transcript 
 
Event ID: DEB Core Programs Solicitation Webinar
Event Started: 9/12/2011 1:26:46 PM ET


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only mode. During the question and answer session please press * then 1 on your touch 
tone phone. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections may 
disconnect at this time. Now I will turn the meeting over to Mr. Allen Tessier. 

[Presentation Title, Slide 1]

ALAN: Welcome, this is a webinar presentation by the Division of Environmental Biology
to introduce our new solicitation for core programs. My name is Alan Tessier, I'm here
at NSF in a room with a number of other program officers from all of the different 
clusters within the Division of Environmental Biology. This is being recorded, and this
entire presentation, voice included, will be available for download after this. So if 
you have to leave, you can always go back and access this from the same website where 
you registered. There are about 18 slides here. And we will try to get through them 
pretty fast. You'll have to hold your questions until the end. We are enforcing that. 
Your microphones are muted. You will not be able to have any voice come across. You can
make use of the chat window if you need to. You can always e-mail questions to 
DEBQuestions@nsf.gov after this presentation as well and we will be answering those if 
you don't find your question answered here.

[Slide 2]

What is changing here? As of the next deadline dates which would have been January 9th
and still is January 9th, proposal submissions will have to conform to a new 
division-wide solicitation that's NSF 11-573 which of course is available on the NSF 
website and the URL link is shown on the slide. We said conform to the solicitation, 
because there are obviously other solicitations that you can submit proposals to 
including two core programs. And, they are described within this solicitation as to 
how this solicitation impacts submissions through those other solicitations. 

[Slide 3]

Okay specifically what is changing. This new solicitation is actually one of 
several new solicitations which have been issued by the Biological Sciences 
Directorate. As many of you know, several years ago, one of the four divisions within 
BIO, the Division of Biological Infrastructure, shifted to once a year submissions to 
their programs. A little more recently, in May 2011, the Division of Molecular and 
Cellular Biosciences changed the way they receive proposals and shifted to once every 
eight months' submission with only a single submission allowed per PI each time. So 
that's three times every two years. The rest of our presentation here concerns two very
recently announced solicitations, one governing IOS and one governing DEB, that's the 
Division of Integrative Organismal Systems and the Division of Environmental Biology. 
Even though there are two different solicitations, they are very similar and parallel.
Both the of these solicitations require that proposals submitted to the core 
programs in those divisions have to start with a pre-proposal submitted to the January
deadline. The January 9th deadline is for DEB and IOS may be a different day but it's
still a January deadline. Full proposals are by invitation only. And their submission 
date is in August, August 2 for the DEB. 

[Slide 4]

What types of proposals are being affected by this solicitation? Basically, any 
proposal that is a research proposal that would have normally been submitted to 
our January or July panel cycle deadlines, either through the Grant Proposal 
Guide for NSF or directly to the program descriptions for the programsin IOS 
or DEB. They must now conform to these new solicitations. In addition, any proposal 
that would have been submitted to one of these two divisions through the RUI, the 
Research in Undergraduate Institutions, or through the Long-term Research in 
Environmental Biology, LTREB, solicitations must conform to the same new solicitation 
which requires pre-proposals in January.

[Slide 5]

In IOS what we mean by those core programs are any of the programs listed on this slide
in the four clusters of IOS. There is a separate webinar that will be scheduled to 
discuss these changes with the IOS program officers. 

[Slide 6]

In DEB we also have four clusters and here's a listing of all the programs that are 
affected by this new solicitation. 

[Slide 7]

There are a number of existing solicitations that are very relevant for investigators 
who are typically supported by DEB; and, they are not changed by this solicitation. 
They are not impacted in any way. We list some examples here. Obviously the CAREER 
solicitation which has been NSF wide, which has a July deadline once a year, those 
proposals will still be accepted by all these core programs at the July deadline. 

