News & Updates

NASA’s 2021 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge is an engineering design competition supporting NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development Program’s efforts to rapidly mature innovating and high-impact capabilities and technologies for infusion in a broad array of future NASA missions. The 2021 BIG Idea Challenge is open to teams of five to 25 students from Space Grant-affiliated colleges/universities. Teams are asked to submit robust proposals for near-term dust mitigation (or dust tolerant) technologies that could be used for lunar applications near or in the Moon's South Pole. More

Organized by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and funded by DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office, this national competition encourages students to develop innovative solutions for geothermal applications through a year-long project that engages collegiate school teams to analyze geothermal energy for a community or campus application.

NSF has issued a Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) entitled, “Towards an Equitable National Cyberinfrastructure.” Through this DCL, NSF's Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure and EPSCoR in the Office of Integrative Activities are specifically inviting proposal submissions to Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*) to address the disparities in campus-level networking and cyberinfrastructure that exacerbated the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in some areas of the country. There are several ways that such disparities could be addressed within the CC* programmatic framework. All projects supported by CC* must be driven by STEM research and education needs that require the support of networking and computing infrastructure on campuses. More

NSF has selected Dr. José Luis Zayas-Castro of the University of South Florida to serve as division director for the Division of Engineering Education and Centers. Zayas-Castro, who begins his NSF term on Aug 2, is currently executive associate dean, associate dean for international affairs, and professor of industrial and management systems engineering in the USF College of Engineering. He began his faculty career at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, where he led activities in manufacturing, innovation, and academic and research affairs. More

The DOE announced a plan to provide $100 million over the next four years for university-based research on a range of high energy physics topics through a new funding opportunity announcement. The objective of this funding is to advance knowledge of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.

The DOE has announced $45 million for projects that will help seamlessly integrate clean energy sources onto the grid. As solar and other renewable energy are rapidly deployed throughout the country, these projects are developing new technologies and capabilities to bolster the resilience of the US electric grid. The funding, which also creates a new $25 million consortium, will advance the domestic manufacturing of solar energy and electric grid technologies.

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The CCI Program seeks to encourage community college students to enter technical careers relevant to the Department of Energy (DOE) mission by providing technical training experiences at the DOE laboratories. Selected students participate as interns appointed at one of 16 participating DOE laboratories. They work on technologies or instrumentation projects or major research facilities supporting DOE’s mission, under the guidance of laboratory staff scientists or engineers. Applications are due Oct 6. More

NSF has officially appointed Karen Marrongelle to serve as chief operating officer. Since 2018, she has led the NSF Directorate for Education and Human Resources, or EHR, which supports research that enhances learning and teaching, and broad efforts to achieve excellence in STEM education at all levels and in all settings.

The DOE has announced $60 million in funding for its largest-ever cohort of university-based Industrial Assessment Centers (IACs), which assist small- and medium-sized manufacturers in reducing their carbon emissions and lowering energy costs, while training the next generation of energy-efficiency workers.