Defense Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DEPSCoR)
FOA-AFRL-AFOSR-2020-0004
Grants.gov  https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=326765
Required white papers due 21 September 2020.

This funding opportunity aims to create basic research collaborations between a pair of researchers, namely 1) Applicant/Principal Investigator (PI), henceforth referred to as Applicant, a full-time faculty member who has never served as a PI on a prior DoD-funded award and 2) Collaborator/co-Principal Investigator (co-PI), henceforth referred to as Collaborator, an investigator who will provide mentorship to the Applicant and has served as a PI on a DoD-funded research award actively between 1 October 2013 and 30 September 2020. This structure is aimed at introducing potential applicants to the DoD’s unique research challenges and its supportive research ecosystem. The website https://discover.dtic.mil/products-services/ is a non-comprehensive repository of government-funded scientific, technical, and engineering information for the DoD. Researchers new to DoD and Applicants are encouraged to visit the site as a starting point for identifying past and present DoD-funded researchers. While each member of the collaboration should be in a tenure-track appointment or tenured at IHE in DEPSCoR-eligible States/Territories, you do not need to be in the same state. Likewise, the Applicant and Collaborator can have appointments at the same IHE. Though this is a collaboration between the Applicant and Collaborator, the Applicant’s IHE will submit the proposal.

The FY20 DEPSCoR competition seeks proposals addressing the following topic areas:

1. Cognitive and Computational Neurosciences
2. Space Science
3. Agile Science of Test and Evaluation
4. Materials with Extreme Properties
5. Propulsion and Energetics
6. Computational Architectures and Visualization
7. Optoelectronics
8. Probability and Statistics
9. Molecular Structure and Dynamics
10. Social and Behavioral Science
11. Biotronics
12. Aerospace Structures and Materials
13. Ocean Acoustics
14. Machine Learning, Reasoning, and Intelligence
15. Power Electronics & Electromagnetism, Adaptive & Machinery Controls and Advanced Machinery Systems