And then there are a number of other solicitations you see here that are not changed. 
The deadlines may be revised from year to year if the solicitations change, but they 
are not impacted by the new solicitations in DEB or IOS. Some of these however, like 
RCN accept proposals and the solicitation instructs principle investigators to submit 
them to a core program, depending on the deadlines for that core program. In DEB that 
will be the August 2 full proposal deadline. Note also that the DDIGs, Doctoral 
Dissertation Improvement Grants, are not changing. Those are still coming in as full 
proposals according to the deadline in that solicitation. Also, all of the programs in
IOS and DEB will continue to accept the conference and workshop proposals, EAGERs, 
RAPIDs, or supplements to existing awards as described in the grant proposal guide for
NSF so there are no changes to those types of special requests. 

[Slide 8]

Okay, why are we making these changesin DEB and IOS? What was the motivation for this? 
Over the last decade, there have been rather dramatic changes in the number of 
proposals submitted to NSF overall, but particularly within BIO. Everybody, both people
at NSF handling those proposals and people in the science community writing and 
reviewing those proposals, have remarked on the trend. 

Basically, at this point we are approaching the situation where 90% of the proposals 
being written and reviewed are being declined. These proposals have to be revised and 
resubmitted, on average, two or three times before they are funded, if they are funded.
And this is basically making the entire system very inefficient in terms of workload 
for everybody: people writing the proposals and reviewing them and handling them at our
end. It was really these trends which were followed over the past several years that 
were the motivation to make these changes. And let me come back to that in a minute. 
But first show you some data for DEB to indicate what I mean by these trends.

[Slide 9]

Here you can see that during the past decade the number of submitted projects, that is 
to say unique individual projects, counting collaboratives as a single project, have 
increased over the last 10 years, nearly doubling within DEB. And you will note that 
our awards on the other hand have been pretty unchanged. Now, it is true that our 
budgets went up substantially during the first half of this decade. But, the fact of 
the matter is that the cost of doing science also went up. And, the scale of requests 
has increased. And so, the number of awards is not changed very much and the success 
rate for funding has declined and is quickly approaching the 10% level on average. You
will note that the one year that was a good year for success rate was the year that we
received the stimulus funding. Indicated by ARRA [in the graph]. 

[Slide 10]

So success rate having declined is an index of the problem here. But the real 
problem is perhaps seen best by looking at the burden on the reviewing community. The 
number of total reviews that we had to request to handle the increasing number of 
proposals being submitted, continued to rise during the first half of the 2000-2010 
decade. And in DEB we tried to get about half the reviews from expert ad hoc review 
requests and the other half by panelist. Here you can see how the number of ad hoc and 
panelist reviews rose until about 2006. At that point, we were so overburdened with 
proposals that in DEB we basically made the decision to reduce the number of ad hoc 
reviews that we were requesting, so you can see that the red line, the ad hoc review 
line, begins to drop. We had to do that because our workload in getting more panelists 
and more panels was what we had to focus on and you can see the number of panelist 
reviews continued to increase. To that effect, we could see we were slowly and 
gradually switching over to a panel-only review process and often losing valuable 
expert reviews. I think everyone out there noticed this change. It became very common 
to only have four reviews going back to people in the last year or so. As opposed to in
2004-2005 it was more typically five or six reviews. 

Also, the quality of reviews begin to decline. In 2006, NSF launched a massive survey 
of the science community, sending out requests to over 44,000 individuals: everyone who
had submitted a proposal as a PI or co-PI during 2004, 2005, and 2006. More than 50% of
those people responded to the survey: 24,000 responses. Overwhelmingly, people 
indicated that the reviewer burden was getting out of control. They were having to 
review so much that the quality of their own reviews was going down. They felt that NSF
really needed to do something. Over 55% of the respondents indicated that in their 
minds preliminary proposals were something NSF should consider moving toward. That 
report is public. It is called IPAMM and you can find it from the NSF search. Since 
that time from 2007 when that report was released, we in DEB have talked with panelists
routinely and have talked with our committee of visitors and we talked with advisory 
committees and heard the message that something had to be done to reduce the workload 
of writing, reviewing and recommending proposals. 

[Slide 11]

So what are the details inside this new solicitation? We said it is a once-a-year 
deadline now, in January. It requires a pre-proposal that comes in. The pre-proposal 
has only four pages of text and one page that describes the PI, Co-PI, and senior 
personnel team. Preliminary proposals are a requirement in order to submit a full 
proposal and there is a limit on how many pre-proposals can be submitted in January. 
The limit is two per individual if the individual is a PI or a co-PI on any planned 
institutional submission, so if it would be submitted as a collaborative project at the
full proposal stage, anyone that is a PI on one of those institutional submissions is 
restricted to no more than two pre-proposal submissions. 

In addition, if you are going to be the lead individual on a sub-award of any 
of those submissions, you also fall under this restriction. Not included on the limit 
here are other senior personnel. Individuals who could be involved in the project as 
other senior personnel, if they are not a PI or a co-PI or a lead on a sub-award, there
are no restrictions on how many pre=proposals you can be involved in. The pre-proposals
will be reviewed by panel only. You would expect to get three reviews back from them as
well as a panel summary. 

And the panel will be advising NSF program officers on whether to invite or not invite
the full proposal. And we will get those decisions out in early May. If you are 
invited, you then have until the August 2 deadline to prepare your full proposal and 
submit it. Only invited proposals will be allowed to submit for the August deadline. 
The only exception to that would be proposals that come in as RCNs or OPUS proposals, 
those two are not having to go through the proposal stage because they have separate 
solicitations. And LTREB renewals, regular first time LTREB proposals do have to go 
through the pre-proposal stage. But the renewal which is viewed at the five-year stage
can come in August 2 without having gone through the pre-proposal. The full proposals 
will be reviewed again by panels. But depending on the program officer, they may also 
request ad hoc expert reviews. And we anticipate that the full proposal panel will 
occur around October and then we would be giving decisions about awards or declines by
the beginning of December. A month before the pre-proposals are starting again. 

[Slide 12]

So to summarize this cycle that we anticipate having, the annual cycle that starts in 
January, and for those who get awards hearing decisions by the beginning of December. 

[Slide 13]

The pre-proposal format should be far less work to produce. In addition to the standard
cover page and project summary, the project description as I said is only five pages 
and the first page is simply a listing of all the senior personnel. Within that list, 
you have to indicate the status of each person and the role they would play on a full 
proposal. In essence, there are two groups of people there are those that fall under 
the restriction of being a PI, a co-PI, or lead on a sub-award and then there are other
senior personnel you can include but who are not falling under restriction on being on
only two pre-proposals. 

These other senior personnel as well as the PI, co-PI and sub award leads are all
allowed to include their biographical sketches and the format largely follows the GPG.
But there are some changes: one of the changes is that the list of conflicts is 
submitted by a single copy document for everybody involved. The main pre-proposal will 
really be just the 4 pages, pages 2-5 of the project description. And there are no 
budgets required and there is no section on facilities, no appendices or other 
supplementary documents will be allowed. This includes no need for a post-doc mentoring
plan and no data management plan on the pre-proposal. 

[Slide 14]

What guidance are we trying to give people on the pre-proposals? As with any proposal 
of course, it should be a pretty compelling and convincing argument that makes a 
reviewer want to fund this. But more specifically we have spent quite a bit of time 
when we were planning this, thinking about what guidance we would give to panels and 
reviewers as they look at these pre-proposals. 

