NSF 23-526: Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*)

Program Solicitation

Document Information

Document History

Posted: December 5, 2022
Replaces: NSF 22-582
Replaced by: NSF 24-530

Program Solicitation NSF 23-526

National Science Foundation
Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure
Division of Computer and Network Systems
Office of Integrative Activities

Full Proposal Deadline(s) (due by 5 p.m. submitter's local time):

March 01, 2023

September 11, 2023

Important Information And Revision Notes

This solicitation combines areas of the previous two solicitations, with the two areas of NSF 22-582 added to the areas of NSF 21-528. This solicitation:

Incorporates text from Dear Colleague Letter: Towards an Equitable National Cyberinfrastructure (NSF 21-108).
Increases the maximum award size in area (1) Data-Driven Networking Infrastructure for the Campus and Researcher to $650,000.
Changes the exclusion rule in area (1) so that previous awardee institutions who have not received an award in this area in the last five years are now eligible.
Increases the maximum award size in area (2) Regional Connectivity for Small Institutions of Higher Education to $1,200,000.
Removes allowability of planning grants for area (3) Network Integration and Applied Innovation.
Increases the maximum award size in area (4) Campus Computing and the Computing Continuum to $500,000.
Adds exclusion rule in area (4) so that previous awardee institutions who have not received an award in this area in the last five years are now eligible.

Any proposal submitted in response to this solicitation should be submitted in accordance with the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) that is in effect for the relevant due date to which the proposal is being submitted. The NSF PAPPG is regularly revised and it is the responsibility of the proposer to ensure that the proposal meets the requirements specified in this solicitation and the applicable version of the PAPPG. Submitting a proposal prior to a specified deadline does not negate this requirement.

Summary Of Program Requirements

General Information

Program Title:

Synopsis of Program:

Cognizant Program Officer(s):

Please note that the following information is current at the time of publishing. See program website for any updates to the points of contact.

Kevin L. Thompson, Program Director, CISE/OAC, telephone: (703) 292-4220, email: kthompso@nsf.gov
Deepankar Medhi, Program Director, CISE/CNS, telephone: (703)292-8950, email: dmedhi@nsf.gov
Subrata Acharya, Program Director, CISE/CNS, telephone: (703) 292-2451, email: acharyas@nsf.gov
Nicholas Goldsmith, Assistant Program Director, CISE/CNS, telephone: (703) 292-8950, email: nicgolds@nsf.gov
Pinhas Ben-Tzvi, Program Director, OD/OIA/EPSCoR, telephone: (703) 292-8246, email: pbentzvi@nsf.gov

Applicable Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Number(s):

47.070 --- Computer and Information Science and Engineering
47.083 --- Office of Integrative Activities (OIA)

Award Information

Anticipated Type of Award: Standard Grant or Continuing Grant

Estimated Number of Awards: 30 to 53

The estimated number of awards per program area is as follows: 3-5 Data-Driven Networking Infrastructure awards; 3-6 Regional Connectivity for Small Institutions awards; 5-8 Network Integration and Applied Innovation awards; 6-12 Campus Computing and the Computing Continuum awards; 2-4 Regional Computing awards; 7-10 Data Storage awards; and 4-8 Planning Grants and CI-Research Alignment awards.

Anticipated Funding Amount: $15,000,000 to $20,000,000

pending availability of funds and quality of proposals received.

Each program area will support awards pursuant to the following budget and duration:

Data-Driven Networking Infrastructure for the Campus and Researcher awards will be supported at up to $650,000 total for up to 2 years;
Regional Connectivity for Small Institutions of Higher Education awards will be supported at up to $1,200,000 total for up to 2 years;
Network Integration and Applied Innovation awards will be supported at up to $1,000,000 total for up to 2 years;
Campus Computing and the Computing Continuum awards will be supported at up to $500,000 total for up to 2 years;
Regional Computing awards will be supported at up to $1,000,000 total for up to 2 years;
Data Storage awards will be supported at up to $500,000 total for up to 2 years; and
Planning Grants will be supported for up to $100,000 for 1 year and CI-Research Alignment awards will be supported for up to $200,000 total for up to 2 years.

Eligibility Information

Who May Submit Proposals:

Who May Serve as PI:

Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization:

Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or co-PI:

Proposal Preparation and Submission Instructions

A. Proposal Preparation Instructions

Letters of Intent: Not required

Preliminary Proposal Submission: Not required

Full Proposals:
- Full Proposals submitted via Research.gov: NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) guidelines apply. The complete text of the PAPPG is available electronically on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg.
- Full Proposals submitted via Grants.gov: NSF Grants.gov Application Guide: A Guide for the Preparation and Submission of NSF Applications via Grants.gov guidelines apply (Note: The NSF Grants.gov Application Guide is available on the Grants.gov website and on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=grantsgovguide).

B. Budgetary Information

Cost Sharing Requirements:

Inclusion of voluntary committed cost sharing is prohibited.

Indirect Cost (F&A) Limitations:

Not Applicable

Other Budgetary Limitations:

Not Applicable

C. Due Dates

Full Proposal Deadline(s) (due by 5 p.m. submitter's local time):

March 01, 2023

September 11, 2023

Proposal Review Information Criteria

Merit Review Criteria:

National Science Board approved criteria. Additional merit review criteria apply. Please see the full text of this solicitation for further information.

Award Administration Information

Award Conditions:

Standard NSF award conditions apply.

Reporting Requirements:

Standard NSF reporting requirements apply.

I. Introduction

Campuses today face challenges across multiple levels of cyberinfrastructure (CI), where meeting the needs of scientific research and education in capacity and services extends to networking, computing, data services, secure and trustworthy systems, and especially human expertise, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. Recognition of the "data driven" nature of scientific advancement and discovery has led to an increased focus in addressing the data challenges posed by the NSF research and education community.

In recent years, NSF has addressed the growing requirements of the NSF community, and opportunities to innovate, in cyberinfrastructure through the CC* program, which invests in innovative, coordinated, and secure campus, multi-campus and multi-institution CI components. The Campus Cyberinfrastructure-Network Infrastructure and Engineering (CC-NIE) program in 2012 and 2013 focused on campus networking upgrades and re-architecting, and innovative development and integration of new networking capabilities in support of driving scientific application requirements. Subsequent years saw the program expand beyond data networking to address a broader set of CI needs at the campus level, including computing, storage, multi-institution integrated CI, and learning and workforce development.

The CC* solicitation invests in coordinated campus-level cyberinfrastructure improvements, innovation, integration, and engineering for science applications and distributed research projects. Science-driven requirements are the primary motivation for any proposed activity. All projects supported by CC* must be driven by STEM research and education needs that require the support of networking, computing, and storage infrastructure on campuses.

CC* awards will be supported in seven program areas:

Area (1) Data-Driven Networking Infrastructure for the Campus and Researcher awards will be supported at up to $650,000 total for up to 2 years;
Area (2) Regional Connectivity for Small Institutions of Higher Education awards will be supported at up to $1,200,000 total for up to 2 years;
Area (3) Network Integration and Applied Innovation awards will be supported at up to $1,000,000 total for up to 2 years;
Area (4) Campus Computing and the Computing Continuum awards will be supported at up to $500,000 total for up to 2 years;
Area (5) Regional Computing awards will be supported at up to $1,000,000 for up to 2 years;
Area (6) Data Storage awards will be supported at up to $500,000 total for up to 2 years; and
Area (7) Planning Grants will be supported for up to $100,000 for 1 year and CI-Research Alignment awards will be supported at up to $200,000 total for up to 2 years.

