NSF Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI**2)

On March 16, the National Science Foundation announced the Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI**2) Program Solicitation 10-551 at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10551/nsf10551.pdf. This is an NSF-wide solicitation, led by the Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI). It is the first tangible result of the March 3 Dear Colleague letter at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10029/nsf10029.jsp?org=OCI announcing the Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering.

This posting provides only the basic information about the solicitation. I think it is a very promising one for supporting certain kinds of research and development for linguistic cyberinfrastructure, and I hope our community is able to take advantage of it.

There are two due dates (deadlines):
Letters of intent are due by 5pm proposer's local time on May 10, 2010. These are required; you cannot submit a full proposal without having submitted an LOI.
Full proposals are due on June 14, 2010.

There are two categories of submissions for this solicitation; a third will be available starting in 2011.
1. Scientific Software Elements (SSE)
2. Scientific Software Integration (SSI)

SSE awards are for small groups that will create and deploy robust software elements for which there is a demonstrated need ... [read the solicitation, p. 5, for the details]. These are expected to total $300K - $500K for 3 years. About 18 SSE awards will be made in FY 2010, subject to availability of funds.

SSI awards are for larger multidisciplinary groups organized around a common research problem and common software infrastructure, and will result in sustainable community software... [more details in solicitation, p. 5]. These are expected to total approximately $1M per year for 3-5 years. About 4 SSI awards will be made in FY 2010, subject to availability of funds.