[Slide 15]

The advice we are giving people, it is sort of bulleted here. I would say the first 
three bullets are all addressing a similar issue, which is what is the proposal about,
what is the main question? What is the main phenomenon under study? What's the novel 
idea that the PI has? Are these answered in terms of addressing something that captures
the interest of reviewers and in terms of its potential to advance knowledge that is 
general and beyond just the specific study systems. In addition, the pre-proposal 
should also describe the basic approach to be used to address this question or 
hypothesis or whatever the aims are. And, it should also, making use of the bio 
sketches, but also describing specifically in the pre-proposal project description, the
ability of the team to conduct this research. 

And fourth, it should outline what the broader impacts would be. So the review criteria
are still basically intellectual merit and broader impacts. And the intellectual merit
will really focus on what is the main idea, what's the approach and what's capability 
of the team to carry it out? 

[Slide 16]

The pre-proposal panels will be advisory to the program officers. What we will ask the
pre-proposal panel to give us feedback on is outlined here. In many ways they are the 
same issues that we ask panels on full proposals to evaluate. But I think the key here
is that on the pre-proposal it really will be more front and center: how novel, how 
innovative are the questions being addressed here? What is the motivation? How is it 
conceptually grounded within frameworks or theories that have been used to address 
these phenomena? What is the approach? Is it feasible? Does it look feasible? Is it 
innovative? Perhaps classic questions being addressed from a novel approach? 

And again, how well qualified are the PIs, Co-PIs, and other senior personnel? And is 
there a convincing and sincere effort to broaden the impact of his work if it were to 
be conducted? Again the panels will be advisory to program officers and recommending 
invite or do not invite. Ultimately, the program officers will make the decision. They
will consider other things that we will not ask the panel to consider such as: other 
existing awards in the program that already exist in our portfolio, what we are already
funding; the diversity of our portfolio with regard to the career level, young versus 
more senior people, Underrepresented groups and geographic location and institution 
types. It is the responsibility of the program officers to balance the portfolio. 

[Slide 17 did not correctly display and was skipped]

[Slide 18]

One of the issues that we get asked a lot, is what NSF means by potentially 
transformative? We had a couple of slides here and I will see if the next slide has the
other one. But this slide discusses risk grapicaly and is something we show panels and 
will probably continue to show pre-proposal panels as well. What we mean by risk and 
basically what it describes here is that risk has two dimensions. There is the boldness
risk which is something we really value. We are looking for ideas that are bold and 
innovative. At the same time there is recognition of risk coming from feasibility and 
the ability to conduct or have the research work out to get answers and historically 
people tend to balance these two by wanting to reduce feasibility risk while maximizing
boldness risks. The line describing the distinction between invite and not invite 
decisions is meant to imply that we recognize it is not a simple trade-off here, that 
We really value the boldness and riskiness even if it incurs substantial feasibility 
risk. And so we ask panelists to take that into consideration when making a 
recommendation. 

I lost the other slide. [laughter] 

[Narration for missing slide 17]

The other issue I will just describe for you, is this notion of transformative 
potential. We obviously, as you probably have heard, tend to value the potential of 
proposals to transform a discipline as a key intellectual merit. And recently the 
National Science Board directed that potentially transformative research should be part
of the intellectual review criteria of all proposals. One of the ways we tell panelists
that they should consider this in their own minds, is to consider the potential for an
increase in knowledge advancement from a particular proposed idea and to really look 
for proposals that seem to be on the cutting edge of ideas. They may not be ideas that
have really caught on yet but they seem to be ideas that have potential to really 
generate a lot of new interest and knowledge, and so we try to instruct panelists that
the difference between incremental research and this research that has the potential to
really transform a field is really what we mean by transformative potential. 

[Slide 19]

The questions can now get started in a minute. I just want to point out that there are
resources online for you and obviously the solicitation is something you should read 
in-depth. There's also some frequently asked questions which we are not sure how 
frequently they will be asked because we started this with what we were asking 
ourselves when we were putting this together. 

