National Science Foundation’s Major Research Instrumentation (MRI)

Office of Grant Writing & Publications 202 Jesse Hall University of Missouri Columbia, MO 65211 573 882-9500 phone 573 884-8371 fax

Limited Submission Announcement

The National Science Foundation’s Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program received additional funding through the federal Recovery Act. We are expecting the deadline for additional proposals to be in early July and that there will be a limit as to the number of proposals MU can submit. Given that it takes time to work with vendors to prepare proposals for large equipment requests, we are going ahead now with this call for internal letters of intent. In doing so, we hope to give selected PIs as much time as possible for proposal preparation.

The follow paragraph is summarized from the most recent MRI competition. While it may or may not apply to the anticipated call for proposals, it is included here as a way to provide some context for this funding program:

The MRI program is designed to increase access to scientific and engineering equipment for research and research training in our nation's institutions of higher education, research museums and non-profit research institutions. This program seeks to improve the quality and expand the scope of research and research training in science and engineering, and to foster the integration of research and education by providing instrumentation for research-intensive learning environments. The MRI program encourages the development and acquisition of research instrumentation for shared inter- and/or intra-institutional use and in concert with private sector partners. The MRI program assists in the acquisition or development of major research instrumentation that is, in general, too costly for support through other NSF programs. Proposals will be considered for instrumentation used for any NSF-supported field of science, mathematics, and engineering. The research activities using this instrumentation need not be supported by NSF or the federal government.

Because we expect MU to be limited as to the number of proposals we can submit for stimulus-funded MRI proposals (in the past, this program allowed three proposals with at least one of the three proposals being for instrument development), letters of intent must be submitted to the Office of Research, ltdsub@missouri.edu, no later than 4:00 pm Friday, April 24, 2008. Letters of intent should be no longer than three pages and should include 1) the investigators, types of research and sources of funding expected to use the equipment; 2) a brief description of the instrumentation; 3) a rationale for acquiring or developing the instrumentation and its potential impact on research at MU; 4) the anticipated cost of the project; and 5) whether the application will be for instrument acquisition or development.

URL for more information: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08503/nsf08503.htm

This notice is being sent to deans, directors, and chairs in health and life science disciplines. Please forward it to other faculty members who may be interested.

All limited submission announcements can be tracked by deadline via the Calendar at research.missouri.edu or by announcement date via the Limited Submissions listing at http://research.missouri.edu/ogwp/lsa.htm.