NSF Grant: Training-based Workforce Development for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (CyberTraining)

November 28, 2017

NSF’s Training-based Workforce Development for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (CyberTraining) Grant

More information: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2018/nsf18516/nsf18516.htm

Dollar amount: Each CyberTraining award shall range from $300,000 to $500,000 per award and shall be up to 3 years in duration.

Full Proposal Deadline:  February 14, 2018

The CyberTraining program addresses training and career growth of the scientific and engineering research workforce.

This requires training and outreach to new users, applications, innovative technologies and creative approaches.

Each project shall have a board of advisers or a network of collaborators representative of the stakeholders.

All projects include training and curriculum material that is integrated into undergraduate and graduate courses. It also creates templates for other institutions.

Projects contribute cloud infrastructure for online lessons.

CyberTraining program focuses on three communities.

CI Professionals (CIP): research CI and professional staff who  support research CI. The CIP track is for technical and research CI professional skills development of current and future CI professionals, including undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and research scientists.

CI Contributors (CIC): Those who develop new CI capabilities, approaches, and methods. The CIC track is for advanced domain skills development in current and future CI Contributors.

CI Users (CIU): Domain scientists and engineers who use advanced CI for research. The CIU track is for user-level core literacy in advanced CI and computational, data science, and engineering skills. This targets current and future CI Users.

Program Description

Proposals articulate well-designed programs that serve as templates and provide curriculum/instructional material that others can adopt.

Short term impact:

  • scientific research workforce development
  • broadening adoption of CI users and contributors
  • undergraduate/graduate curriculum development
  • creating alliances
  • providing accessibility
  • ways of drawing students into computer science
  • contributing to NSF-funded CI (XSEDE)

Long term goals:

  • computational and data science for all scientists and engineers
  • advanced CI that enables better research and engineering
  • engage with more disciplines
  • establish career pathways
  • scalable educational cloud infrastructure

Education models for this grant:

  • a few weeks
  • short duration workshops
  • workshops at a larger conference
  • online courses
  • The courses can have a simultaneous in-person and streaming component

The recruitment plan should include types of institutions where trainees will be recruited, along with the plan to reach out to individuals from disciplines and institutions with lower levels of CI adoption as well as from underrepresented groups.

A project should include evaluating how well short- and long-term goals were met.

CISE’s IIS division encourages data science-related proposals conducted in collaboration with the NSF-funded Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs and Spokes (BD Hubs and Spokes).