• Demographics Committee member: Angela Olinto (UChicago)
• Contacts: Jim Whitmore (NSF-PHYS-PA)
  • Information below provided by J. Whitmore (wiki edited P. Cushman 1/24/15)

The PHY division has recently issued a solicitation (14-576): This division-wide solicitation replaces an annual Dear Colleague Letter (the most recent version is NSF12-068). The solicitation follows most of the requirements in the Grant Proposal Guide, but has additional requirements listed below. These relate primarily to proposers who anticipate having multiple sources of support, and proposals involving significant instrumentation development. This solicitation also has deadlines instead of target dates. All proposals submitted to the Physics Division that are not governed by another solicitation (such as CAREER) should be submitted to this solicitation; otherwise they will be returned without review.

The categories of proposers eligible to submit proposals to the National Science Foundation are identified in the Grant Proposal Guide, Chapter I, Section E.

There are no restrictions or limits.

There are no restrictions or limits.

None. However, the Physics Division strongly encourages single proposal submission for possible co-review rather than multiple submissions of proposals with slight differences to several programs.

• For each proposal received, the Particle Astrophysics (PA) Program selects a number of adhoc reviewers and then convenes a (FACA) Panel which considers the adhoc reviews and provides a ranked list of proposals that serves as advice to the program. As noted above, if a proposal contains both PA and non-PA projects, the program shares the proposal with another program and co-reviews it in both the PA Panel and the other Program’s panel.

Annually, with a deadline of the last Wednesday in October for the PA Program. Other programs in PHY may have a different deadline (see NSF 14-576).

For this comparison, I have selected two years: FY2008 (before the ARRA year of 2009) and the most recent FY2014:

Prof	Assoc Prof	Assist Prof	Research Personnel	Female	Male	Number of proposals with at least one Co-PI	Total proposals

FY2008 31 7 5 2 5 (11%) 40 24 45 FY2014 35 12 18 5 17 (24%) 53 23 70

Note: “Research Personnel” include Research Professor, Research Associate, Research Scientist, Research Physicist and Adjunct Research Professor. When there is a Co-PI on the proposal, it is invariably someone from the same institution (ie an “umbrella” grant)

Mostly one; a few PIs submit 2 if they are working on two very different projects, not counting supplemental requests; most of the time when we get two proposals in the same year from the same PI they are an Operations proposal and a Base-support proposal

These are summed over all awards, not by any sub-category. FY 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Total number PIs 134 126 122 121 114 Total number of Res.Sci. (FTE) 8 18 17 17 7 Note: FTE is defined as (Number of months supported)/12

Huge amount of work; so I can only give you the success rates, summed over all proposals that go to the annual PA panel: FY 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Success rate 71% 52% 54% 31% 33%

Note: the “high” success rate in FY2010 was due to the “large” ARRA funding in FY2009 in which funds were used to make “Standard Awards” in which all 3 years of funding were provided in FY2009; consequently, although the FY2010 funds were less, fewer funds were committed and so more new awards could be made. In addition, the rates are higher than some other agency numbers; partly because the funded projects are pre-selected (have been approved by the community) and because most of the PA projects are usually much more than 3 years in length; hence renewals of excellent projects are reasonable.

Will mostly be every 3 years since most of our awards are 3-year awards. However, if a PI is declined one year, they probably resubmit the next year.

• Do younger researchers rise through the ranks (are researcher on proposal and then become PI later)? Find the Number of years between first appearance as senior researcher on a proposal to PI

Not possible

• What number or fraction of the community is supported by soft money?

Without knowing “the community,” I can only give you these numbers: if I define those on soft money to be those identified in a proposal as a “Research Scientist,” the numbers are as follows:

• What number or fraction of the community is supported by research projects/missions?
• What number or fraction of the community is support by institutions?
• What number or fraction of the community can or does serve as PI?
• What number or fraction of the community is part of a smaller groups (1-3) vs larger groups?

cannot answer

• Are there other sources of scientific support for the community?
• How much of the science support for the community 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)?

Essentially all goes to Universities – there may be some subawards to labs, 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?

Don’t know how to answer these two, but I can give you the median award size for the PA Program: over the last 5 years, it has been between $165k and $185k per year

• How many investigators/students participate in the average proposal?

I can answer this for the successful awards

• Career questions
  • How many awards have gone to first-time PIs?
  • How much of the typical award supports the PI? CoIs? Students?
  • What is the age (in career) distribution of PIs? Proposers?
  • What is the age (in career) distribution of the relevant community?

Could get it but probably take some time to collect from each proposal

• Competition Questions
  • What is the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable success rates?
  • What factors determine what the acceptable boundary is? (program staff, reviewers, community, fairness, etc.)

Don’t know how to answer these three

• Does the success rate/number of proposals make any difference in program allocations by agencies?

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?

I could answer these questions for the awards we make – not too hard

• Questions about Impact on People
  • What anecdotal evidence do we have about the impact of funding rates?
  • What quantitative information can we find about people entering or leaving the field?
  • What are the off-ramps (retirement, leaving the field, working part time, etc.) for each discipline and how many are using them?
  • What are the on-ramps (students, from other fields, shifting research focus, etc.) for each discipline and how many are using them?

Don’t know how to answer these

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