Limited Submission Funding Opportunity: EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Track 4: EPSCoR Research Fellows (RII Track-4)

     The Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) promotes scientific progress nationwide and offers a number of funding tracks for researchers. The EPSCoR RII Track-4 provides opportunities for non-tenured investigators to visit the nation’s premier private, governmental, or academic research centers and build research collaborations.  During these visits, the EPSCoR Research Fellows will have the unique opportunity "to learn new techniques, develop new collaborations or advance existing partnerships, benefit from access to unique equipment and facilities, and/or shift their research toward potentially transformative new directions."  These Fellowship experiences are designed to enhance the Fellows’ research trajectories well beyond the award period.  These Fellowships can also improve the research capacity of their institutions and jurisdictions.  This opportunity is open to non-tenured faculty who have an appointment at an institution of higher education or an early-career career-track appointment at an eligible non-degree-granting institution.

Please work with your institutional research office to meet the limited submission proposal requirements.

Submission Deadline: March 13, 2018 by 5 pm of submitter's local time. 

For more information click on the following link:  NSF EPSCoR Track-4

MAPS Outreach Team Teaches a Lesson on Seed Dispersal to 3rd graders

Teaching students at New Your Elementary

   As part of the RII Track 1 EPSCoR Award, Microbiomes in Aquatic, Plants and Soils across Kansas, Education and Outreach (MAPS), education and outreach initiatives, Dr. Peggy Schultz has designed interactive elementary lessons related to the research.  On December 6, 2017, Dr. Schultz traveled with Ben Kerbs and Rebecca Wagoner, her lab assistants, as well as Tita Soberon, Project Teaching Adviser, to New York Elementary in Lawrence, KS to present a lesson on Seed Dispersal to Mr. John Bode’s third grade class.  The goals of the lesson were to 1) allow students to discover and learn the many ways seeds are dispersed; 2) examine different seeds and their dispersal methods; and 3) understand how animals aid seed dispersal.

Students create and test their seeds

    After a brief introduction on what plants need to live, students played a game of tag simulating how squirrels gather acorns for the winter and what happens to the nuts, or seeds, when they encounter their natural predators. If tagged in the game, students had to stop and dump their acorns at the tagged spot. This represented one way animals disperse seeds.  Back in the classroom, students played a game that involved rolling in feathers to simulate how seeds can be transported in an animal’s fur. Then, Ben and Rebecca led brief small group lessons demonstrating how some real seeds float, fly, explode and roll in order to disperse.  Following the small group discussions, students designed and created their own seed.  Once finished constructing their seed, they tested their creation on ramps, in water and in a breeze to see which method of dispersal worked best.  As the lesson concluded, Mr. Bode led the class discussion to check for understanding and to make connections between the seed dispersal lesson and other science topics the class had studied so far this year.  The students really enjoyed the lesson and hoped that Dr. Schultz and her team would come back again.
     This Seed Dispersal lesson was designed to align with the Kansas 3rd grade Next Generation Science Standards.  As part of the MAPS outreach, Dr. Schultz plans to teach this lesson and others to more 3rd grade classrooms in the spring of 2018.

Education and outreach funding is provided by the Kansas NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Award OIA-1656006 titled: "Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant, and Soil Systems across Kansas." The grant's educational objectives are designed to enhance STEM education in Kansas by supporting activities that will lead to an expanded STEM workforce or prepare a new generation for STEM careers in the areas of aquatic, plant and soil microbiome environments and ecological systems.

MAPS Graduate Student Research Opportunities

    Dr. Amy Burgin, Associate Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies and Associate Scientist, Kansas Biological Survey at the University of Kansas is recruiting graduate students to be a part of a unique research opportunity as part of the Kansas EPSCoR Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant, and Soil Ecosystems Across Kansas (MAPS) Award. Interested students will study the microbiomes of linked aquatic, plant and soil ecosystems that span the pronounced precipitation gradient as well as the hydrologic gradient across Kansas. Dr. Burgin's specific work focuses on" understanding how changes in nutrient loading will alter N cycling rates in rivers and the propensity for harmful algal blooms in reservoirs." This is a team-based science opportunity and interested students can contact Dr. Burgin at: burginam@ku.edu

For more information about this research opportunity go to:

• KU Today
• KState News
• NSF EPSCoR MAPS

Education and outreach funding is provided by the Kansas NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Award OIA-1656006 titled: "Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant, and Soil Systems across Kansas." The grant's educational objectives are designed to enhance STEM education in Kansas by supporting activities that will lead to an expanded STEM workforce or prepare a new generation for STEM careers in the areas of aquatic, plant and soil microbiome environments and ecological systems.

First Award Letter of Intent Submission Deadline Extended

Deadline to Submit Letters of Intent Extended for Kansas NSF EPSCoR

MAPS First Awards 

Related to the current Kansas NSF EPSCoR focus of

microbiomes as broadly construed to be in aquatic, plant and/or soil systems. 

