March 5, 2020

Dear Colleague:

This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) complements a separate National Science Foundation (NSF) DCL (NSF 20-052) that referred to the emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and expressed NSF's interest in accepting proposals to conduct non-medical, non-clinical-care research that can be used immediately to better understand how to model and understand the spread of COVID-19; to inform and educate about the science of virus transmission and prevention; and to encourage the development of processes and actions to address this global challenge.

In that DCL, NSF invited researchers to respond to this challenge through existing funding opportunities. In addition, NSF invited researchers to use the Rapid Response Research (RAPID) proposal type, which allows NSF to receive and review proposals having a severe urgency with regard to availability of, or access to, data, facilities or specialized equipment, as well as quick-response research on natural or anthropogenic disasters and similar unanticipated events.

Through this DCL, the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) within the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering is inviting RAPID proposals and supplemental funding requests to existing awards that address COVID-19 challenges through data and/or software infrastructure development activities. Such activities would be funded by the Computational and Data-Enabled Science and Engineering (CDS&E) program or the Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) program.

Proposals in response to this DCL and the NSF DCL on COVID-19 (NSF 20-052) may also request the use of NSF-funded advanced computing resources such as Frontera, Stampede2, Bridges, Comet, and JetStream. To ensure availability of these computing resources, investigators must contact OAC prior to submission of the proposal.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMISSION

Complete guidance on submitting a RAPID proposal and on a supplemental funding request may be found in Chapters II.E.1 and VI.E.4, respectively, of the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG). Proposers responding to this DCL should select the "Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure" as the division and "Cyberinfrastructure" as the program under NSF Unit of Consideration.

Before submitting a RAPID proposal or supplemental funding request in response to this DCL, investigators must first contact one of the cognizant OAC program officers listed below in order to determine whether the proposed activities meet NSF guidelines for these types of submissions.

Questions about this DCL should be addressed to:

• William Miller, WLMiller@nsf.gov;
• Edward Walker, edwalker@nsf.gov;
• Robert Chadduck, rchadduc@nsf.gov, and
• Stefan Robila, srobila@nsf.gov.

Sincerely,

Margaret Martonosi
Assistant Director
Computer and Information Science and Engineering

Manish Parashar
Office Director
Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure