and related activities on topics related to methods and resources of advanced cyberinfrastructure and of computational and data science and engineering, at levels ranging from basic literacy to advanced, focused on addressing the emerging needs and outstanding bottlenecks. The target communities at various stages of their career pipelines comprise CI Professionals as well as the undergraduate and graduate students, post-docs, research scientists and faculty researchers and educators from both the CI Contributor and CI User communities. The activities can include retraining and cross-training of the faculty mentors and course instructors themselves to keep up with the dynamic knowledge landscape, as one of the ways for obtaining a multiplier effect. For student training, a key concern is not to increase the time to degree. For this solicitation, relevant to the aforementioned communities, there are three tracks for submissions: