Details

Published on Wednesday, 21 February 2018 19:00

The NSF Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) Program Webinar scheduled for February 23, 2018, is full and, therefore, another webinar has been scheduled for February 27, 2018, at 2:30 pm ET. You will need to register to join the webinar and can find the announcement along with directions for registration on the NSF Events page.

If you are registered to attend the first webinar on 2/23/18 you do not need to register for the 2/27/18 webinar, as the same information will be presented at both. 

Following an earlier Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) about the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) program (NSF 17-126; https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2017/nsf17126/nsf17126.jsp?org=CISE), NSF has now issued the Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI): Data and Software – Elements and Frameworks (CSSI; NSF 18-531; https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2018/nsf18531/nsf18531.htm) program solicitation. 

As noted in the previous DCL, NSF, through its Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC), initiated several activities to seek community input about its data and software cyberinfrastructure investments. Based on the resultant input, NSF pursued refinements in the structure of the data and software cyberinfrastructure programs to address ongoing community needs.

CSSI constitutes an umbrella for OAC’s existing investments in data and software cyberinfrastructure; this umbrella specifically strives to support advances in the community vision of a national cyberinfrastructure ecosystem. CSSI brings together the individual Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBs) and SI2 programs to intentionally (a) recognize the many similarities between data and software cyberinfrastructure by using similar categories of proposals; (b) include and foster holistic re-use across all levels of the data and software stack; (c) stimulate crosscutting themes such as integrated workflows and data flows, robust scientific and engineering discovery, machine learning, etc.; and (d) scale from individual or small groups of innovators to large hubs of excellence. Further, this umbrella will allow funding opportunities to be more flexible and responsive to the evolving and emerging needs in integrated data and software cyberinfrastructure in the future.

The CSSI program solicitation describes four categories of proposals:

• Data Elements and Software Elements (formerly DIBBs Pilot Demonstrations and SI2 Scientific Software Elements, or SSE);
• Data Framework Implementations and Software Framework Implementations (formerly DIBBs Early Implementations and SI2 Scientific Software Integration, or SSI)
• Planning Grants for Community Data Cyberinfrastructure and Planning Grants for Community Software Cyberinfrastructure (formerly SI2 Scientific Software Innovation Institute Conceptualization); and
• Community Data Cyberinfrastructure Implementations and Community Software Cyberinfrastructure Implementations (formerly SI2 Scientific Software Innovation Institutes, or S2I2)

This particular CSSI solicitation is open for proposals addressing the first two proposal categories noted above, i.e., Data and Software Elements as well as Data and Software Frameworks only. OAC anticipates addressing the other two proposal categories through future program solicitations.

Please see the OAC website (https://nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=505505&org=OAC&from=home)  for additional information, including future funding opportunities. As always, current DIBBs and SI2 awardees should continue to communicate with their cognizant program officers in OAC for any questions related to their awards. Prospective CSSI principal investigators are also welcome to contact their disciplinary program directors for guidance.