Synthesis Center for Understanding Organismal Resilience
Agency: National Science Foundation
Posted: 2023-03-21 | Closing date: 2024-07-15
Estimated total program funding: 20000000
Cost sharing or matching requirement: No

Synthesis Centers are a mechanism used by NSF's Directorate for Biological Science (BIO) to bring together communities that leverage existing data to catalyze discoveries through synthesis, analysis, and integrative training. Research supported by the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS) in BIO focuses on organisms as integrated units of biological organization, i.e., why they are structured as they are and function as they do. IOS seeks to establish a new Synthesis Center to advance our ability to explain and predict organismal resiliency and plasticity in response to complex and dynamic environmental circumstances encountered over a lifespan through the synthesis of varied data sets and types that bridge multiple scales and levels. The Synthesis Center will enable innovative synthesis and analysis of available biological and related data by providing the vision, infrastructure, and expertise to advance new avenues of inquiry in organismal biology focused on organismal resilience and plasticity. To accomplish this vision, the Synthesis Center will adopt approaches that are based on open science, team science, and data-intensive methods that enable data synthesis, sharing and inclusive collaborations among researchers across multiple levels of biological inquiry that may include genomic, physiological, structural, developmental, behavioral, neural, immunological, and microbiological analyses across some or all the IOS subdisciplines. In addition to supporting data and knowledge synthesis, the Synthesis Center should train new generations of researchers in solving challenging research problems through data-intensive, open, cross-disciplinary, and collaborative science. The Synthesis Center is also expected to serve as an example in effectively engaging diverse scientists from different types of institutions and across multiple disciplines. These types of data syntheses are expected to provide the basis for fundamental scientific discoveries and/or potentially translational, use-inspired research. In doing so, the Synthesis Center will have a profound impact on the progress of science and society.

Eligibility: *Who May Submit Proposals: Proposals may only be submitted by the following:   -Non-profit, non-academic organizations: Independent museums, observatories, research laboratories, professional societies and similar organizations located in the U.S. that are directly associated with educational or research activities.   -Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) - Two- and four-year IHEs (including community colleges) accredited in, and having a campus located in the US, acting      on behalf of their faculty members.Special Instructions for International Branch Campuses of US IHEs: If the proposal includes funding to be provided to an      international branch campus of a US institution of higher education (including through use of subawards and consultant arrangements), the proposer must explain      the benefit(s) to the project of performance at the international branch campus, and justify why the project activities cannot be performed at the US campus.