In FY 2020, the program was aligned with NSF's vision for a holistic CI ecosystem outlined in "Transforming Science Through Cyberinfrastructure: NSF’s Blueprint for a National Cyberinfrastructure Ecosystem for Science and Engineering in the 21st Century” (see https://www.nsf.gov/cise/oac/vision/blueprint-2019/). Key changes focused on the aggregation and integration of CI investments at the campus level, with the goal of helping campuses drive toward a 21st-century realization of an integrated CI for enabling science. Program area (1) addresses science-driven needs in data networking intra-campus, and externally. Area (2) repeats that core theme of networking improvements, with a specific emphasis on supporting the needs of multiple under-resourced campuses through partnerships with regional entities and small institutions with experience in high-performance Research & Education (R&E) networking. Area (3) goes beyond networking infrastructure investments in areas (1) and (2) by leveraging the campus network as a compelling environment on which to develop and deploy new networking capabilities reflecting applied research and development in networking. Area (4) builds on the networking capability foundation established in the first three areas. It recognizes both the research computing needs at a campus level, and the largely untapped potential to share unused compute cycles and resources across the entire academic fabric of highly connected and increasingly resourced campuses. Area (5) promotes coordinated approaches in scientific computing at the regional level through investments in computing clusters serving scientific computing needs spanning a state or region’s small and under resourced institutions. Area (6) promotes coordinated approaches in scientific data storage and data management at the campus level. Area (7) supports planning and coordination, in part reflecting the challenges for institutions that presently do not participate in the R&E network fabric and community. All areas reflect NSF’s goal of democratization and broadening participation in scientific networking, computing, and data.

CC* has increasingly looked for ways to more effectively broaden participation in the program, a direction receiving major impetus with recent participation in the program by the Office of Integrative Activities (OIA). In July 2021, NSF released the Dear Colleague Letter: Towards an Equitable National Cyberinfrastructure (NSF 21-108). This effort represents a joint partnership between NSF's Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) within the Office of Integrative Activities (OIA) that continues into FY 2023. This joint collaboration with CISE/OAC and OIA/EPSCoR aimed to encourage proposal submissions to CC* for projects that will help overcome disparities in cyber-connectivity associated with geographic location, and thereby enable the populations based in these locales to become more nationally competitive in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research and education.

Cyberinfrastructure limitations affect EPSCoR-eligible institutions disproportionately as a group, due to generally reduced levels of access to research infrastructure, including cyberinfrastructure in particular. This effect is compounded for institutions within EPSCoR jurisdictions whose existing STEM research and education infrastructure may be more limited, such as Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs). Additional resources have been published by community organizations to help identify solutions to reduce gaps in cyber-connectivity for MSIs and under-resourced institutions. Through this joint solicitation, CISE/OAC and OIA/EPSCoR aim to address the disparities in campus-level networking and cyberinfrastructure, specifically for underserved communities and underrepresented populations across the nation by specifically encouraging proposals that will address this disparity.

II. Program Description

Program-wide Criteria

Science-driven requirements are the primary motivation for any proposed activity. Proposals will be evaluated on the strength of the science enabled (including research and education) as drivers for proposed investment and innovation in campus CI.

A common theme across all aspects of the CC* program is the critical importance of the partnership among campus-level CI experts, including the campus Information Technology (IT)/networking/data organization, contributing domain scientists, research groups, and educators necessary to engage in, and drive, new networking capabilities and approaches in support of scientific discovery. Proposals across the program should reflect and demonstrate this partnership on campus. Proposals will be evaluated on the strength of institutional partnerships, as they are expected to play a central role in developing and implementing the eventual network and data infrastructure upgrades. Campus IT leadership involvement is a critical element in CC*.

All proposals submitted to the CC* program, with the exception of submissions in response to program area (7), must include a Campus CI plan within which the proposed CI improvements are conceived, designed, and implemented in the context of a coherent campus-wide strategy and approach to CI that is integrated horizontally intra- campus and vertically with regional and national CI investments and best practices. This Campus CI plan must be included as a Supplementary Document and is limited to no more than 5 pages.

Further, proposals are expected to address within the Campus CI plan the sustainability of the proposed work in terms of ongoing operational and engineering costs. Since security and resilience are fundamental issues in campus CI, the Campus CI plan should address the campus-wide approach to cybersecurity in the scientific research and education infrastructure, including the campus approach to data and privacy. Campuses are encouraged to consider emerging best practices in network routing security for network operators as expressed in the Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (see https://www.manrs.org). The plan should include the campus status and plans with respect to federated identity and specifically InCommon, including: if the campus is registered with InCommon as supporting the Research and Scholarship (R&S) Entity Category to streamline integration with research applications (see https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/InCFederation/Research+and+Scholarship+Category); and if the campus meets the InCommon Baseline Expectations for Trust in Federation (see https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/BE?preview=/164988631/175965279/TI.34.2-BaselineExpectations-v2-2020-11.pdf).

The website, http://fasterdata.es.net/campusCIplanning/, offers a number of Campus CI plans provided by existing CC* program awardees as examples. Proposals addressing a multi-institution or regional activity and approach to coordinated and integrated CI may submit a Campus CI plan representing the multi-institution group or region.

All proposals submitted to CC* are expected to address the relevant cybersecurity issues and challenges related to their proposed activities. Depending on the type of proposal, these issues may include, but are not limited to: data integrity, privacy, network security measures, federated access and identity management, and infrastructure monitoring.

As a campus CI program, funded activities should represent ongoing opportunities for student engagement, education, and training. Proposals that demonstrate opportunities to engage students directly in the design, deployment, operation, and advancement of the funded CI activities, consistent with the required Campus CI plan, are encouraged.

Program Areas

The CC* program welcomes proposals in seven program areas: (1) Data-Driven Networking Infrastructure for the Campus and Researcher; (2) Regional Connectivity for Small Institutions of Higher Education; (3) Network Integration and Applied Innovation; (4) Campus Computing and the Computing Continuum; (5) Regional Computing; (6) Data Storage; and (7) Planning Grants and CI-Research Alignment.

(1) Data-Driven Networking Infrastructure for the Campus and Researcher

Proposals submitted to this area address network infrastructure improvements at the campus level to enable national and global high-performance end-to-end access to dynamic network services that in turn enable rapid, unimpeded movement of diverse and distributed scientific data sets and advanced computing. These networking improvements include, but are not limited to, the following types of activities:

Network upgrades within a campus network to support a wide range of science data flows (including large files, distributed data, sensor networks, real-time data sources, and virtualized instruments for computer systems research);
Re-architecting a campus network to support large science data flows, for example, by designing and building a Science DMZ (see http://fasterdata.es.net/science-dmz/ for more information on the Science DMZ approach); and/or
A network connection upgrade for the campus connection to a regional optical exchange or point-of-presence that connects to a state/regional/national network aggregation point prioritizing support for research and education.