You can e-mail any DEB program officer for questions. We also have a central e-mail 
address it is one word: DEBquestions@NSF.gov. And this webinar posting -and we'll put 
the correct slide on for that transformative potential slide- will be posted at the 
same website where you registered for this. If you have specific concerns at a more 
general level, you can send an e-mail to Penny Firth who is the acting Division 
Director in DEB or, and some of you may not know this yet but, we have a new Assistant
Director for Biological Sciences, John Wingfield, who is a former Division Director in
IOS. And you can also send concerns to him directly.

Okay I think we are going to switch over to entertaining questions at this point.


OPERATOR: If you would like to ask an audio question please press star then one on your
touch tone phone. If you want to withdraw your request please press star then two. Once
again to ask a question please press star one. One moment please. 

Kathryn Burns you may ask your question. 

KATHRYN: My question is: How much do you expect this new strategy to increase the fund 
rate? Is there a target fund rate you guys are shooting for? 

ALAN: I'm not sure exactly we mean by fund rate? 

KATHRYN: Success of getting an award if you submitted an application. 


ALAN: We are anticipating that there will be a lot of pre-proposals and there will 
still be a filter there. There is still going to be a significant reduction in what 
gets invited. And then there is going to be another filter at the full proposal stage 
and we are hoping that for the full proposals our funding rate will be significantly 
higher than it currently is now. That is to say that the reason for putting in this 
pre-proposal as a filter is to reduce the work that needs to be done at the full 
proposals stage to have a higher likelihood of being funded. 

Our overall budget is not changing here. Not that we know our budget in the 
future. [laughter] Our budget is set by Congress at any given moment we may not know 
what we will have in front of us. In terms of budget and the number of awards, the size
of awards, the types of awards, where those awards are going, we are not necessarily
anticipating any changes there.  What we are trying to do is reduce the work involved 
in getting to that point.

KATHRYN: I guess my question would more appropriately be asked [as]: of those people or
groups submitting full proposals, is there a rate you are shooting to get? Are you 
going to be soliciting a lot of full proposals, a drastically reduced number of 
proposals, half the number of current proposals? 

ALAN: This is the first time through but We are certainly hoping that the funding rate
from the full proposal panel will be 2 to 3 times greater than it has been currently. 
That is to say yes we are hoping it will be higher. But do we have a number or 
something? Are we trying to manage the success rate? No. 

KATHRYN: Okay thanks. 

OPERATOR: Once again if you would like to ask a question. Please press star then one. 
One moment. At this time I show no further questions. I'm sorry one just popped up. 
One moment. 
Seth Borenstein you may ask your question. 

SETH: Yes I was wondering what the expected workload would be for panel members during
the pre-proposal evaluation? In other words, is it expected that they will be doing 
about double what we are used to in the past? Because there may be twice as many short
proposals coming in? 

ALAN: We would love suggestions on what you think you can do. [laughter] 

SETH: Yes. That's a good answer. At least there is flexibility in discussing it.

ALAN: We are still planning how we will run the pre-proposal panels, since they are 
not going to be occurring until about next March or April. So we don't have decisions 
fully on this. And we would actually love your opinions of what kind of load you can 
handle. We certainly anticipate it would be more pre-proposals that a panelist will 
read than full proposals would have been. But it's not exactly the same math that you 
can do it by the number of pages right? So we realize it will be quite a bit more than
full proposals. But, other than that, it is still a bit of an experiment for us and it
will depend on how many pre-proposals are submitted. 

SETH: Okay. And do you expect that the invite and non-invite line will be determined by
the panel recommending who should be above that line or below that line? 

ALAN: Well, we wouldn't go to all the effort to have a panel if we weren't going to 
take their advice very seriously. And in general, we do follow their advice in regard 
to the intellectual and broader impact merits. But as I said, we also have other 
constraints that we are responsible for in balancing our portfolio to fulfill NSF's 
mission. Therefore, there may be times when a panel invites and we say not invite and 
there may be times where the panel says not invite and we say invite. But in general we
expect a pretty high correlation between what the panel says and what we end up doing. 

