NM EPSCoR Infrastructure Seed Award & Collaboration Innovation Working Group Overview

Hello everybody my name is Anne Jakle and I am the Associate Director of New Mexico EPSCoR and a Co-PI on the New Mexico SMART Grid Center. The purpose of this webinar today is to outline two upcoming funding opportunities that we have. Infrastructure seed awards and Collaborative Innovation Working Groups. Both of which are due on March 20th of this year. This webinar will be recorded and archived on our website so you can visit it later.

In addition, I’d like to ask you if you have any questions to 00:35 - please type them in the Q&A box in the Zoom webinar interface and we will answer the questions at the end of the presentation. So, first I would just like to give a very brief overview on the New Mexico SMART Grid Center. SMART stands for Sustainable Modular Adaptive Resilient and Transactive. This is a five-year, twenty million dollar National Science Foundation project funded through the EPSCoR program that establishes an interdisciplinary research center to address the design, operational data, and security challenges of next generation electric power management. So you can think at the highest level, that the topic of this grant is grid modernization and at a very specific level we’re looking at how we can turn existing electricity system distribution feeders into a set of interconnected distribution feeder micro grids.

There are many disciplines that are part 01:33 - of our current project including: computer science, electrical and computer engineering, economics, cyber infrastructure, and workforce development. And this is the grant that funds these two funding opportunities that we’re discussing today, and so it’s important that you understand it and the context of it because anything that you are proposing to get funded has to relate to our grant and it’s scope of work in some way. First I’d like to go over the Infrastructure Seed Awards. These are the $50,000 awards we’ll get to at the at the next next slide, but the overview of this program is that it is designed to support transformative research and capacity building across New Mexico’s academic institutions in emerging smart- grid areas, and so it’s really looking for you to pursue novel research thrusts that lead to increased research productivity and new external funding opportunities. And also there’s an additional emphasis on increasing access to research experiences - particularly for undergraduate students from underrepresented groups. The details of these awards…

As I mentioned they’re 02:42 - $50,000 and they’re meant to take span a year (so 12 months - well once we get through the sub award process and all of that, the start date will likely be June 2020). Any faculty member in New Mexico is eligible - you do not have to be part of a current New Mexico EPSCoR project to apply for this opportunity. We have two tracks on which you can apply. The first is for research universities, being of course in New Mexico UNM, New Mexico Tech, and NMSU. And both of these encompass the same scope, but the emphases are slightly different between these two tracks.

The Track 1 is really looking at 03:17 - projects that will produce peer-reviewed publications or additional research grants or other exceptional education or workforce development outcomes in addition to the student training piece. That Track 2 to is for Primarily Undergraduate Institutions. So these are all the two and four-year colleges in New Mexico that do not grant PhDs, and the emphasis on this track is really on expanding access to research experiences for diverse undergraduate students, and there’s elements again of each of these, you know, good research and expanding access to students of research in each track, but how they are ranked when they come in, um, the emphasis is weighted more on these two areas outlined here. For the budget of your Infrastructure Seed Awards, and all of this is outlined in great detail in the request for proposals which I encourage you to read thoroughly, but we will provide student support, equipment, materials and supplies, up to one week of faculty summer salary, and conference travel. Unallowable expenses include postdoc salary. We will not fund postdocs out of these awards.

No 04:24 - additional faculty salary and unfortunately for some we cannot wave FNA or indirect cost rates. That has to be factored into your total budget. So I’m not going to read through these verbatim here, but I’ve outlined the review criteria for these proposals. I wanted to let you know that all of them are externally reviewed. We send them out to subject matter experts and the broad review criteria is the NSF (National Science Foundation) merit review criteria, which includes intellectual merit and broader impacts.

04:59 - So roughly you know everyone will be looking at these to see how well it relates to the scope of work for the New Mexico SMART Grid Center, and if you want to learn more detail about that project there is more on our website which is nmepscor.org, or we can also furnish a proposal narrative upon request for both tracks. On track 1 and track 2 proposals, clearly specified outcomes are very important. Publications, possible future funding opportunities you will apply to, how many students will be trained, if you will present at certain conferences, what conferences will those be, saying what journals you plan to publish in - that’s very helpful. Additional review criteria is outlined here but it is something that we’ll be looking at is how students will be trained through these awards and particularly undergraduates and particularly underrepresented students which is outlined and defined here, but this is the NSF definition.

