The National Science Foundation (NSF) will provide information about two current proposal solicitations funded by the economic stimulus during a webcast to be held on May 28, 2009. The Academic Research Infrastructure program (the ARI-R2 solicitation, NSF 09-562) and the Major Research Instrumentation program (the MRI-R2 solicitation, NSF 09-561) will be discussed. The webcast will be held from 1:00-2:45 pm EDT. Those wishing to participate in the webcast should register in advance at http://www.tvworldwide.com/events/nsf/090528/. The registration site includes an opportunity to submit, by email, questions about the ARI-R2 and MRI-R2 solicitations in advance of the webcast.
Funds for these programs were appropriated through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. Together, these two solicitations are intended to strengthen the nation’s academic research capabilities by providing opportunities to develop or acquire research instrumentation (MRI2-R) and to renovate research facilities (ARI2-R). For the Academic Research Infrastructure solicitation, the deadline for letters of intent is July 1, 2009 and the deadline for full proposals is August 24, 2009.  For the Major Research Instrumentation solicitation, the deadline for full proposals is August 10, 2009. (No letter of intent is required for MRI-R2.) More information about the solicitations are available at http://www.nsf.gov/od/oia/programs/ari/ and http://www.nsf.gov/od/oia/programs/mri/.