Proposals may wish to consider the application of new wireless technologies as an element of their engineering solution to network-based challenges in enabling scientific research and education on their campus. For example, proposals may include multi-gigabit or environment-constrained technologies to connect new instrumentation, resources, or communities relevant to the proposing institution. Note that any wireless solution proposed should address research and education needs as the singular priority, as opposed to a general campus wireless network.

Proposals in this area are required to present a complete technical solution, with complete equipment specifications. Full equipment quotes are required and should be provided in the Supplementary Document section.

Proposals must include descriptions of scientific and engineering research projects and their research needs and must include application drivers that require network engineering or upgrades of their existing infrastructure. Specifically, proposals must include a summary table of the science drivers and their network requirements in the Project Description; these requirements may be specified in terms of throughput ranges. Proposals must also present project specific end-to-end scenarios (workflow profiles) for data movement, distributed computing, and other end-to-end services driving the networking upgrade. Enabling access to research and education resources external to the campus, including cloud computing resources, is also within scope. Proposals are strongly encouraged to include supporting quantitative information, for example, providing current or historical data flow rates, in their descriptions of data movement scenarios and use cases. Proposals are encouraged to justify equipment choices based on the needs of the science drivers and workflows.

Proposals must also include a project plan addressing clear project goals and milestones resulting in a working system in the target environment in the Project Description. Proposals are encouraged to address end-to-end networking performance in considering metrics of success.

Proposals should consider expected outcomes; they should include an explanation of the compelling need for proposed network improvements in light of the current state of the networking infrastructure, and the expected benefits to the identified science drivers and applications enabled by the proposed improvements. All of the above elements should be included in the Project Description.

Proposals are required to include a network management plan addressing roles, responsibilities, and support in the Project Description. The plan should spell out how science data flows will be supported. A letter of support from a campus leader is strongly encouraged and should address sustainability and commitment from the institution.

Proposals are required to include a network diagram of the proposed network upgrades. Proposals missing a network diagram in the Project Description will be returned without review. Proposals are encouraged to document current utilization in the context of the proposed upgrades.

Target environments must be campus infrastructure residing within the U.S.

All proposals in this area must document explicit partnerships or collaborations with the campus IT/networking organization, as well as one or more domain scientists, research groups, and educators in need of the new network capabilities. Partnership documentation from personnel not included in the proposal as PI, co-PI, or Senior Personnel should be in the form of a letter of collaboration located in the Supplementary Documents section of the proposal.

Any budget request for professional services, such as IT staff support, must be documented in coordination with the institution's campus IT or CIO organization. Except for under-resourced institutions, requests for significant human resources are not encouraged.

Budgets are expected to reflect a network-based upgrade. Proposals with budgets dominated by non-networking equipment are strongly discouraged. Proposals may include nominal configurations for a Data Transfer Node (DTN) as part of their Science DMZ designs; however, the DTN component should be less than 15% of the overall budget. Compute resources should not be included in the budget unless they are an integrated component of the DTN platform. See areas (4) and (5) below for funding opportunities in campus and regional cluster computing.

Proposals are encouraged to describe project efforts to provide training and support for users.

Proposals are encouraged to engage community knowledge and expertise for relevant technical areas of proposal development. In addressing relevant security considerations in the proposed design, proposals are encouraged to reference the Energy Science Network's (ESnet) design guidance for the Science DMZ, including this element: "Security policies and enforcement mechanisms that are tailored for high performance science environments." ESnet provides more detailed guidance on security considerations in the design of the Science DMZ at: http://fasterdata.es.net/science-dmz/science-dmz-security/. In addressing networking equipment choices and configurations matched for high-performance R&E networking environments, proposals are encouraged to leverage objective community expertise and experience available from the NSF-funded EPOC project at: https://epoc.global/cc/.

Proposals are expected to describe an approach to end-to-end network performance measurement based on the PerfSonar framework with associated tool installation and use; proposals may describe an alternative approach to PerfSonar with sufficient justification.

Proposers are strongly encouraged to engage with their relevant state or regional research and education optical network entity. Most of these entities are members of a national organization called Quilt and can be found here: http://thequilt.net/.

Proposers are encouraged to reference the following community website for more information on PerfSonar: http://fasterdata.es.net/performance-testing/perfsonar/.

An award in this program area is not the appropriate mechanism to provide support for individual faculty research projects. Requests for support of such projects should be directed to NSF's research grant programs.

Additional proposal preparation guidance for this area can be found in Section V.A. Proposal Preparation Instructions

Only Institutions of Higher Education are eligible to submit proposals in this program area. Awardees in this area are not eligible to submit a proposal(s) to this area again for 5 years from the previous award start date. Any proposal received from an organization having already received an award in this area within 5 years will be returned without review.

Proposals in this area are required to have titles that begin with "CC* Networking Infrastructure:" followed by the title of the project.

Summary of area (1) requirements:

Proposals are required to:

present a complete technical solution, with complete equipment specifications. Full equipment quotes are required and should be provided as Supplementary Documentation.
address scientific and engineering projects and their research needs and must include application drivers that require network engineering or upgrades of their existing infrastructure.
present project specific end-to-end scenarios for data movement, distributed computing, and other end-to-end services driving the networking upgrade.
include a summary table of the science drivers and their network requirements in the Project Description.
include a Project Plan addressing clear project goals and milestones resulting in a working system in the target environment in the Project Description.
document explicit partnerships or collaborations with the campus IT/networking organization, as well as one or more domain scientists, research groups, and educators in need of the new network capabilities.
document in coordination with the institution’s campus IT or CIO organization any budget request for professional services, such as IT staff support.
include a network management plan addressing responsibilities, support, and roles in the Project Description.
address campus infrastructure residing within the U.S.
include a network diagram of the proposed network upgrades.
include a Campus CI plan as a Supplementary Document, limited to no more than 5 pages (see Section II. Program-wide Criteria above for more information).
be submitted by an Institution of Higher Education. Current and previous awardees in this area within the last 5 years are not eligible to apply to this area.
have titles that begin with "CC* Networking Infrastructure:" followed by the title of the project.

(2) Regional Connectivity for Small Institutions of Higher Education

This area supports broadening participation and significantly widening the set of institutions connected to the regional and national research and education network fabric. This area specifically targets groups of smaller institutions with fundamental challenges in networking infrastructure and resources. This area supports increased research and education (R&E) network connectivity across smaller institutions coordinated and led by a Regional Optical Network (RON) or a leadership institution in R&E networking in the region. This area represents an opportunity as well for potential collaborations between EPSCoR and non-EPSCoR jurisdictions.

This area solicits proposals led by established regional and state R&E data networks and data network-based consortia. Example entities are listed as members of the national regional networks consortium called the Quilt (see https://www.thequilt.net/about-us/the-quilt-participants/). For areas of the US without a state or regional level coordinating entity and associated structure and network infrastructure, proposals will be accepted from self-declared leadership universities. An institution may also lead a proposal in regions with an established RON with documented coordination with the RON.

Proposals are required to address campus networking needs spanning multiple under-resourced institutions. Proposals addressing a single institution are not allowed to submit to this area and will be returned without review. Proposals may choose to apply an alternative design framework to the conventional single institution context in Area (1) and consider an aggregation model where some or all associated resources and services (e.g., Science DMZ) are centralized at a regional level.