A Research Program for Tenure Track

Faculty Early in their Careers

Submission Deadlines:

Letters of Intent Due by 5:00 pm on Thursday, November 30, 2017

Proposals are still due by 5:00 pm on TUESDAY, January 23, 2018 

2017-2018 First Awards information

Efforts to widely disseminate this opportunity are greatly appreciated. 

*Those that have already submitted an LOI need not re-submit

Education and outreach funding is provided by the Kansas NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Award OIA-1656006 titled: "Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant, and Soil Systems across Kansas."  The grant's educational objectives are designed to enhance STEM education in Kansas by supporting activities that will lead to an expanded STEM workforce or prepare a new generation for STEM careers in the areas of aquatic, plant and soil microbiome environments and ecological systems.

NSF EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program: Track-2 Funding Opportunity

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS 

for

NSF EPSCoR FY 2018 RII Track-2 FEC

This solicitation is now available and remains relatively unchanged from last year.   

Submission Deadlines:

Letter of Intent Due Date(s) (required) (due by 5 p.m. submitter's local time):November 27, 2017

Full Proposal Deadline(s) (due by 5 p.m. submitter's local time):January 26, 2018

    The RII Track-2 FEC seeks to build inter-jurisdictional collaborative teams of EPSCoR investigators to participate in investigator-driven research in scientific focus areas consistent with NSF priorities. Projects must include researchers from at least two RII eligible EPSCoR jurisdictions who without the assistance of the other team and complementary resources would not be in a position to tackle the projects as well or rapidly alone.
    The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) research and education activities should include and integrate a variety of individuals, institutions, sectors and programs to broaden participation throughout the project. Proposals must reflect an integrated comprehensive vision to drive discovery and build sustainable STEM capacity that exemplifies individual, institutional, geographic, and disciplinary diversity with an emphasis on developing a diverse early-career faculty.

The topic for the FY 2018, RII Track-2 FEC proposals is Understanding the relationship between genome and phenome.

The full request for proposals with submission instructions can be downloaded as a PDF here:  

 NSF EPSCoR FY 2018 RII Track-2 FEC 

First Awards - Kansas NSF EPSCoR Funding Opportunity

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS 

for

    FIRST AWARDS

Related to the current Kansas NSF EPSCoR focus of

microbiomes as broadly construed to be in aquatic, plant and/or soil systems. 

A Research Program for Tenure Track

Faculty Early in their Careers

Submission Deadlines:

Letters of Intent Due by 5:00 pm on WEDNESDAY, November 8, 2017.

Proposals Due by 5:00 pm on TUESDAY, January 23, 2018.  

     Kansas NSF EPSCoR helps Kansas build its research capacity and competitiveness in science and technology.  The First Award Program helps early career faculty become competitive for funding from the research directorates at the National Science Foundation by encouraging early career faculty to submit proposals to the NSF (or other federal funding agency) as soon as possible after their first faculty appointment, and by accelerating the pace of their research and the quality of their subsequent proposals. First Awards are intended to be single‐investigator awards to support the PI’s research program at their institution.  The inclusion of Co‐PIs, other senior personnel and sub-awards to other institutions is prohibited.
     Individual tenure track faculty member who are currently untenured at the assistant professor rank at Kansas State University, University of Kansas, Wichita State University, Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Pittsburg State, University or Washburn University and meet the following criteria may apply:

1. Is within the first three years of his/her faculty appointment,  
2. Has not previously received a First Award or similar funding from another EPSCoR or EPSCoR‐like (Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence, COBRE) program in Kansas, and
3. Is not currently nor has previously been a lead Principal Investigator of a research grant funded by a federal agency.

The full request for proposals with submission instructions can be downloaded as a PDF here:  

2017-2018 Kansas EPSCoR First Awards

Education and outreach funding is provided by the Kansas NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Award OIA-1656006 titled: "Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant, and Soil Systems across Kansas."  The grant's educational objectives are designed to enhance STEM education in Kansas by supporting activities that will lead to an expanded STEM workforce or prepare a new generation for STEM careers in the areas of aquatic, plant and soil microbiome environments and ecological systems.

Hays, Kansas Community Connections interviews MAPS Fort Hays State Researcher

      Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at Fort Hays State University and part of the soils systems research team for the Kansas NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Award OIA-1656006 titled: Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant, and Soil Systems across Kansas (MAPS) talked with Mike Cooper, host of Community Connections, in October of 2017 about the MAPS grant award and research.  Community Connections is local TV show in Hays, Kansas, that highlights local news. Dr. Greer discussed what the Kansas NSF EPSCoR MAPS grant is, what the researchers are looking for, and what it means for Fort Hays State University.

To see the full interview, go to Community Connection: Mitch Greer, Dr. Mitch Greer,

Kansas NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Award OIA-1656006 titled: Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant, and Soil Systems across Kansas promotes outreach communications and funds workforce development and educational objectives designed to enhance STEM education in Kansas by supporting activities that will lead to an expanded STEM workforce or prepare a new generation for STEM careers in the areas of aquatic, plant and soil microbiome environments and ecological systems.