SETH: Thank you. And if I can, one final question. Will the panel members be different
between pre-proposal review and the final review? 

ALAN: Yes. I'm seeing a lot of nodding heads around the room by the program officers 
that will be running those panels. But yes, we certainly intend that there will be not
just the same people. There might be some overlap. But by far, we are really shooting 
for different panels. 

SETH: Thank you. 

OPERATOR: Your next question is from Jim -- 

JOHN ADAMEC: Hold on one second. We have a couple questions that came in through text 
from folks who are not attached to the audio line. So we are going to handle one of 
those really quickly and then trade off to the next audio person. 

OPERATOR: Thanks. 

SAM: Hello this is Sam Scheiner. We have a question, I'll just read it: "for the title
of the proposal project I do not understand what is meant by additional acronyms for 
accomplishments-based renewal, ABR, or research in undergraduate institutions, RUI?" 
So the ABR and RUI are particular categories of proposals, this also holds for OPUS. 
You are asked when you submit those proposals to start the title with that acronym and
it just makes it easier for everybody to know that this is a special category of 
proposal. But otherwise, those proposals are going to go through the same panel and 
have pretty much the same review criteria. I hope that answered your question. 

JOHN: Okay we will go to the next audio question please. 

OPERATOR: James Gosz. 

JAMES: Hello I was wondering if this change in the DEB and BIO has been reviewed by the
science board and whether you see this as a long-term change in programming and whether
or not other divisions and directorates are going to follow suit? 

PENNY: Hi Jim this is Penny Firth here and the change we are making has been looked at
by a variety of folks around the foundation and of course was approved all the way up 
to the director of the foundation. And we are in fact going into this hoping it will 
make a positive change, but open to the possibility of altering or adjusting in future 
years if the data seem to demand some kind of tuning up in the future but we are hoping
that what we tried this time will work. 

JAMES: And broader throughout the foundation? And discussing from other directorates? 

PENNY: Yes. 

JAMES: Positive you mean? 

PENNY: Yes positive and discussion. Positive discussion. 

JAMES: Okay. 

JOHN: We have another text question we're going to tackle quickly. 

SAM: So there is a question about how much detail does the pre-proposal panel expect in
terms of broader impact compared to the product description? I would say it is the same
ratio as you would have in the regular proposal. So in a 15 page regular proposal there
is somewhere between half a page and a full page typically on broader impacts so on a
proportional basis, that would be some were between a quarter to a half of a page at 
most on broader impacts in a pre-proposal. 

JOHN: Okay do we have any more audio questions on the line? 

OPERATOR: Yes next will be Jacob Kerby. 

JACOB: Hi, I have a question on the logistics of the pre-proposal panel, is it going to
be similar to the regular panel? That is, are the reviewers going to judge it on a sort
of poor, good, excellent criteria and then I guess the idea is instead of a fund or do 
not fund subdivision of categories it's an invite to panel for a full proposal or no 
full proposal recommendations? And with that also a secondary question will the 
pre-proposal panels have ad hoc panelists as well? Or is it simply a panel at that
stage? 


ALAN: So a few questions there. The pre-proposals will not have ad hoc reviews. These 
would be panel only reviews. How those panels will run is something that there may be
some experiments with. But, in general, in DEB we are thinking of still having three 
panelists who write reviews and those reviews would have scores submitted through 
FastLane and all proposals will be reviewed on a five-point scale from Poor to 
Excellent. The panel will meet and discuss each of the pre-proposals. And again, mostly
it will revolve around preassigned panelists and we are likely going to just ask them 
to give us a thumbs-up or thumbs down, invite or not invite recommendation categories 
on the proposals. We don't rank the individual ones. But we will obviously want to hear
from the panelists as to why. And there will be a panel summary written to give you 
feedback on how those panelists ended up feeling about a given proposal. 