Proposals in this area may be of particular interest to under-resourced institutions, where a partnership among multiple institutions within a jurisdiction or region may facilitate needed advances in cyber-connectivity. Additional resources for building regional STEM research and education networking may be found at the Quilt website (https://www.thequilt.net).

Proposals submitted to this area must address scientific research and education needs driving the proposed improvements in R&E networking connectivity on campus and/or externally.

Proposals may focus on upgrading an institution’s connectivity to the national research and education community and/or point to a need to redesign their campus network to better support academic data flows, such as the Science DMZ approach (see http://fasterdata.es.net/science-dmz/ for more information). Connectivity solutions between R&E buildings and sites are also in scope. Proposals are encouraged to leverage objective community expertise and experience in high-performance networking equipment and configurations available from the NSF-funded EPOC project at: https://epoc.global/cc/.

Proposals in this area should focus on supporting their institutions' science research and education needs and aspirations and discuss how these needs and aspirations translate to the need for greater connectedness and investment in network capacity. Institutions whose missions are primarily education-focused may choose to present their scientific needs in the context of network-enabled education activities and distance education. Proposals are encouraged to discuss research and education drivers with specific descriptions of these drivers. Access to research and education resources external to the campus, including cloud computing resources, is also within scope.

Proposals may wish to consider the application of new wireless technologies as an element of their engineering approach to network-based challenges in enabling scientific research and education—this may include, for example, multi-gigabit or environment-constrained technologies to connect campuses in rural areas, or existing campus networks to new instrumentation, resources, or communities relevant to the proposing institution. Note that any wireless solution proposed should address research and education needs as the singular priority, as opposed to a general campus wireless network.

Proposals in this area are required to present a complete technical solution, with complete equipment specifications. Full equipment quotes are required and should be provided as Supplementary Documentation.

Proposals are expected to address coordination activities with the participating small institutions by planning for one or more meeting events starting in year 1.

Proposals may include equipment and resources targeted for the state or regional network infrastructure. It is expected that such investments will be justified in the proposal in the context of needed improvements at the state and regional aggregation level in order to support the target institutions’ external connectivity regionally, nationally, and globally for enabling R&E collaborations, as well as lack of alternate funding sources.

The lead proposing entity is expected to be experienced in high-performance R&E networking and to be well-resourced and capable of actively working with the participating institutions on designing and implementing the proposed networking improvements. The partnering institutions’ engagement activities may be supported in the proposal and may be included as subawards.

Proposals will be evaluated mainly on the strength of the science research and education use cases presented, quantification of those use cases, and how the use cases relate to the proposed networking upgrades. These use cases may be education focused. Proposals will also be evaluated on the strength of institutional partnerships as they are expected to play a central role in developing and implementing the eventual network upgrades.

Proposals are required to provide a summary table of the science drivers and their network requirements in the Project Description. These requirements may be specified in terms of throughput ranges or as part of a composition or workflow profile for repeating cycles of scientific data movement.

Proposals are required to include, in the Project Description, a conceptual or functional network diagram of the proposed network upgrades and are encouraged to include the context of end system and user connectivity. Proposals are encouraged to document current utilization in the context of the proposed upgrades.

Proposals must include, in the Project Description, a project plan addressing clear goals and milestones resulting in a working system in the target environment. The project plan should include the role of a Project Manager function with duties reflecting the coordination challenges of multi-institutional physical networking upgrades. Proposals are encouraged to address end-to-end networking performance in considering metrics of success.

Proposals are required to include, in the Project Description, a network management plan addressing responsibilities, support, and roles. The plan should spell out how science data flows will be supported.

Target environments must be campus infrastructure residing within the U.S.

Proposals are required to include a network diagram of the proposed network upgrades. Proposals missing a network diagram in the Project Description will be returned without review. Proposals are strongly encouraged to include detailed and legible campus network diagrams for each participating institution “before” and “after” the proposed efforts showing end user connectivity. These diagrams may be included as Supplementary Documents.

All proposals in this area must document explicit partnerships or collaborations with the participating campus’ IT/networking organizations, as well as one or more domain scientists, research groups, and educators in need of the new network capabilities. Partnership documentation from personnel not included in the proposal as PI, coPI, or Senior Personnel should be in the form of a letter of collaboration located in the Supplementary Documents section of the proposal.

Proposals are encouraged to describe an approach to end-to-end network performance measurement based on the PerfSonar framework with associated tool installation and use; proposals may describe an alternative approach to PerfSonar with sufficient justification. Proposers are encouraged to reference the following community website for more information on PerfSonar: http://fasterdata.es.net/performance-testing/perfsonar/.

Any budget request for professional services at the campus level, such as IT staff support, must be documented in coordination with the institutions’ campus IT or CIO organizations. The proposing entity may choose to include technical staff support required to carry out the work.

Budgets are expected to reflect network-based upgrades. Proposals with budgets dominated by non-networking equipment are strongly discouraged. Proposals may include nominal configurations for a Data Transfer Node (DTN) as part of their Science DMZ designs; however, the DTN component should be less than 15% of the overall budget. Compute resources should not be included in the budget unless they are an integrated component of the DTN platform. See areas (4) and (5) below for funding opportunities in campus and regional cluster computing.

Proposals are encouraged to document current utilization in the context of the proposed upgrades.

If a proposal chooses to discuss design of a proposed Science DMZ, NSF encourages adoption of guidance found on the ESnet website as referenced above.

Proposals are encouraged to engage community knowledge and expertise for relevant technical areas of proposal development. In addressing relevant security considerations in the proposed design, proposals are encouraged to reference ESnet’s design guidance for the Science DMZ, including this element: "Security policies and enforcement mechanisms that are tailored for high performance science environments." ESnet provides more detailed guidance on security considerations in the design of the Science DMZ at: http://fasterdata.es.net/science-dmz/science-dmz-security/. In addressing networking equipment choices and configurations matched for high-performance R&E networking environments, proposals are encouraged to leverage objective community expertise and experience available from the NSF-funded EPOC project at: https://epoc.global/cc/.

A letter of support from a campus leader at each participating campus is encouraged and should address sustainability and commitment from each participating institution.

An award in this program area is not the appropriate mechanism to provide support for individual faculty research projects. Requests for support of such projects should be directed to NSF's research grant programs.

Additional proposal preparation guidance for this area can be found in Section V.A. Proposal Preparation Instructions.

Institutions of Higher Education and Non-profit, Non-academic Organizations are eligible to submit proposals in this program area.

Proposals in this area are required to have titles that begin with "CC* Regional Networking:" followed by the title of the project.

Summary of area (2) requirements:

Proposals are required to:

address campus networking needs spanning multiple under-resourced institutions.
address scientific research and education needs driving the proposed improvements in R&E networking connectivity on campus and/or externally.
present a complete technical solution, with complete equipment specifications. Full equipment quotes are required and should be provided as supplementary documentation.
provide a summary table of the science drivers and their network requirements in the Project Description.
include a Project Plan addressing clear project goals and milestones resulting in a working system in the target environment in the Project Description.
document explicit partnerships or collaborations with the campus IT/networking organization, as well as one or more domain scientists, research groups, and educators in need of the new network capabilities.
document in coordination with the institution’s campus IT or CIO organization any budget request for professional services, such as IT staff support.
include a network management plan addressing responsibilities, support, and roles in the Project Description.
address campus infrastructure residing within the U.S.
include a Campus CI plan as a Supplementary Document, limited to no more than 5 pages (see Section II. Program-wide Criteria above for more information).
include a network diagram of the proposed network upgrades.
have titles that begin with "CC* Regional Networking:" followed by the title of the project.

