[Themaintainers] NSF Strengthening American Infrastructure

[Andrew Russell]

Hi everyone - 

NSF recently posted a Dear Colleague Letter that announced funding on the theme of “Strengthening American Infrastructure.”  I thought it would be interesting for people here, both in the narrow sense of a funding opportunity as well as a broader indication of NSF’s thinking about infrastructure. (One could comment/speculate on the timing of the announcement, which was published on election day, Tuesday Nov 3 - but I’m not going to do that.)  

Here’s the link: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2021/nsf21019/nsf21019.jsp

And some of their language:

"The National Science Foundation (NSF) - through its Directorates for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE), Engineering (ENG), Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS), Geosciences (GEO), Biological Sciences (BIO), Education and Human Resources (EHR), and the Office of Integrated Activities (OIA) - seeks to stimulate fundamental exploratory, potentially transformative research that strengthens America's infrastructure. Effective infrastructure, whether it be physical, cyber, or social, provides a strong foundation for socioeconomic vitality and broad quality of life improvement. Strong, reliable, and effective infrastructure spurs private-sector innovation, grows the economy, creates jobs, makes public-sector service provision more efficient, strengthens communities, promotes equal opportunity, protects the natural environment, enhances national security, and fuels American leadership. To achieve these goals requires expertise from across the science and engineering disciplines. In particular, knowledge of human reasoning and decision making, governance, and social and cultural processes are essential to efforts to envision, build, and maintain an effective infrastructure that improves lives and society and builds on advances in technology and engineering."

"With this DCL, the NSF seeks to build research capacity that can address these and many other challenging infrastructure contexts that require a human- and-social-centered approach. NSF anticipates nurturing and growing a research community in SAI over the longer term. This DCL constitutes the first step in that direction. We invite conference and EAGER proposals that will bring together experts across disciplines to support substantial and potentially pathbreaking, untested fundamental research grounded in user-centered concepts and offering the potential to substantially improve or transform the design, use, development, cost-effectiveness, or maintenance of U.S. infrastructure. These proposals should include a central focus on at least one SBE program area with the lead PI being an expert in social, behavioral, or economic science. Proposals must also demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach beyond that of any single Program or NSF Directorate.
NSF is particularly interested in proposals that integrate a deep understanding of human cognition, perception, information processing, decision making, social and cultural behavior, legal frameworks, governmental structures, and related areas into the design, development, and sustainability of infrastructure. Infrastructure may be of any kind, including cyber, economic, educational, physical, and social."



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Andrew L. Russell, Ph.D.
+ Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, SUNY Polytechnic Institute
+ Co-Director, The Maintainers <https://themaintainers.org/>
+ Co-Author, The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/576816/the-innovation-delusion-by-lee-vinsel-and-andrew-l-russell/>
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