NSF Centers for Chemical Innovation
The National Science Foundation's Centers for Chemical Innovation (CCI) Program supports research centers focused on major, long-term fundamental chemical research challenges. CCIs that address these challenges will produce transformative research, lead to innovation and attract broad scientific and public interest. CCIs are agile structures that can respond rapidly to emerging opportunities and make full use of cyberinfrastructure to enhance collaborations. CCIs integrate research, innovation, education, and public outreach and include a plan to broaden participation of underrepresented groups.
The CCI Program supports both Phase I (development) awards and Phase II (full Center implementation) awards. Phase I awards are a total of $1.75M for three years. Following submission of a Phase II proposal and an extensive merit review, especially promising Phase I teams may transition to Phase II Center funding: $4M/yr for five years renewable for an additional five years. The portfolio of CCI awards includes all fields supported by NSF Chemistry. Many respond to budget priority areas of sustainability, molecular electronics, and the chemistry-life science interface. Many of these awards include strong computational and data-enabled science components. In FY 2012, the competition for new Phase I awards is limited to topics in Sustainable Chemistry. See the current solicitation (NSF 12-572) for more information.
Research to Innovation at CCI
NCIIA-LENS OF THE MARKET from Scott Hancock on Vimeo.
The CCI Research to Innovation (R2I) program has been designed expressly for researchers engaged in the National Science Foundation’s Phase I Centers for Chemical Innovation (CCI).
The goal of the R2I program is to ensure that Phase I CCI Center researchers have the skills to effectively translate their research into innovations and to develop and execute an aligned R2I translation plan. Both the innovation ideas and the translation plan can act as part of the preparation for a CCI Phase II submittal.
The workshops provide CCI participants—faculty, post docs, students and their support ecosystem—with the skills to:
- Utilize and implement the R2I process as specifically related to their research;
- Define innovation options from their research that are aligned with market needs;
- Develop a R2I translation plan
- Develop criteria for analyzing and evaluating R2I translation plans
This program is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, Chemistry Division into the National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance (grant # 0926490).
* Banner images courtesy of the National Science Foundation