Limited Submission Opportunity: NSF 2025 Advanced Computing Systems & Services: Adapting to the Rapid Evolution of Science and Engineering Research 2.0
OBJECTIVE:
The NSF Advanced Computing Systems and Services (ACSS) program requests proposals from organizations who are willing to serve as resource providers. Resource providers would (1) provide advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources in production operations to support the full range of computation, data-analysis, and AI research across all of science and engineering (S&E), and (2) enable democratized and equitable access to the proposed resources. NSF is looking to complement their existing areas by provisioning resources, broadly defined to include systems and services, in the following two categories:
- Category I, Capacity Resources: production computational resources maximizing the capacity provided to support the broad range of computation, data analytics and AI needs in S&E research; and
- Category II, Innovative Prototypes/Testbeds: innovative forward-looking capabilities deploying novel technologies, architectures, usage modes, etc., and exploring new target applications, methods, and paradigms.
Only Category II submissions will be accepted in this cycle. Resources proposed in this category can represent the deployment of new technologies, system architectures, or usage modalities at scale, with plans for developing a national S&E user community that will benefit from the proposed capabilities. Proposed resources could encompass a broad range from enabling of advancements in traditional computing architectures to novel computing paradigms. The former could include novel processor architectures supporting artificial intelligence applications or integration of distributed systems leveraging edge devices; domain-specific architectures; reconfigurable and/or software defined systems; systems designed for streaming data and/or real-time processing, etc. The latter could apply aspects of neural and broader levels of non-neural biological organization architectures or implement collective properties of quantum states.
Proposers are further encouraged to potentially explore novel facility scale electric power infrastructure, including models, leading to significant efficiencies in compute center and edge scale power utilization. Additionally, Category II incentivizes proposals that explore and assess comprehensive and effective future options for science-based responses to a potential future national and/or international urgent need, as well as towards opportunities for future AI-enabled breakthroughs in science, engineering, and technology.
FUNDING INFORMATION:
Up to $5 million over no more than 5 years.
ELIGIBILITY RESTRICTIONS:
BU may forward only 1 proposal for Category II as the lead institution.
There are no restrictions or limits on who may serve as a PI. Individuals may only be a PI or co-PI on only one proposal per competition.
INTERNAL SELECTION PROCESS:
Interested applicants should submit the following materials via InfoReady Review by: 4/25/2025
- Questions outlined in InfoReady Review application
- 2-page Proposal Summary describing plans for provisioning innovative computational and data analysis capabilities or services, examples of use cases, and system-level performance and reliability metrics.
- Up-to-date CV or Biosketch
A faculty committee will review internal proposals and select nominees to submit proposals by 6/24/2025.
DEADLINES:
Internal Materials Due: Friday, April 25, 2025 by 11:59 pm EDT
Full Proposal Deadline: Tuesday, June 24, 2025 by 5:00 pm ET