(3) Network Integration and Applied Innovation

This program area supports end-to-end network CI through integration of existing and new technologies and applied innovation. The goal is to take advantage of research results, prototypes, and emerging innovations to use them to enable specified researchers in a networking context. Proposals in this area may leverage new and existing investments in network infrastructure, services, and tools by combining or extending capabilities to work as part of the CI environment used by scientific applications and users.

Proposals in this area are expected to reflect innovation in advanced networking. As a result, this area is not appropriate for projects whose costs are dominated by equipment purchases.

Proposals in this area support the development and integration of innovative networking capabilities and network-related software development, and deployment activities resulting in an operational environment prototype are expected to be part of the proposed activities.

A broad range of activities is covered by this area, including but not limited to:

Integration of networking protocols and technologies with science application layer processes and workflows, for instance, for large-scale shared scientific datasets and/or large-scale remote computational resources;
Transition of successful research prototypes in Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and wireless networking technologies to distributed scientific environments and campus infrastructure;
Applications of networking hardware and software developed on NSFFutureCloud facilities (e.g., ChameleonCloud and CloudLab), including the integration of new technologies such as programmable network interfaces;
Networking solutions exploiting virtualization, distributed computing and Software-Defined Infrastructure (SDI), including cloud services and direct campus-to-cloud connections;
Innovative research prototypes integrating programmable packet processing components into campus infrastructure or exploring applications of software-defined data planes in support of high-performance data distribution; and
Network engineering support through the creation and application of new and novel procedures and tools and network measurement and monitoring software for solving end-to-end network performance issues, especially for dynamically constructed network services.

Additionally, proposals are encouraged to perform experimental deployment, protocol prototyping and testing, and evaluation using FABRIC (https://www.fabric-testbed.net). FABRIC is an NSF-funded nationwide next-generation network testbed comprising novel extensible network elements equipped with compute and storage capabilities located throughout the network, interconnected by high-speed dedicated optical links. FABRIC’s programmability combined with high-fidelity measurement capabilities provides a compelling research infrastructure that supports applied network research. Using such a testbed, for example, a researcher could conduct edge-core-cloud evaluations.

Proposals in this area must identify, in the Project Description, one or more supported science or engineering research projects or applications and describe how the proposed network integration activities will support those projects, particularly in the context of addressing data movement, throughput, and predictable performance end-to-end.

Where appropriate, proposals are encouraged to document explicit partnerships or collaborations with the campus IT/networking organization. Graduate students are expected to be involved and supported in conducting proposed activities for this program area.

Proposals in this area must include, in the Project Description, a project plan addressing clear project goals and milestones resulting in a working system in the target environment. Proposals must define base metrics relevant to the proposal goals and address measurement and evaluation of the resulting system. Any software development under proposed activities must be made available under an open source license.

Additional proposal preparation guidance for this area can be found in Section V.A. Proposal Preparation Instructions.

Only Institutions of Higher Education are eligible to submit proposals in this program area.

Proposals in this area require titles that begin with "CC* Integration-Small": for proposed budgets of up to $500,000 or "CC* Integration-Large:" for proposed budgets of between $500,001 and $1,000,000, followed by the title of the project.

Summary of area (3) requirements:

Proposals are required to:

identify, in the Project Description, one or more supported science or engineering research projects or applications and describe how the proposed network integration and applied innovation activities will support those projects.
involve and support graduate students where appropriate in conducting proposed activities.
include, in the Project Description, a Project Plan addressing clear project goals and milestones resulting in a working system in the target environment.
define base metrics relevant to the proposal goals and address measurement and evaluation of the resulting system.
make available under an open source license any software development under proposed activities.
include a Campus CI plan as a Supplementary Document, limited to no more than 5 pages (see Section II. Program-wide Criteria above for more information).
be submitted by an Institution of Higher Education.
have titles that begin with "CC* Integration-Small": for proposed budgets of up to $500,000 or "CC* Integration-Large:" for proposed budgets of between $500,001 and $1,000,000, followed by the title of the project.

(4) Campus Computing and the Computing Continuum

Local campus computing resources have emerged as an important aggregated and shared layer of scientific computing, as evidenced by the growth in the Open Science Grid (OSG), an NSF-supported distributed scientific computing fabric of shared computing clusters across more than 100 institutions that delivered 2.4 billion CPU hours of scientific computing in calendar year 2019. In 2020, NSF made a new five-year award to continue and enhance OSG under the Partnership to Advance Throughput Computing (PATh) project.

This program area promotes coordinated approaches in scientific computing at the campus level and invests in the seeding of new and shared computing resources at the campus level through investments in capacity computing in campus clusters. The program area promotes a coordinated approach incentivizing multi-campus and national resource sharing.

It is expected that the campus-wide computing needs are addressed in the proposal; a proposal focusing on a single science domain or project use will not be considered for funding.

All proposals submitted to this area must address:

Scientific and engineering projects and their research and education computing needs, describing project-specific scenarios for scientific computing tied to the proposed computing resources;
Features, capabilities, and software platforms representing the proposed computing resources; and
Scientific computing codes expected to run on the resources.

All proposals should consider expected outcomes and explain the compelling need for proposed computing resource in light of the current state of available computing resources and the expected enabling benefits of the proposed resources to the identified science drivers and applications.

NSF encourages proposals in this program area from under-resourced institutions and strong preference will be given to proposals demonstrating a compelling need for access to campus/cloud resources, including institutions lacking necessary computing and storage resources on campus. Under-resourced institutions in need of technical direction/expertise during their proposal development are encouraged to engage the NSF-funded PATh project at: https://path-cc.io.

The proposal may request funding for the acquisition of a shared, high-performance network-connected compute resource available to scientific computing users on campus and outside of campus.

Proposals must include in the Project Description:

A summary table of the science drivers and their computing environments—these requirements should be specified in clear terms reflecting a specific understanding of the required computing resources and environment, for example, CPU/GPU type, compute job profile parameter ranges, core count ranges per job, times to completion or as part of a composition or scientific workflow profile;
The platform architecture specifying cluster components, including compute node type and count, per-node memory, interconnect fabric, storage, and open-source software/platform;
An open source-based approach to cluster monitoring, measurement, management, and instrumentation;
A sustainability plan addressing the institution’s commitment to providing an ongoing level of sustained access to computational resources;
A High-Performance Network Connectivity and Specification—see below for more details; and
A description of the cluster as a Shared Resource Intra-campus and Inter-campus—see below for more details.

Proposals are encouraged to consider open-source virtualization technologies.

Inclusion of itemized vendor quotes accompanying the budget is required for all proposals in this program area.

High-Performance Network Connectivity and Specification: Proposals must describe the network connectivity of the proposed computing resource, both intra-campus [for example, the campus network path(s) connecting the resource with the researchers and driving science applications on campus], and inter-campus (for example, showing the network path connecting with the regional exchange point or Internet2). Proposals should include a network diagram showing the connected topology of the proposed cluster resource. Proposals should include in their plans the deployment of a PerfSonar based network performance measurement capability to initially measure achievable end-to-end network performance for scientific data flows between the resource and relevant end points of researchers.

