CHE DMR DMS Solar Energy Initiative | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The CHE DMR DMS Solar Energy Initiative is a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant opportunity designed to fund interdisciplinary research teams working on major scientific obstacles to highly efficient solar energy harvesting, conversion, and storage. The central idea is to push beyond incremental progress by building genuinely integrated collaborations that combine chemistry, materials research, and mathematical sciences in a way that produces new concepts and potentially transformative approaches. NSF is explicitly looking for projects where mathematical sciences are not just a supporting tool used at the margins, but a core, synergistic driver that is tightly linked with chemical and materials discovery and understanding.

A key requirement is team composition. Proposals must be submitted by groups with three or more co-Principal Investigators, and the team must include at least one PI from each of three disciplinary areas aligned with NSF divisions: one in chemistry (CHE), one in materials research (DMR), and one in mathematical sciences (DMS). The solicitation also allows for additional co-PIs (a fourth or fifth, for example) from other relevant fields, including areas within engineering, as long as the core triad of chemistry, materials, and mathematical sciences is present and substantively integrated into the research plan. This structure is meant to encourage new collaborations rather than routine extensions of existing single-discipline programs.

The research scope centers on the scientific challenges that limit solar energy technologies, spanning the fundamental and potentially applied questions involved in capturing sunlight, converting it to usable forms of energy, and storing it efficiently. While the announcement does not prescribe specific subtopics, it is aimed at high-impact, cross-cutting problems where progress requires coordinated advances in molecular or chemical processes, materials design and characterization, and rigorous mathematical modeling, analysis, computation, or theory. Competitive projects are expected to demonstrate clear intellectual synergy among the disciplines, with each area contributing essential ideas and methods that shape the overall direction, rather than operating as loosely connected work packages.

NSF also emphasizes educational and workforce development value through interdisciplinary research involvement. Successful proposals are expected to provide meaningful interdisciplinary training opportunities, typically by engaging students and researchers in work that crosses traditional boundaries and exposes them to the combined perspectives of chemistry, materials science, and mathematics. In other words, the initiative is positioned not only as a research funding opportunity, but also as a mechanism to cultivate researchers who can operate effectively across these fields.

From a funding and administrative standpoint, this is a discretionary NSF grant program in the Science and Technology and other Research and Development category, listed under CFDA 47.049 (Mathematical and Physical Sciences). NSF anticipated making around 10 awards, with an estimated total program funding level of $12,000,000. Individual awards were expected to fall between $750,000 (floor) and $1,750,000 (ceiling). Cost sharing or matching is not required.

Eligibility is limited at the organizational level to U.S.-based universities and colleges: specifically, accredited universities and four-year colleges with a campus located in the United States, applying on behalf of their faculty. The deadline information in the announcement indicates a full proposal due date of January 25, 2011, and the solicitation was originally posted on September 10, 2010 (NSF Publication 10-613; Funding Opportunity Number 10-613). For access issues, the notice directs applicants to NSF Grants.gov support at grantsgovsupport@nsf.gov.

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