Cyberinfrastructure Training, Education, Advancement, and Mentoring for Our 21st Century Workforce (CI TEAM) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Cyberinfrastructure Training, Education, Advancement, and Mentoring for Our 21st Century Workforce (CI TEAM) grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number 11-515) is designed to strengthen the United States science and engineering workforce by expanding education and training around modern cyberinfrastructure. NSF uses "science" broadly here to include the natural sciences, mathematics, computer and information sciences, and the social sciences, alongside engineering and education. The program is grounded in the idea that new information, communication, and computational technologies have changed how research and learning are done, and that these technologies increasingly operate as an interconnected ecosystem of systems, tools, and services. That ecosystem is what NSF describes as cyberinfrastructure, and it is reshaping who can participate in research and education, what they can accomplish, and the ways they collaborate.

A central purpose of CI TEAM is long-term capacity building: preparing a citizenry and workforce that can not only use cyberinfrastructure effectively, but also design, develop, adopt, and deploy cyber-based tools and environments. NSF emphasizes that these opportunities should reach people across the full learning lifecycle, including K-16 pathways, informal learning, lifelong learning, and professional development. In other words, CI TEAM is not limited to university-level instruction; it is meant to support training models that can reach students, educators, and working professionals at many stages, and to ensure that access to these opportunities extends to all communities.

CI TEAM projects are expected to integrate research and education in ways that actively promote and leverage cyberinfrastructure at scales ranging from local efforts to national and global collaborations. Across the portfolio of awards, NSF is looking for outcomes that (1) increase the number of scientists, engineers, educators, and students who are prepared to work with cyberinfrastructure, including those who are already strong in STEM fields but need additional cyberinfrastructure-focused preparation; (2) generate broadly usable curricular and instructional materials, learning technologies, and institutional models that other organizations can adopt or adapt, along with publications or other disseminated results that document what worked and why; and (3) expand and broaden participation in cyberinfrastructure as both creators and users, with a clear focus on groups that have been historically underrepresented. The solicitation explicitly highlights women, people in underserved rural regions, first-generation college students, and minority communities, including those connected to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs).

The program accepts three categories of proposals, each aligned to a different maturity level and scale of impact. Demonstration Projects are exploratory and may be limited in scope or scale, but they should be strong enough to serve as proof-of-concept examples that could later be implemented more broadly. Implementation Projects are typically larger and build on prior experience, meaning teams are expected to have some evidence base or track record that supports scaling the work. Diffusion Projects focus on reaching broad national and/or international audiences, using cyberinfrastructure resources, models, and technologies to deploy educational strategies and spread proven approaches. NSF signals that Implementation and Diffusion Projects, in particular, should result in sustainable learning and workforce development activities that complement ongoing NSF investments in cyberinfrastructure rather than duplicating them.

Collaboration and partnership are required themes across all project types. CI TEAM proposals must bring together expertise across multiple disciplines and should include partnerships that support integrated research and learning. Depending on the project goals, partners may include colleges and universities, K-12 schools, government entities, industry, professional societies, nonprofit organizations, and international collaborators. NSF also highlights several practical expectations about how projects should be constructed: a commitment to leveraging existing or currently developing cyberinfrastructure technologies, use of open software standards, adoption and creation of open educational resources when appropriate, and strong plans for strategic implementation, management, and evaluation. In plain terms, NSF is looking for projects that connect to real cyberinfrastructure ecosystems, avoid reinventing the wheel, and can demonstrate measurable progress and lessons that others can reuse.

From a funding and administrative standpoint, CI TEAM is a discretionary grant program under NSF, categorized as Science and Technology and other Research and Development. The total estimated funding amount for this competition is $5,000,000, with an award floor of $250,000 and an award ceiling of $1,000,000. NSF anticipated making about 12 total awards, specifically expecting to support approximately 6 to 7 Demonstration Projects (up to $250,000 each) and about 3 to 6 Implementation or Diffusion Projects (up to $1,000,000 each). The solicitation indicates that cost sharing or matching is required. The program spans many NSF directorates and offices through the listed CFDA numbers, reflecting its cross-cutting nature (including engineering, mathematical and physical sciences, geosciences, computer and information science and engineering, biological sciences, social and behavioral sciences, education, polar programs, international science and engineering, cyberinfrastructure, and EPSCoR).

Eligibility is described broadly as "Others" with clarification in the full solicitation, and NSF notes that having received a prior CI TEAM award is not required to apply. The solicitation also explicitly states that principal investigators, co-principal investigators, and other senior personnel involved in NSF-funded CI TEAM projects remain eligible to submit proposals in any of the three categories for this competition. The opportunity was posted on December 16, 2010, with a full proposal deadline of March 16, 2011. For access issues related to the announcement through Grants.gov, applicants were directed to NSF Grants.gov support at grantsgovsupport@nsf.gov.

Overall, CI TEAM is best understood as a workforce and education initiative tied directly to the growing importance of cyberinfrastructure in research and learning. It funds projects that teach people to build and use cyber-based systems and tools, produce shareable educational models and materials, and deliberately broaden participation so that cyberinfrastructure-enabled science and engineering becomes more inclusive, more scalable, and more sustainable over time.

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