Open House at CUNY's Advance Science Research Center

The City University of New York announces its second annual ASRC Open House on Thursday, November 16th from 10am to 7pm. Guests will be able to tour 10 active core facilities, talk to research faculty, and have the opportunity to become a core facility user or affiliate faculty member with access to the Center. Research Initiatives of the ASRC include photonics, nanoscience, structural biology, neuroscience and environmental sciences. To register for the tour, and get more information about the ASRC, visit this link: http://www.asrc.cuny.edu/events/open-house-2017/.

NSF wants to know what research infrastructure you need

In Dear Colleague Letter 18-013 NSF has issued a request for information about the need for Mid-scale Research Infrastructure. "Mid-scale" is defined as costs falling between the maximum you can request from their popular Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program, which is $4M, and the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act's definition of a 'major multi-user research facility project', which is $100M or greater. This request for information is not a request for funding, nor should the request be interpreted as an intent to publish a new research infrastructure opportunity in the near future, but it will help the NSF identify "promising projects that remain difficult to address within program budgets due to the comparatively large investment needed in a relatively short period of time." A link to the survey can be found at the bottom of the Dear Colleague Letter linked above. It doesn't hurt to let the NSF know what the community needs!

Four NSF BIO divisions do away with pre-proposals (and deadlines!)

NSF announced on October 5th in Dear Colleague Letter 18-011 that after careful consideration of the impact of the pre-proposal pilot on reviewers, institutions and the research community, "BIO will implement a 'no-deadline,' full-proposal mechanism for receiving and reviewing proposals submitted to core programs in the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB), the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS), the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB), and to the programs in the Research Resources Cluster of the Division of Biological Infrastructure (DBI)." More information on the changes to proposals can be found in these FAQ's (NSF 18-012) as well as on the division's websites.