The objective of the Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure (CICI) program is to develop, deploy and integrate security solutions that benefit the scientific community by ensuring the integrity, resilience and reliability of the end-to-end scientific workflow. CICI seeks three categories of projects:
- Secure Scientific Cyberinfrastructure: These awards seek to secure the scientific workflow by encouraging novel and trustworthy architectural and design approaches, models and frameworks for the creation of a holistic, integrated security environment that spans the entire scientific CI ecosystem;
- Collaborative Security Response Center: This single award targets the development of a community resource to provide security monitoring, analysis, expertise, and resources Research & Education (R&E) cyberinfrastructure staff, regardless of physical location or organization; and
- Research Data Protection: These awards provide solutions that both ensure the provenance of research data and reduce the complexity of protecting research data sets regardless of funding source.
Anticipated Funding Amount for All Awards: $10,000,000 to $12,000,000 (6-12 expected awards)
Total funding for the CICI program is $10,000,000 to $12,000,000, subject to the availability of funds. Secure Scientific Cyberinfrastructure awards will be supported at up to $1,000,000 total per award for up to three years. Research Data Protection awards will be supported at up to $1,000,000 total per award for up to three years. A single Collaborative Security Response Center award will be supported at up to $5,000,000 for up to three years.
Eligibility
Applicants are encouraged to consult with their Associate Deans for Research prior to internal submission to assure they meet eligibility criteria and their projects meet stated program objectives.
An individual can participate as PI, co-PI or senior personnel on no more than two CICI proposals. Note that any individual whose biographical sketch is provided as part of the proposal will be considered as Senior Personnel in the proposed activity, irrespective of whether that individual will receive financial support from the project.
Submission Process
Materials detailed below should be submitted as a single PDF attachment to an email sent to Stephanie Endy at (stephanie.endy@case.edu) before 5pm on Friday, May 11, 2018:
- Cover letter listing PI Name, School or College, Department, title of project, and number of CICI proposals that the PI intends to participate in (whether or not these will be submitted through CWRU). The title of the project must follow the NSF prescribed conventions as described in the program announcement;
- No more than one page description of the project including a description of the broader impact and intellectual merit of the project. Note the additional review criteria from NSF described in the program announcement as these may be considered during the internal selection process; and
- NSF-style biosketch for PI.
Final nominees will be notified of their selection by Wednesday, May 16, 2018.
Final proposal must be received by the Office of Research Administration by Friday, June 1, 2018 at 5:00pm EST.
Final proposal must be received by the sponsor by Monday, June 4, 2018 at 3:00pm EST.
NSF has included additional merit review criteria for this solicitation, which may be considered during the internal review and selection of CWRU applications:
All proposals must clearly address the following solicitation-specific review criteria:
- Science-driven: To what extent is the proposed project science-driven? How will the project outcomes fill well-recognized science and engineering needs of the research community? What will be the broader impacts of the project, such as its benefits to science and engineering communities beyond its initial targets, under-represented communities, and education and workforce development? The project description should provide a compelling discussion of the potential to benefit its intended as well as broader communities.
- Innovation: To what extent is the proposed project innovative? What innovative and transformational capabilities will the project bring to its target communities? How will the project integrate innovation and discovery into the project activities?
- Close collaborations among stakeholders: To what extent does the proposed project involve close collaborations among stakeholders? How will the project activities engage cyberinfrastructure (CI) experts, specialists, and scientists working in concert with the relevant domain scientists who are users of CI?
- Building on existing, recognized capabilities: To what extent does the proposed project build on existing, recognized capabilities? How will the project activities build on and leverage existing NSF, national, and open source cyberinfrastructure and cybersecurity investments, as appropriate?
- Project plans, and system and process architecture: How well detailed are the project plans, and logical and physical architectures? The project description should include high-quality management plans. The project plan should include user interactions and provide a timeline including a proof-of-concept demonstration or prototyping of the proposed system or framework.
- Sustained impact: What potential does the proposed work have for providing benefits beyond the participants and the lifetime of the award?