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DOE Cosmic Frontier
Funding Policies and Philosophy
DOE HEP program model
Using community-driven strategic planning & reviews, we develop and support a specific portfolio of selected facilities & experiments to enable significant advances in specific science areas (i.e. we select specific projects/facilities to build)
Lab environment & infrastructure with a variety of resources needed to design, build, and operate selected facilities & projects
For the selected projects/facilities in our program, we support a science collaboration in all stages, leading to the best possible science results
Partnerships as needed to leverage additional science and expertise (e.g. use other agency’s facilities)
In developing the program, we follow the PASAG/P5 criteria:
Make contributions to select, high impact experiments:
That directly address HEP science goals
That will make a significant, visible or leadership contribution
For which the HEP community contributions or expertise is needed – instrumentation, collaborations, analysis techniques etc.
HEP-style Collaborations, Support
HEP provides long-term support for our responsibilities in designing, building and operating projects to achieve significant advances in science.
The HEP community’s model and the HEP program’s support is traditionally for teams of scientists to participate in all phases of an experiment as part of an HEP-style collaboration.
The collaboration leads the design, R&D, Fabrication, Operations, & Data Analysis phases.
Science planning is expected throughout all phases to end up with coordinated data analysis by a collaboration (e.g. one precision result rather than 100 independent results)
Researchers typically have long-term commitments, and responsibilities on the experiments/projects, in addition to their science planning and analysis efforts.
For this model to work, it requires people to receive stable, long-term support; otherwise projects would not be able to count on them to deliver their responsibilities.
The HEP community’s research model and expectations described above is reflected in the proposal review process.
Research program priorities:
Priority is to support efforts on projects/experiments in HEP program, i.e. where HEP has responsibilities.
Support HEP-model science collaboration to carry out the experiment in all phases
Support research efforts directly in line with our project priorities and science goals (e.g. HEP supports dark energy studies on experiments with broader science goals).
Need to make sure that our experiments are adequately supported before supporting or adding to research efforts for other programs. However, some funding is available for development of ideas for new projects that are aligned with the science drivers. Research efforts on projects that are aligned with HEP science drivers, but which don’t have HEP participation, will also be considered, taking into account the above and based on funding availability.
Typical researcher’s program:
HEP “buys” full research time of the faculty member on their overall program by providing summer salary and group support.
The typical researcher program may include service work on an experiment, participation in design, R&D, fabrication, operations on a project/experiment, science planning and analysis, and may include a plan of efforts on currently operating as well as planning for future projects.
Typically, a researcher is not funded for one particular study or effort here and there.
The typical researcher has specific long-term commitments & responsibilities for our projects/experiments, which may include analyzing data with one experiment while working on the design or fabrication of the next one.
Anecdotal Trends
We are starting to see a few people that are submitting more than 1 proposal for 2 different efforts on the same experiment and is assumed to be a way to get around the page limit. DOE CF will make it clear that this isn't helpful in the future for next year's FOA. If everybody starts doing this, it will mean lots more time spent writing proposals instead doing research.
RFP and Proposal structure and frequency
Institutional HEP grants: Comparative review every year of 1/3 of the 3-year grants (Reviewed separately by each Frontier). This includes rating of individual researchers.
Project Funding (through National Labs)
Field Work Proposals
Early Career Grants
Advanced Detector
Selected Questions and Available Data
General Data we need (over the last 10 years)
Who is writing the proposals? Please let me know which of these data are available, without violating privacy rules.
PI position: (postdoc, professor, tenured, etc)
Gender, race/ethnicity
geographical location,
size, type (and research tier?) of institution
Other?
How many proposals submitted by same PI - broken down by PI category above
Number of senior researchers on proposal per year - broken down by the PI categories above
Total funding awarded -same breakdown
Compare success rates of different sorts of proposals
per PI category as above
per number of senior researchers on the proposal
per number of proposals submitted in the last 5 years
per which type of proposal (indexed by RFP? or by topic?)
Years between successful proposals for each PI (does each renewal count as a “successful proposal”?)- broken down by the PI categories
Ratio of successful to unsuccessful proposals per PI - broken down by the PI categoris
Same ratio, but as an overall success rate per RFP or topic - which categories make sense here?
Do younger researchers rise through the ranks (are researcher on proposal and then become PI later)?
Number of years between first appearance as senior researcher on a proposal to becoming PI
Number of senior researchers (above postdoc) that are supported on proposal soft money overall
Same as above, but per proposal, per geographical place, per gender/race/ethnicity
Where does the money go
How much of the science support f comes through missions or other stable sources relative to competed 3-year proposals?
What fraction of the money for competed research is distributed to various types of institution (labs, universities, centers, industry)?
Individual support questions
How many grants of typical size are required to support an individual investigator?
How many sources of support does the typical investigator (PI, CoI, student) rely upon?
How many investigators/students participate in the average proposal?
Career questions
How many awards have gone to first-time PIs? (DOE)
How much of the typical award supports the PI? CoIs? Students? (DOE)
What is the age (in career) distribution of PIs? Proposers?
What is the age (in career) distribution of the relevant community?
Question for Program Managers
How many proposals have been reviewed annually for the last 10 years?
How many proposals have been selected annually for the last 10 year?
How much money has been awarded annually in the last 10 years for competed research grants?
What fraction of the total program budget each year has gone to support competed grants?