Research Opportunities in Space

and Earth Sciences a.k.a. ROSES (and other Solicitations)

by Max Bernstein

I am going to put lots of stuff in the slides for your future reference that I will only briefly mention while talking.

Afterwards there will be time for questions and also you may write to me at SARA@nasa.gov

Agenda

• We decide what to solicit from community input

• Kinds of solicitations

• ROSES as an example omnibus NRA

• Example data about ROSES awards

• Where to find selection statistics on the SARA web page

• Example program element in ROSES

• Peer review and how to volunteer

• About our NSPIRES web page for proposal submission

Origins Part 1: NASA Plans The NASA Strategic Plan lays out some very broad Goals and Objectives for the Agency, e.g., Strategic Goal 1: Expand the frontiers of knowledge, capability, and opportunity in space and below that Objective 1.4: Understand the Sun and its interactions with Earth and the solar system, including space weather.

The NASA Science Plan has science questions e.g., Chapter

4.1: What causes the Sun to vary? and What are the impacts on

humanity?

These alone are too broad to assess whether a proposal is

relevant, but they help us to formulate our programs. In this

case these are both about Heliophysics, one of our divisions.

Origins Part 2: External Input

Beyond these broad statements, our specific priorities are

often set by external forces, i.e., the community via the

National Research Council Decadal Survey and various

committees and analysis and advisory groups peopled by

folks from universities like you.

These include the Astrophysics, Earth Science,

Heliophysics and Planetary Science Subcommittees (of the

NASA Advisory Council), the Cosmic Origins, Exoplanets,

Physics of the Cosmos Analysis Groups, the Applied

Sciences Advisory Committee, Lunar Exploration, Mars

Exploration, Outer Planets, and Small Bodies Assessment

Groups (among others).

SMD uses all of these Solicitations • Announcement of Opportunity (AO)

A few per year; contracts only for specific space flight Missions.

• Restricted (University Only) Grants Programs

Our graduate student fellowship solicitation (NESSF) and Undergraduate Student Instrument Project (USIP) result in grants (and cooperative agreements) to universities (only).

• Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN)

Relatively rare, typically only a few per year at most.

Used where research or research-related activity is to be carried out in close cooperation with NASA. Example: "research institutes" like the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

• Annual Omnibus Research Announcement (NRA) <- ROSES

The proposer has considerable freedom to specify specific objectives within the broad program objectives given in the NRA.

Use to fund supporting research and technology, research and data analysis.

This last one is the most complicated and results in mostly grants and cooperative agreements, but may result in contracts.

• "Omnibus" Meaning that the blah blah is in the Summary of

Solicitation up front and then the technical description of what we

are seeking is described in a short "program element"

• I’m from Science and my Omnibus Solicitation is called

Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES).

It has 60-70 individual program elements with their own due

dates. See http://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2016

• NASA has a few of these, such as Research Opportunities in

Space Biology (ROSBio), Human Exploration Research

Opportunities (HERO) and Research Opportunities in

Aeronautics (ROA).

• They are all posted at http://nspires.nasaprs.com/ and

Grants.gov.

Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences

(ROSES) NRA is an Omnibus Solicitation

• Winners: We select ~1000 out of ~4000 proposals each year,

equal to ~ $600 M (over the lifetime of the award). Spreadsheets

with data about selections posted on the web at sara.nasa.gov

• Funded Organizations: ~30% of awards are to NASA centers,

~60% to universities and non profits, and the remainder to non-

NASA government labs, and for-profit corporations. (non-U.S.

organizations are a special case).

• Award Size: Ranges from under $100K per year for focused,

limited efforts (e.g., data analysis) to more than $1M per year for

extensive activities (e.g., development of science experiment

hardware).

• Peer Reviewed: Based on merit, relevance, and level of effort.

• Award Mechanism: Typically grants (for universities and non

profits), but also cooperative agreements, contracts, and inter- or

intra-agency transfers.

• Duration: Typically three years but can be up to five.

ROSES Continued: award and funding information

ROSES Award Types

Extramural* Research Proposals result in grants.

Proposals from NASA Centers result in internal NASA awards.

Proposals from other government labs result in IATs.

Extramural Proposals with funded Government Co-Is result in two awards: a grant to the proposing extramural organization and also an award within the government.

Research Proposals from NASA Centers with funded Extramural Co-Is results in a cooperative agreement (CA).

Proposals in response to special PEAs that specify extramural/NASA collaborations result only in CAs (this is rare).

Extramural Proposals result in contracts when its appropriate e.g., because there is a NASA schedule or need for a deliverable. (this is rare).

* Extramural here means not from the government. Most of these proposals are from universities but some are

from research non profit organizations and some are from for profit organizations.

ROSES solicits in one year and, generally, funds in the following fiscal year because we give 90 days for offerors to develop their proposals and it takes time to conduct a peer review. This means that the funding is usually not in hand and thus new awards are contingent on the next year’s appropriation. Each Program Element presents an estimated budget. We don’t release ROSES until after the President’s budget because large changes from past years would be reflected in the estimated budget. Most ROSES calls are annual and most (e.g., 2/3) of their budget is tied up in existing awards.

ROSES Schedule and Budget

Some selection statistics can be found at http://sara.nasa.gov

Choose "Grant Stats" and you may download an xl spreadsheet

with ROSES data…

Selection statistics

Selection statistics This is an excerpt from the ROSES spreadsheet

Selection statistics

And also there is data on the graduate student fellowship

program…

Selection statistics

• Theory and modeling to understand NASA space data.

• Analysis of data from NASA’s missions.

• Suborbital (aircraft, sounding rocket, and stratospheric balloon) investigations of natural phenomena and development of instruments for future flight missions.