JACOB: Just a follow-up question, that panel summary if you're invited for a full 
proposal, will we get that panel summary or no? 

ALAN: Yes you will get it regardless. You'll get the reviews, everybody will get the 
reviews and the panel summary. If for some reason a program decides to not follow the 
advice of the panel, then you would also get a comment from the program officer 
explaining why.

JACOB: Okay thank you. 

SAM: Okay so we have on the chat line the question, "can you comment on the proposal 
limit per PI? Especially in light of the potential impacts on funding of collaborative
interdisciplinary research?" So, the way we came up with the limit of two per person 
was actually by a detailed analysis of how many proposals the average person is 
submitting in a given year or is involved in. Most people, 95% I believe, submit only 
one or two proposals per year. So that limit should affect very very few individuals. 
And we would remind you that you can be involved in more than two proposals but it 
would be in the other senior personnel category. The only thing this limits you to is 
in roles of PI, Co-PI, or lead on a sub-award. We don't actually expect this to really
affect collaboration or interdisciplinary research. And we'll also remind you of course
that this is only for the core programs and we have a number of other programs, many of
them aimed specifically at interdisciplinary research where a lot of those kinds of 
proposals come in. 

JOHN: We have another question on text that we will answer. 

ALAN: This is a once a year call and the question is "what will the process be for 
resubmitting pre-proposals that are not invited or invited proposals that are not 
funded?" In general, if you are declined either at a pre-proposal or full proposal 
stage you have to start over again with a new pre-proposal on the January 9 deadline. 
So we are not -- you know -- it does mean if you are declined on all pre-proposals, 
which you hear in May, you have to wait until January 9 if you are planning to submit 
another proposal to the core programs. As Sam said, we have a lot of other deadlines 
for other solicitations which come up during the course of the year. But if you are 
planning a proposal to come in to, for instance, the Ecosystems Science program the 
deadline is January 9 for pre-proposals regardless of whether or not it is a 
resubmission. 


SAM: And just to sort of amplify this, people need to keep in mind as Alan already 
said, the number of awards we are going to make is not going to change. So your 
ultimate chance of getting funded really will be the same. It's just you are submitting
once a year rather than twice. So we will get twice as many pre-proposals in January as
we would have gotten full proposals across the year. And most people only actually 
submit once a year. So again, for some people it will be a shift in terms of when they
put the proposal in but no real effective change in what is going to happen in terms of
funding. 

SAM: Any other audio questions? 

OPERATOR: We do have one more question. Kai Hung. 

KAI: Hello yes, my question is, with the review on the pre-proposal the comments from 
the panel, are those going to be advanced to be seen by the full proposal review? In 
other words are we doing a cumulative scoring between the two rounds? Or do we start 
completely clean at the full proposal round? 

ALAN: That's actually a question we haven't discussed much internally, but we are. 
Basically the full proposal will not, again it will be a different panel than the 
pre-proposal, it will be different people and they will start out reading that full 
proposal without any other information in front of them other than the full proposal. 
So their review initially for sure is based only on the full proposal. We haven't 
talked in-house about whether or not we would show the panelists when they arrived the
panel summary from the pre-proposal panel. So I cannot answer that part of the 
question. But certainly the reviews including ad hoc reviews will be based solely on 
the full proposal submission. 

KAI: Thank you. 

JOHN: Do we have any other questions at this time by audio or chat, if you so desire? 

OPERATOR: There are no questions on the audio side. 

ALAN: In that case, I want to thank everybody, please let people know this is being 
posted. Other people who could not make this I am sure may want to download and listen
to it. And again, you can submit questions to DEBquestions@NSF.gov. And if we hear 
certain ones that we think are really relevant or clarifiying we will also adjust the 
frequently asked questions or add new ones there. 

So again thank you all. 

OPERATOR: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for attending. You may 
disconnect at this time. 

[Event Concluded]