The Cluster as a Shared Resource Intra-campus and Inter-campus: Proposals should describe (1) their approach to sharing the proposed computing resource across the science drivers and researchers at their institution; (2) how the resource will be accessed by external research groups; and (3) how the resource is coordinated with external resources allowing the institution’s researchers to seamlessly access computing resources at other campuses, regional and national computing resources, and/or production cloud resources, if appropriate.

Proposals are required to commit to a minimum of 20% shared time on the cluster and describe their approach to making the cluster available as a shared resource external to the campus, with access and authorization according to local administrative policy. Conversely, the proposal should describe the approach to providing on-demand access to additional external computing resources for its targeted on-campus users and projects. One possible approach to implementing such a federated distributed computing solution is joining a multi-campus or national federated system such as the Open Science Grid. Whatever opportunistic, federated, scalable, distributed computing platform is chosen, the proposal is expected to justify the choice by including a discussion on the shared platform’s track record in the community, its current scientific computing production capability, and its scaling properties. Proposals are encouraged to include a letter of collaboration from the selected platform and describe how they will track and report on meeting the 20% extramural usage goal each year.

The proposal is expected to document campus IT and research leadership commitment to operations and maintenance (O&M). Under resourced institutions are allowed to request staffing support to configure, operate, and support data management and access of the storage resource at up to 25% of the overall budget request. Staffing support may also include training and user on boarding activities to broaden adoption and use on campus. Costs associated with software license fees are not allowed.

NSF views this area as an opportunity, especially for under-resourced institutions, to develop a scientific computing strategy, describe it in the required CI plan, and consider how the proposed resource plays into that strategy.

Campus computing solutions that integrate cloud services are particularly encouraged.

Awards in this program area are expected to work cooperatively with ACCESS award activities and services (see https://access-ci.org) towards a more seamless integration and leverage of CI resources for researchers, educators, and students.

Additional proposal preparation guidance for this area can be found in Section V.A. Proposal Preparation Instructions.

Only Institutions of Higher Education are eligible to submit proposals in this program area. Awardees in this area are not eligible to submit a proposal(s) to this area again for 5 years from the previous award start date. Any proposal received from an organization having already received an award in this area within 5 years will be returned without review.

Proposals in this area require titles that begin with "CC* Campus Compute:" followed by the title of the project.

Summary of area (4) requirements:

Proposals are required to:

address scientific and engineering projects and their research and education computing needs, describing project-specific scenarios for scientific computing tied to the proposed computing resources.
address features, capabilities, and software platforms representing the proposed computing resources.
address scientific computing codes expected to run on the resources.
include a summary table of the science drivers and their computing environments. These requirements should be specified in clear terms reflecting a specific understanding of the required computing resources and environment (for example, CPU/GPU type, compute job profile parameter ranges, core count ranges per job, times to completion), or as part of a composition or scientific workflow profile.
describe the platform architecture specifying cluster components, including compute node type and count, per-node memory, interconnect fabric, storage, and open-source software/platform.
describe an open source-based approach to cluster monitoring, measurement, management, and instrumentation.
describe a sustainability plan addressing the institution's commitment to providing an ongoing level of sustained access to computational resources.
describe how the cluster is connected via high-performance network connectivity, including a network topology showing how the cluster is connected to the campus network.
provide a description of the cluster as a shared resource intra-campus and inter-campus, with 20% or more of the cycles committed to extramural scientific uses.
include complete itemized vendor quotes accompanying the budget.
include a Campus CI plan as a Supplementary Document, limited to no more than 5 pages (see Section II. Program-wide Criteria above for more information).
be submitted by an Institution of Higher Education are eligible to submit proposals in this program area.
have titles that begin with "CC* Campus Compute:" followed by the title of the project.

(5) Regional Computing

Program area five promotes coordinated approaches in scientific computing at the regional level through investments in computing clusters serving scientific computing needs spanning a state’s or region’s small and under resourced institutions.

This area solicits proposals led by regional and state research and education leadership entities and universities. This area represents an opportunity as well for potential collaborations between EPSCoR and non-EPSCoR jurisdictions.

It is expected that multi campus-wide computing needs are addressed in the proposal; a proposal focusing on a single campus, a single science domain or a single project use will not be considered for funding. It is expected that the resources funded by this track will be primarily used by the targeted small and under resourced institutions.

All proposals submitted to this area must address:

Scientific and engineering projects and their research and education computing needs, describing project-specific scenarios for scientific computing tied to the proposed computing resources;
Features, capabilities, and software platforms representing the proposed computing resources;
Scientific computing codes expected to run on the resources; and
Approaches/mechanisms that will be used to ensure fair and equitable use of the resources by the targeted small and under resourced institutions.

All proposals should consider expected outcomes and explain the compelling need for proposed computing resource in the context of the current state of available computing resources and the expected benefits provided by the proposed resources to the identified science drivers and applications.

The proposal may request funding for the acquisition of a shared, high-performance network-connected compute resource available to scientific computing users across a defined set of campuses. Storage is one component of an integrated compute cluster - A storage component is allowed for up to 25% of the overall budget request. Staffing required to configure and operate the shared resource is an acceptable component of the budget for up to 25% of the overall budget request. The proposal is expected to document long term commitment to operations and maintenance (O&M) past the lifetime of the award - or describe the strategy for sustaining availability of the resource. Costs associated with software license fees are not allowed.

Proposals must include in the Project Description:

A summary table of the science drivers and their computing environments—these requirements should be specified in clear terms reflecting a specific understanding of the required computing resources and environment, for example, CPU/GPU type, compute job profile parameter ranges, core count ranges per job, times to completion or as part of a composition or scientific workflow profile;
The platform architecture specifying cluster components, including compute node type and count, per-node memory, interconnect fabric, storage, and open-source software/platform;
An open source-based approach to cluster monitoring, measurement, management, and instrumentation;
A sustainability plan addressing the institution’s commitment to providing an ongoing level of sustained access to computational resources;
A High-Performance Network Connectivity and Specification—see below for more details; and
A description of the cluster as an Inter-campus - see below for more details.

Proposals are encouraged to consider open-source virtualization technologies.

Inclusion of itemized vendor quotes accompanying the budget is required for all proposals in this program area.

High-Performance Network Connectivity and Specification: Proposals must describe the network connectivity of the proposed computing resource, and how it is connected to users across multiple campuses. Proposals should include a network diagram showing the connected topology of the proposed cluster resource. Proposals should include in their plans the deployment of a PerfSonar based network performance measurement capability to initially measure achievable end-to-end network performance for scientific data flows between the resource and relevant end points of researchers.

The Cluster as a Shared Resource Inter-campus: Proposals should describe (1) their approach to sharing the proposed computing resource in a fair and equitable manner across the science drivers and researchers across the identified small and under resourced institutions; (2) how the resource will be accessed by research groups across multiple institutions; and (3) how the resource is coordinated with other external resources allowing the institutions’ researchers to seamlessly access computing resources at other sites and campuses, regional and national computing resources, and/or production cloud resources, if appropriate.