It includes women or 06:00 - these underrepresented minority groups listed. And a couple of final review criteria that reviewers are instructed to look at… So that’s all I had for Infrastructure Seed Awards, again, we will hold any questions till the end and I will move on to Collaborative Innovation Working Groups, which is our second funding opportunity. It also has the March 20th due date and the call is available right now. Again the request for proposal is on our website and please read these all thoroughly to look at requirements.

The objectives of 06:42 - the Collaborative Innovation Working Groups is to support groups of researchers to promote research innovation and integration in the area of smart grids or related areas, and can also support training and learning activities, and emerging smart grid-related areas or core challenges of advancing and diversifying the disciplines that are involved, workforce training, and industries related to the electricity sector. So you can think of this as a unique opportunity to address a grand challenge that requires an interdisciplinary approach to transform an area or science. Experience has shown (we’ve funded these through previous grants) that working groups of 8 to 12 people meeting for two to three days (particularly at some kind of off-site location like a field station, like the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge) have been shown to be the most productive groups. Though we will consider proposals of shorter duration and with varying participant levels, though we expect that the budget for those meetings would be commensurately scaled down. I’ve provided an example here of a Collaborative Innovation Working Group that we recently funded.

This one was called Envisioning the 07:56 - Distribution Feeder Microgrid, and this workshop gathered leading researchers at National Laboratories, high-level management from New Mexico electric utilities, and other industry partners to provide feedback on our New Mexico SMART Grid Center scope of work and specifically the participants discussed new ideas that our research team can implement as part of the research roadmap. You can see here that I listed the defined outcomes that came out of this working group that were also part of their proposal. It’s very important that you look at: these are the questions that we go into the meeting with, this is how we will work through them (so in through a detailed agenda), and then these are the outcomes that we expect at the end. Another requirement is that at least to New Mexico institutions are represented at these. So here we had NMSU and UNM in addition to many industry and lab partners.

For the budget, 08:54 - these will be funded up to $7,500 and they should occur within six months of receiving funding and so you outline when you think the event will take place as part of your proposal. Anyone in New Mexico from a higher education institution or a National Laboratory is eligible to apply for one of these working groups, and I would just say here too, the New Mexico EPSCoR State Office is a possible venue for these meetings. We have a conference room that can hold about 20 people and free parking. And in addition, as I mentioned, some of these off-site locations like the UNM Sevilleta field station are really productive locations for getting groups together to work through things. In terms of the budget for the C-IWGS, they mostly fund travel, lodging, meals, facility expenses, meeting expenses, and you can provide honoraria for outside experts, or also a professional facilitator.

No funding is awarded to your institution 09:57 - directly, you work through our office and we help you to pay for everything directly. Also, we can help line-up the venues and all of that too, and help with some of the meeting planning, and coordination as well. So the elements of a successful C-IWG. Specific questions that will be addressed. The C-IWG proposals should be questioned driven and outcome oriented - so focusing on how you are going to integrate these disciplines. Including two or more institutions, I mentioned, a participant list - both invited and confirmed - there will be higher weight given to those C-IWG applications that have confirmed participants. And there should be a plan to share the workshop outcomes.

So a report is required to be submitted to our office afterwards, 10:49 - but how will you take the outcomes of the workshop and move them forward or disseminate them more broadly. So will a proposal potentially be written that comes out, but also will there be follow-up meetings with industry or state regulators, or public presentations given, what will be the greater impacts of this event? And the review form for the C-IWG’s is attached to the RFP. That is all that I had planned to outline these two opportunities, and now we can take an opportunity to answer any questions, if there are some… I’m seeing none at this time, so we will wrap this up. Please get in touch if any questions do come up, my email and phone number are listed there.

We look 11:39 - forward to seeing your successful proposals!.