Centers for Chemical Innovation | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Centers for Chemical Innovation (CCI) program funds large, collaborative research centers that tackle major, long-term challenges in fundamental chemistry. The core idea is to support ambitious, high-impact chemical research problems that are too complex or far-reaching for a single investigator or small team to solve efficiently. A successful CCI is expected to deliver transformative advances in chemical science, spark innovation, and generate interest that extends beyond a narrow specialty, reaching broad segments of the scientific community and, where appropriate, the public.

A defining feature of the CCI model is that it is designed to be agile rather than rigid. These centers are expected to adapt quickly as new scientific opportunities emerge, and to organize people, tools, and data in ways that accelerate discovery. The solicitation emphasizes modern collaboration approaches, including the use of data infrastructure and other mechanisms that help teams coordinate, share results, and work effectively across disciplinary or institutional boundaries. CCIs are also permitted, and in many cases encouraged, to build partnerships that extend beyond academia, including collaborations with industry, government laboratories, and international organizations, when those partnerships strengthen the science and speed progress toward the center's goals.

The program also makes clear that a CCI is not just a research engine. Each center is expected to integrate several elements into a unified vision: cutting-edge research, pathways to innovation, education and workforce development, efforts to broaden participation in chemistry, and informal science communication. In practice, that means the center should be able to show how its research agenda connects to training students and researchers, building inclusive pipelines, and communicating the excitement and significance of the work to audiences outside the immediate research group. The broader impacts are treated as an integral part of the center's design rather than an afterthought.

This funding opportunity uses a two-phase structure. Phase I provides substantial resources for teams to develop the scientific agenda, management and governance approach, collaborative infrastructure, and the broader impacts framework needed for a major center. Phase I is essentially the build-and-prove stage, where the team demonstrates that the concept is viable, the collaboration works, and the center can produce meaningful progress while refining its long-term plans. Moving to Phase II is not automatic: Phase II proposals are only expected from Phase I centers that show satisfactory progress. The timeline noted in the solicitation indicates that Phase I awards made in FY 2017 would be positioned to apply for Phase II funding in FY 2020.

For eligibility in scope, the FY 2017 Phase I competition is open to projects across all research areas supported by NSF's Division of Chemistry, but proposals must clearly focus on chemistry and demonstrate strong impact within the discipline. In addition to supporting new Phase I centers, the solicitation also covers a renewal application for an existing Phase II center originally initiated in FY 2012: the Center for Selective C-H Functionalization (CCHF), indicating that the program can also support continued operation of mature centers when they remain scientifically compelling and productive.

Administratively, this opportunity is an NSF discretionary grant in the science and technology and other research and development category. The funding opportunity title is "Centers for Chemical Innovation" with funding opportunity number 16-568. The CFDA numbers associated with the opportunity are 47.049. The posted and creation dates were May 26, 2016, and the proposal deadline listed was October 11, 2016. The eligible applicant category is listed as "Others," with additional eligibility details referenced in the full solicitation text.

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