Proposals are required to commit to a minimum of 20% shared time on the cluster and describe their approach to making the cluster available as a shared resource external to the state/region and the set of institutions being primarily served. Proposals are strongly encouraged to address this requirement by joining the Partnerships to Advance Throughput Computing (PATh) campus federation ( ,https://path-cc.io) and adopting an appropriate subset of PATh services to make the cluster available to researchers on a national scale.

Awards in this program area are expected to work cooperatively with ACCESS award activities and services (see https://path-cc.io) towards a more seamless integration and leverage of CI resources for researchers, educators, and students.

Tangible metrics addressing measures of success should be included.

Additional proposal preparation guidance for this area can be found in Section V.A. Proposal Preparation Instructions.

Institutions of Higher Education and Non-profit, Non-academic Organizations are eligible to submit proposals in this program area.

Proposals in this area are required to have titles that begin with "CC* Regional Computing:" followed by the title of the project.

Summary of Area (5) proposal requirements:

Proposals are required to:

address scientific and engineering projects and their research and education computing needs at targeted small and under resourced institutions, describing project-specific scenarios for scientific computing tied to the proposed computing resources.
address features, capabilities, and software platforms representing the proposed computing resources.
address scientific computing codes expected to run on the resources.
include a summary table of the science drivers and their computing environments. These requirements should be specified in clear terms reflecting a specific understanding of the required computing resources and environment (for example, CPU/GPU type, compute job profile parameter ranges, core count ranges per job, times to completion), or as part of a composition or scientific workflow profile.
describe the platform architecture specifying cluster components, including compute node type and count, per-node memory, interconnect fabric, storage, and open-source software/platform.
describe an open source-based approach to cluster monitoring, measurement, management, and instrumentation.
describe a sustainability plan addressing the institution's commitment to providing an ongoing level of sustained access to computational resources.
describe how the cluster is connected via high-performance network connectivity, including a network topology showing how the cluster is connected to the campus network.
provide a description of the cluster as a shared resource intra-campus and inter-campus, with 20% or more of the cycles committed to extramural scientific uses.
include complete itemized vendor quotes with the budget.
include a Campus CI plan as a Supplementary Document, limited to no more than 5 pages (see Section II. Program-wide Criteria above for more information).
be submitted by Institutions of Higher Education or Non-profit, Non-academic Organizations.
have titles that begin with "CC* Regional Computing:" followed by the title of the project.

(6) Data Storage

A significant challenge, if not bottleneck, to CI-enabled research and education is the limited access to data storage and associated services across campuses. While cloud services continue to provide data services for parts of the research community, data restrictions on some data sets combined with expensive egress data movement charges do not allow this to be a universal solution. Meanwhile, the ability of research projects across disciplines to gather ever more data and increased tools to analyze data put increasing pressure on storage and management.

This program area promotes coordinated approaches in scientific storage and data management at the campus level and incentivizes multi-campus and national resource sharing. Awards in this area reflect NSF principles and guidance in the community’s stewardship of data from NSF funded research, and particularly aim at supporting the data lifecycle. As described below for the Data Management Plan, proposals are expected to adhere to the findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) principles and guidance from NSF as described in the Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) on Effective Practices for Data: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf19069

This program area supports campus data storage needs for scientific data. Campuses may request up to $500,000 in data storage and associated hardware.

It is expected that campus-wide storage needs are addressed in the proposal; a proposal focusing on a single science domain or project use will not be considered for funding.

All proposals in this program area must address:

Scientific and engineering projects and their research and education storage needs, describing project-specific scenarios for scientific data generation, storage, and management;
Features, capabilities, and software platforms representing the proposed storage resources and services; and
Plans to manage the resource, data sets, and usage while ensuring adherence to FAIR principles and equitable access.

All proposals should consider expected outcomes and explain the compelling need for proposed storage capacity and capability in light of the current state of available storage resources and the expected enabling benefits of the proposed resources to the identified science drivers and applications.

NSF encourages proposals in this program area from under-resourced institutions and strong preference will be given to proposals demonstrating a compelling need for access to data storage resources, including institutions lacking necessary data storage resources on campus.

The proposal may request funding for the acquisition of a shared, high-performance network-connected data storage resource available to scientific users on campus and outside of campus.

No software license fees are allowed. Proposals are expected to describe full open source-based configurations and solutions. Under-resourced institutions may opt out of this requirement, and may include commercial software license costs for the data storage management platform only - such proposals are expected to provide clear evidence of institutional commitment to supporting those costs beyond the two- year award duration.

Proposals must include in the Project Description:

A summary table of the science drivers and their data storage environments - these requirements should be specified in clear terms reflecting a specific understanding of the required storage resources and environment, for example, storage type, data movement characteristics and data curation approach as part of a scientific workflow profile;
The platform architecture and open-source software/platform, with under-resourced institutions allowed to include commercial software license fees for only the storage management platform;
An open source-based approach to storage system monitoring, measurement, management, and instrumentation;
A sustainability plan addressing the institution's commitment to providing an ongoing level of sustained access to storage resources;
High-Performance Network Connectivity and Specification - see below for more details; and
A description of the storage system as a Shared Resource Intra-campus and Inter-campus - see below for more details

itemized vendor quotes as part of the budget are required for all proposals in this program area.

High-Performance Network Connectivity and Specification: Proposals must describe the network connectivity of the proposed storage resource, both intra-campus (for example, the campus network path(s) connecting the resource with the researchers and driving science applications on campus), and inter-campus (for example, showing the network path connecting with the regional exchange point or Internet2). Proposals should include a network diagram showing the connected topology of the proposed cluster resource. Proposals should include in their plans the deployment of a PerfSonar based network performance measurement capability to initially measure achievable end-to-end network performance for scientific data flows between the resource and relevant end points of researchers.

The Storage system as a Shared Resource Intra-campus and Inter-campus: Interoperability is required with a national and federated data sharing fabric such as PATh/OSDF (see: <www.opensciencegrid.org/about/osdf>). At least 20% of the disk/storage space on the proposed storage system must be made available as part of the chosen federated data sharing fabric. Proposals should describe the interaction with data sharing fabric beyond simply naming it.

Staffing required to configure, operate, and support data management and access of the storage resource is an acceptable component of the budget at up to 25% of the overall budget request. Staff associated with training and facilitating adoption, integration, and use of the resource on campus may be included. Staff and user training costs may extend to the open source software platforms and federated data fabric sharing platform.

Management of the system and planned data sets should be discussed in the proposal and may also be addressed as part of the Data Management Plan (see below).

Tangible metrics addressing measures of success should be included.

Proposals should discuss the storage system in the larger context of campus CI and a vision inclusive of supporting shared resources and computing at the campus level.

Any resources requested must be “on premises” which may include placement at an off-campus data center with a pre-existing role in campus research computing and storage. For data archival, burst, or other purposes, proposals may include a component cost associated with cloud storage and storage services.

A data management approach and plan must be documented and provided as a supplementary document of no more than 2 pages. The data management plan should include the campus approach to data lifecycle management, data sharing, and adherence to the FAIR principles. Proposals are strongly encouraged to reference NSF’s DCL on Effective Practices for Data: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf19069

Campuses with a scienceDMZ are expected to address its use in the proposal.

