Purpose:
The Department of Defense (DOD) released its fiscal year (FY) 2020 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF) funding opportunity announcement (FOA). The VBFF program is intended to attract and engage the best and brightest in academia to conduct a range of basic, unclassified research in areas of interest to DOD. DOD also utilizes the VBFF program to foster long-term relationships with outstanding academic researchers and increase the number of technical experts working on defense-related problems. DOD is particularly interested in ambitious “blue sky” research that will lead to revolutionary discoveries, new fields of research, or disruption of existing theories. DOD plans to host a webinar on July 10, 2019 to provide a program overview, grant application information, topic areas of interest, and answer general questions (more information regarding the webinar is below).
Research areas of interest for DOD include:
- Engineering Biology;
- Quantum Information Science;
- Cognitive Neuroscience;
- Novel Engineering Materials;
- Applied Mathematics; and
- Other fields of research with high potential (more information included below – including “combustion at high speed, multi-scale physical processes, propulsion, shielding concepts, etc.”)
Total Funding and Award Size:
DOD anticipates that awards will be made in the form of grants to U.S. institutions of higher education at a maximum award of $3 million over five years. The solicitation does not indicate how many awards DOD intends to make and notes DOD may not allocate fellowships equally among the topics. In FY 2019, 10 awards were made – three for quantum, three for materials/manufacturing, two for cognitive neuroscience, one for physics and one for information/social networks.
Key Dates:
DOD is accepting white papers until August 16, 2019 at 11:59 PM EDT and full proposals will be by invitation and are due January 17, 2020 at 11:59 PM EST.
Webinar:
The webinar will be held on July 10, 2019. The webinar can be accessed as follows:
WebEx Meeting
Meeting Number: 734 968 495
Password: VBFF2019
https://noblis.webex.com/noblis/j.php?MTID=m3b9d993630478d83e551385b020f4a90
Join by Video System
Dial: 734968495@noblis.webex.com, you can also dial 173.243.2.68 and enter the meeting number.
Join by Phone
1 (844) 740-1264 (Toll Free)
1 (415) 655-0003 (Toll)
Access Code: 734 968 495
Web-link for more information:
www.grants.gov under solicitation number “N00014-19-S-F010.”
Filed Under: Funding Opportunities