• Education and public outreach activities

• New experiment techniques (e.g. proof of concept) and technology development for future missions.

• Chemical/physical properties and laboratory techniques needed for analysis of data and samples.

• Ground-based observations critical to NASA objectives.

• Concepts for future space science missions.

• Systems for integrated Earth system models and applying Earth science research data to societal needs.

• Applied information systems applicable to NASA space data.

ROSES topics are very wide ranging

I go to Table 2 http://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2016table2 where I see the following…

ROSES Example program element

It’s September 14 today, too late to propose to this one.

The "Step-1" proposal was required by August 26th.

Lets look at this one

ROSES Example program element

Here is the

link to the

PDF of A.28

itself

A.28 INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH IN EARTH SCIENCE

1. Scope of the Program

This Program element is for new and successor interdisciplinary research

investigations within NASA’s Interdisciplinary Research in Earth Science (IDS)

program. Proposed research investigations must meet the following criteria: a)

offer a fundamental advance to our understanding of the Earth system; b) be

based on remote sensing data, especially satellite observations, but including

suborbital sensors as appropriate; c) go beyond correlation of data sets and

seek to understand the underlying causality of change through determination of

the specific physical, chemical, and/or biological processes involved; d) be truly

interdisciplinary in scope by involving traditionally disparate disciplines of the

Earth sciences; and e) address at least one of the five specific themes listed

this solicitation:

Understanding the Global Sources and Sinks of Methane

• Ecology at Land/Water Interfaces – Human and Environmental Interfaces

Understanding the Linkages Among Fluvial and Solid Earth Hazards

Life in a Moving Ocean

Partitioning of Carbon Between the Atmosphere and Biosphere

ROSES Example program element

ROSES Example program element

At the bottom of each program element is a summary table of

key information, including dates, $ and points of contact…

ROSES Example program element

NSPIRES

All ROSES program elements are posted on grants.gov, but they also appear on our proposal submission web page called NSPIRES (https://nspires.nasaprs.com/) .

~99% of ROSES proposals come in via NSPIRES.

Probably PIs prefer it because the proposal is not local, its hosted so

- Co-Is can work on it directly.

- If anything goes wrong its in the system and time stamped.

We prefer it because:

- Team members confirm electronically and that’s databased allowing us to automatically check participation and manage organization conflict of interest

- Its not a flat PDF file, all fields are databased and shared electronically with procurement at award time.

- NSPIRES Help Desk at (202) 479-9376, or by email at nspires-help@nasaprs.com

NSPIRES

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NSPIRES

NSPIRES

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NSPIRES mailling lists

Peer Review

The proposals are grouped by subject area or method and a small number of subject matter experts evaluate the technical merit of the proposals and return a written evaluation.

The proposals are often but not always evaluated by the review panel for relevance and or cost realism and reasonableness.

Your scientists will want to know if I said how to write a winning proposal. I cant tell you that, but I cant tell you the best way to learn how NOT to write a proposal: serve on a review panel

There are two approaches: either write to the point of contact in the summary table of key information or at:

http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/program-officers-list/

and tell that person you want to be a reviewer, or sign up at

http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/volunteer-review-panels/

You may not be on the review panel if you have proposed to that program this year. (you may be permitted to provide a mail-in review)

Advice from Peer Reviews

The most common error made by proposers is to not provide enough detail. Proposers presume that everyone knows that or are offended that they are questioning my ability to do that.

Thoroughly discuss the methodology.

Explicitly mention the significance/impact of the work.

Discuss potential sources of uncertainty.

Present a mitigation strategy or alternate approach given obstacles.

Present roles of all team members so its clear what they are doing.

Present a clear work plan with milestones.

Common things said by peer reviewers:

"You know what would be nice here? A table."

"Too ambitious. Lots of great ideas but nothing developed fully."

Some things we do in ROSES Require a Step-1 proposal (from the organization) i.e., a

required Notice of Intent (Planetary and Heliophysics).

Allow foreign participants/proposals (not for $, just participation)

Apply stringent relevance or compliance criteria e.g., we will only accept proposals that will analyze data from this particular spacecraft. Also, we reject proposals that try to squeeze in more words by reducing font size, margins, include extra pages, etc.

We mostly do solicitations just for the science mission directorate (SMD) which is just one part of NASA but sometimes we also:

Do solicitations jointly with one or more other directorates (other parts of NASA)

Do solicitations jointly with one or more other Agencies

Ask for but don’t require a Notice of Intent (from the PI)

Thank you

Max Bernstein

sara@nasa.gov

http://sara.nasa.gov

• Lots of talk recently (finding by GAO) about the potential benefits

of a 2-step submission process, which is said to reduce writing

and reviewing time.

• Optional NOIs are still more common but we are experimenting

with two variations on the 2-step submission process, in some

cases proposers are merely discouraged, but in other cases they

may be barred from submitting a full Step-2 proposal, depending

on the solicitation.

• The binding 2-step process may be harder on early-career PIs.

• We also have a few programs with no fixed due date, which is

said to reduce the number of proposals submitted:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/no-pressure-nsf-test-

finds-eliminating-deadlines-halves-number-grant-proposals but in

general we have fixed due dates.

NOIs, Step-1 Proposals and No Due Dates

NASA Office of Education maintains a web page for NASA

internships, fellowships, and scholarships at

https://intern.nasa.gov/

There are various programs for graduate students including

• NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowships

• NASA Space Technology Research Fellowships (NSTRF)

• NASA Education Aeronautics Scholarship and Advanced

STEM Training and Research (AS&ASTAR) Fellowship

NASA has a postdoctoral program https://npp.usra.edu/

NASA Fellowship Programs