2010 National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Grants

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has released the solicitation for the 2010 Major Research Instrumentation (MRI).  The University of Florida will be able to submit — or be included as a partner or subawardee in — no more than three (3) proposals. The UF Office of Research is inviting internal pre-proposals for the MRI program to begin the internal coordination process.

Proposal budgets may include requests from NSF in the range of $100,000 to $4 million for both acquisition and development applications. Proposers may request an award period up to three years for acquisition proposals and up to five years for development proposals. Full applications are due to the NSF by April 21, 2010.  The anticipated earliest starting date is September 1, 2010.

The University of Florida will be able to submit — or be included as a partner or subawardee in — no more than three (3) proposals. No more than two proposal submissions may be for instrument acquisition. To promote instrumentation development, the MRI program continues to require that if an organization submits or is included as a funded subawardee/subcontractor in three MRI proposals, at least one of the three proposals must be for instrument development. (NOTE: It is anticipated that UF, as the lead institution, will submit the maximum three allowed proposals; therefore, UF faculty will not be able to participate on another university`s MRI submission.)

However, if a subaward to an organization in a development proposal is 20% or less of the proposal’s total budget request from NSF, the subawardee’s submission limit will not be affected. For subawards within a linked collaborative proposal, the 20% threshold applies to the budget request from NSF in the proposal containing the subaward(s), not to the combined budget request from NSF for the collaborative project.

College of Medicine pre-proposals (following the format/content guidelines below) should be submitted as a single pdf to Karen Pastos at pastos@ufl.edu by Thursday, February 4th.

Pre-proposals should be no longer than five (5) single-spaced pages and contain the following information (Items 1-6):

(1) Category of application (acquisition or development);

(2) Brief description of instrumentation;

(3) Impact of instrumentation on current/future research and research training activities;

(4) Demonstrated need for the equipment;

(5) Qualifications of the persons who will use or develop the instrument;

(6) Projected cost, including plans for covering the cost of operation and maintenance of the instrumentation, and plans to meet the 30% cost-sharing requirement; and

(7) A list of NSF-funded research projects at UF that will benefit from the instrumentation (include: PI name, department, project title, budget/project period, award amount) (this list is not counted as part of the 5-page limit).