Proposals should also address the long-term plan for archival storage and sustainability. Proposals may address these topics in the Project Description, Data Management Plan, or the Campus CI Plan.

Only Institutions of Higher Education are eligible to submit proposals in this program area. Awardees in this area are not eligible to submit a proposal(s) to this area again for 5 years from the previous award start date. Any proposal received from an organization having already received an award in this area within 5 years will be returned without review.

Proposals in this area are required to have titles that begin with "CC* Data Storage:" followed by the title of the project.

Summary of area (6) proposal requirements:

Proposals are required to:

address scientific and engineering projects and their research and education storage needs, describing project-specific scenarios for scientific data generation, storage, and management.
address features, capabilities, and software platforms representing the proposed storage resources and services.
address plans to manage the resource, data sets, and usage while ensuring adherence to FAIR principles and equitable access.
include a summary table of the science drivers and their data storage environments.
describe the platform architecture and open-source software/platform.
describe an open source-based approach to storage system monitoring, measurement, management, and instrumentation.
include a sustainability plan addressing the institution's commitment to providing an ongoing level of sustained access to storage resources.
describe how the data storage system is connected via high performance network connectivity, including a network topology showing how the system is connected to the campus network.
include complete itemized vendor quotes with the budget.
describe the storage system as a shared resource intra-campus and inter-campus via interoperability with a national and federated data sharing fabric, with 20% or more of the disk/storage space committed to extramural scientific uses.
deploy the system "on premise" which may include placement at an off-campus data center with a pre-existing role in campus research computing and storage.
document a data management approach and plan, included as a supplementary document of no more than 3 pages.
include a Campus CI plan as a Supplementary Document, limited to no more than 5 pages (see Section II. Program-wide Criteria above for more information).
have titles that begin with "CC* Data Storage:" followed by the title of the project.
be submitted by an Institution of Higher Education.

(7) Planning Grants and CI-Research Alignment

For institutions, groups of institutions, and other entities, the task of assembling a complete CC* proposal can be a daunting challenge. Previous CC* solicitations offered, in the area supporting network connectivity for small institutions, the opportunity to develop a complete technical solution during the first year of a two-year award, building on an overall design for improved campus networking required in the corresponding proposal. That “design” element no longer exists in area (2), and now requires coordination among groups of under-resourced institutions. CC* PI teams may require planning and effort related to their proposal ideas, for example, for compiling and understanding the science environments, applications and drivers motivating the proposed CI investments.

Program Area 7 supports Planning Grants for PIs and teams requiring resources and time to coordinate and develop an approach to CC*-related activities. Proposals in this area will be reviewed and evaluated the same as other CC* proposals. Planning proposals should define a clear set of goals and a set of coordination and planning activities to meet those goals. Equipment costs are not allowed as part of a Planning Grant, and proposed costs are expected to include support for community coordination and planning activities. Planning proposals are welcome for areas (1), (2), (4), (5) and (6) in CC* and are limited to $100,000 for 1 year.

Please note that the Planning Grant proposals described in this solicitation are a solicitation-specific project category and are separate and distinct from the type of proposal described in Chapter II.F.1 of the PAPPG. When preparing a Planning Grant proposal in response to this solicitation, the “Research” type of proposal should be selected in the proposal preparation module in Research.gov or Grants.gov.

This area also supports CI-Research Alignment (CIRA) activities. A CIRA award provides opportunities to foster new collaborations, including international partnerships, and address interdisciplinary topics. Innovative ideas for implementing novel networking strategies, collaborative technologies, training, broadening participation, and development of community standards for data and meta-data are especially encouraged. CIRA awards do not support primary research. A CIRA proposal is expected to develop a comprehensive CI strategy encompassing a campus, multiple campuses, or a state or regional research and education network entity. The CIRA activity may encompass planning for a future CC* proposal, but goes beyond a specific campus network design, assessment of campus computing needs, or compilation of demanding science drivers to address integrated CI planning and scoping across the relevant scientific communities on campus, across multiple campuses, state-wide, or regionally. Proposals in this area will be reviewed and evaluated like all other CC* proposals. CIRA proposals should define a clear set of goals and a set of coordination and planning activities to meet those goals. Equipment costs are not allowed in this program area, and proposed costs are expected to request community coordination and planning activities. CIRA proposals are limited to $200,000 for up to 2 years.

A Campus CI plan is not required for this program area of CC*.

Institutions of Higher Education and Nonprofit, Non-academic Organizations are eligible to submit proposals in this program area.

Proposals for Planning Grants are required to have titles that begin with "CC* Planning:" followed by the title of the project.

Proposals for CI-Research Alignment are required to have titles that begin with "CC* CIRA:" followed by the title of the project.

Summary of area (7) requirements:

Equipment costs are not allowed in this program area.
Proposals for Planning Grants are limited to $100,000 and required to have titles that begin with "CC* Planning:" followed by the title of the project.
Proposals for CI-Research Alignment are limited to $200,000 and required to have titles that begin with "CC* CIRA:" followed by the title of the project.

III. Award Information

Approximately $15 million-$20 million will be made available in FY23 to support 30-53 awards, subject to the availability of funds.

IV. Eligibility Information

Who May Submit Proposals:

Who May Serve as PI:

Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization:

Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or co-PI:

Additional Eligibility Info:

V. Proposal Preparation And Submission Instructions

A. Proposal Preparation Instructions

Full Proposal Preparation Instructions: Proposers may opt to submit proposals in response to this Program Solicitation via Research.gov or Grants.gov.

Full Proposals submitted via Research.gov: Proposals submitted in response to this program solicitation should be prepared and submitted in accordance with the general guidelines contained in the NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG). The complete text of the PAPPG is available electronically on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg. Paper copies of the PAPPG may be obtained from the NSF Publications Clearinghouse, telephone (703) 292-8134 or by e-mail from nsfpubs@nsf.gov. The Prepare New Proposal setup will prompt you for the program solicitation number.
Full proposals submitted via Grants.gov: Proposals submitted in response to this program solicitation via Grants.gov should be prepared and submitted in accordance with the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide: A Guide for the Preparation and Submission of NSF Applications via Grants.gov. The complete text of the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide is available on the Grants.gov website and on the NSF website at: (https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=grantsgovguide). To obtain copies of the Application Guide and Application Forms Package, click on the Apply tab on the Grants.gov site, then click on the Apply Step 1: Download a Grant Application Package and Application Instructions link and enter the funding opportunity number, (the program solicitation number without the NSF prefix) and press the Download Package button. Paper copies of the Grants.gov Application Guide also may be obtained from the NSF Publications Clearinghouse, telephone (703) 292-8134 or by e-mail from nsfpubs@nsf.gov.

See PAPPG Chapter II.D.2 for guidance on the required sections of a full research proposal submitted to NSF. Please note that the proposal preparation instructions provided in this program solicitation may deviate from the PAPPG instructions.

Proposals are encouraged to review the NSF/CISE Data Management Guidance for CISE Proposals and Awards available at https://www.nsf.gov/cise/cise_dmp.jsp.

For area (1) Data-Driven Networking Infrastructure for the Campus and Researcher Proposals:

Proposals in this area require titles that begin with "CC* Networking Infrastructure:" followed by the title of the project.