Just got this from Amy Pruden, via Paula Olseiwski. Seems like a potential opportunity to get some funding for the microbiology of the built environment from NSF. The “Concept” of the program is described below:
The Science and Technology Centers: Integrative Partnerships – Concept
The Science and Technology Centers (STC): Integrative Partnerships program supports innovative research and education projects that require large-scale, long-term investments. STCs conduct world-class research through partnerships among academic institutions, national laboratories, industrial organizations, and/or other public/private entities, and via international collaborations, as appropriate. These partnerships build intellectual and physical infrastructure within or between disciplines and facilitate the creation, integration, and transfer of new knowledge.
The STC program supports important investigations at the interfaces of disciplines or fresh approaches within disciplines. STCs may involve any area of science and engineering that NSF supports. STCs exploit opportunities in science, engineering and technology where the complexity of the research agenda requires the duration, scope, scale, flexibility, and facilities that center support can provide. They help enable U.S. leadership in research in a world in which discovery, learning and innovation enterprises are increasingly interconnected, and increasingly global. Centers offer the science and engineering community a venue for interaction and an effective mechanism to undertake long-term, integrated scientific and technological research and education activities; to explore better and more effective ways to educate students; to broaden participation of underrepresented groups; and to develop approaches to ensure the timely transfer of research and education advances made in service to society. STC partner institutions work together with the lead institution as an integrated whole to achieve the shared research, education, broadening participation, and knowledge-transfer goals of the Center.
