UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Institute for CyberScience (ICS) 2018 Seed Grant Program is now accepting applications. Through this initiative, ICS provides funding for promising computational and data-intensive research projects, with the aim of enabling researchers to apply for larger awards.
This year’s program will make $400,000 available to awardees. Individual projects may receive up to $35,000.
ICS especially encourages applications that align with the key strategic areas of “Health,” “Methodology,” and “Energy and Environment,” and that relate to the “Driving Digital Innovation” thematic priority of Penn State’s strategic plan.
ICS will hold a webinar 3-4 p.m. on Dec. 6, to discuss and answer questions about this year's program. Register here.
“The power of computation allows us to tackle some of the most challenging scientific problems of our time,” said Executive Vice President and Provost Nick Jones. “By encouraging cutting-edge computational research, ICS Seed Grants play a vital role in supporting Penn State researchers’ work, which has positive impacts throughout society.”
Last year’s 20 ICS Seed Grant recipients undertook a wide range of research projects, including work to detect fake news with machine learning, study diseased red blood cells, and design new materials. Of these projects, 15 involved collaboration between researchers in multiple colleges.
“I’m pleased that the Seed Grant Program has been successful in supporting interdisciplinary research,” said ICS Director Jenni Evans. “I look forward to seeing the inventive ideas that this year’s applicants plan to pursue.”
Interested applicants can learn more information on the program and how to apply at this page. The deadline for submissions is Jan. 19, 2018. Researchers with questions about the program can email them to ics-seed-grants@ics.psu.edu.
The Institute for CyberScience is one of the five interdisciplinary research institutes under the Office of the Vice President for Research, and is dedicated to supporting cyber-enabled research across the disciplines. ICS builds an active community of researchers using computational methods in a wide range of fields through co-hiring of tenure-track faculty, providing seed funding for ambitious computational research projects, and offering access to high-performance computing resources through its Advanced Cyber Infrastructure. With the support of ICS, Penn State researchers harness the power of big data, big simulation, and big computation to solve the world’s problems. For more information, visit https://ics.psu.edu or email ics@psu.edu.