The Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) is part of CISE's strategy to increase its investments in the development and growth of the research capabilities of future generations of computer and information scientists and engineers, including computational and data scientists and engineers. This solicitation provides the opportunity for early-career researchers to recruit and mentor their first graduate students (or undergraduate students, in the case of faculty at undergraduate and two-year institutions), which is one critical step in a career pathway that is expected to lead to research independence and a subsequent stream of projects, discoveries, students and publications.
CRII intends to support research from PIs who are in their first academic position post-PhD. It is expected that funds obtained through this program will be used to support untenured faculty or research scientists (or equivalent) in their first three years in a primary academic position after the PhD, but not more than six years after completion of their PhD. Applicants for this program may not yet have received any other grants or contracts in the PI role from any department, agency, or institution of the federal government, including from the CAREER program or any other program, post-PhD.
CRII awards will be given to researchers to undertake exploratory investigations, to acquire and test preliminary data, develop collaborations within or across research disciplines, and/or develop new algorithms, approaches, and system designs/prototypes, which together or separately may lead to improved capacity to write successful proposals submitted to other programs in the future. PIs should be aware that reviewers will be asked to consider the following, for each proposal:
- the potential of the research initiation activities to produce sufficient preliminary results to serve as the basis for future competitive research proposals; and
- whether the activities are seen to be the necessary and critical steps for the PI to launch their research career
A map of recent awards made through this program can be seen at https://www.nsf.gov/awards/award_visualization.jsp?org=NSF&pims_id=504952&ProgEleCode=026Y&from=fund.
CRII program is part of CISE's strategy to increase its investments in the development and growth of the research capabilities of future generations of computer and information scientists and engineers, including computational and data scientists and engineers. This solicitation provides the opportunity for early-career researchers who do not have adequate organizational or other means of support to pursue their early-career research, including to recruit and mentor their first graduate students (or undergraduate students, in the case of faculty at undergraduate and two-year institutions), which is one critical step in a career pathway that is expected to lead to research independence and a subsequent stream of projects, discoveries, students and publications.
Proposals may request cloud computing resources to use public clouds such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, and IBM Cloud. For more information on Cloudbank options please refer to the program solicitation.