August 15, 1997 -- SSTI Weekly Digest

Copyright State Science & Technology Institute 2002. Information in this issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest was prepared under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration. Redistribution to all others interested in tech-based economic development is strongly encouraged — please cite the State Science & Technology Institute whenever portions are reproduced or redirected. Any opinions expressed in the Digest do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

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USDA SEEKING PROPOSALS

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) is inviting applications for competitive grant awards under the National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program (NRICGP).

NRICGP is charged with funding research on key problems of national and regional importance in biological, environmental, physical, and social science relevant to agriculture, food, and the environment on a peer-reviewed, competitive basis. Competition is open to scientists at all academic institutions, Federal research agencies, private and industrial organizations, and those individuals qualified but not affiliated with one of the aforementioned organizations.

CSREES is soliciting proposals for support of high priority research in the following categories:

Project Topic	Anticipated FY 1998 Funding
Natural Resources and the Environment	$16.0 M
Nutrition, Food Quality, and Health	$6.7 M
Plant Systems	$33.5 M
Animal Systems	$21.5 M
Markets, Trade, and Policy	$3.6 M
New Products and Processes	$6.3 M

There are two project types for which proposals are being sought. The first is the conventional project which includes standard research grants and conferences. The second project type

are Agricultural Research Enhancement Awards which includes the following: Postdoctoral fellowships; new investigator awards; and, strengthening awards for research career enhancement projects, equipment grants, and seed grants.

The proposal submission deadline is dependent upon the research project topic. However, the first group of proposals are due November 15, 1997.

Information on proposal deadlines, as well as a complete program description, can be viewed on the web at http://www.reeusda.gov/nri. For an NRICGP Application Kit, call CSREES at 202/401-5048 or e-mail psb@reeusda.gov.

DOE ANNOUNCES UNIVERSITY SUPERCOMPUTER PARTNERSHIPS

The Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that, for the first time, its computing resources will be made available to academic researchers. The California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign and the University of Utah were selected as DOE's Academic Strategic Alliances Program (ASAP) Centers of Excellence.

The program will team the universities with three national laboratories - Sandia, Livermore and Los Alamos - to develop advanced computer modeling and simulations to certify the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons in support of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, as well as broader national goals.

DOE operates the world's fastest computer at Sandia National Laboratories. It is building computers at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories that will be three times faster than the Sandia computer. DOE sought assistance from the universities to develop skills and techniques for using this computing power to maintain the nation's nuclear stockpile.

The Academic Strategic Alliances Program will fund $250 million of research at the five universities over a decade. According to DOE, the participating universities will "focus on one or more national-scale multi-disciplinary applications in non-classified areas in which computer modeling and simulation would advance not only the state of knowledge in that area, but also prove useful to the nuclear stockpile stewardship effort.

NIH ANNOUNCES NEW FORMAT AND ELECTRONIC AWARD NOTIFICATION

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced that, as a first step in the transition from paper to electronic exchange of information, it is reformatting the current Notice of Grant Award (NGA) form.

Effective October 1, all NIH grant, cooperative agreement, and fellowship awards will be issued in a letter format. The new letter-format NGA will no longer provide

a cumulative record of all transactions affecting the particular budget period. For example, a supplemental award will only reflect the amount of the supplemental action, not the cumulative support for that budget period.

NIH has begun pilot testing the electronic NGA with a small group of grantee institutions. These institutions have provided NIH with a generic E-mail address established for this purpose. NIH recommends that any grant recipients wishing to receive electronic NGAs establish a generic and stable E-mail address specifically for this purpose.

Similar to the current paper process, the NGA will be sent to the designated e-mail address. The grantee institution will be responsible for distributing the NGA, along with any special terms and conditions, to the principal investigator and other appropriate officials within the recipient organization.

NIH anticipates that electronic NGAs will be transmitted routinely to all grant recipients capable of receiving electronic notices by the end of calendar year 1998. Receiving NGAs electronically will be optional to meet the needs of grant recipients that do not have the capability to receive electronic information.

POSITION AVAILABLE

The Modernization Forum, a national association for the manufacturing extension community, seeks a project manager to join its team of professionals who work with the manufacturing extension community nationwide.

The project manager's responsibilities will include report research and writing, analysis of trends relevant to manufacturing extension, project management, direct interaction with member organizations across the country, and significant contributions to seminars and the annual national conference.

The complete job description can be found on SSTI's home page at http://www.ssti.org. For more information, contact Carol Lessure, Research Director for The Modernization Forum, at 313/271-2790 ext. 7, or by e-mail at clessure@modforum.org

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