NW IMPACT

Call for Proposals

What We Looking For

NW IMPACT proposals to support UW/PNNL collaborative multi-investigator research projects. The projects will advance the vision of NW IMPACT: to make the Northwest the Nation’s leader in the science of making materials.

Proposal teams are expected to:

• Advance the science of making materials.
• Take advantage of both experimental and theoretical/computational capabilities.
• Engage UW students.
• Use the capabilities of the two institutions in ways that result in outcomes that could not be achieved by the two institutions working alone.

Areas of interest and examples include:

• energy conversion and storage
• quantum materials,
• the water-energy nexus, and
• biomimetic approaches to synthesis.

Judging Criteria

Proposals will be judged on three criteria:

• Defining collaborative research projects of high scientific merit in the area of materials, construed broadly
• To what extent the proposal seeds new collaborative research directions that are distinctive from, or add uniqueness to, ongoing research programs
• To what extent the proposal would increase competitiveness of a UW/PNNL team in applying for specific, new, pre-identified team or center-level funding calls (e.g., Energy Frontier Research Center, Multisciplinary University Research Initiative, multi-principal-investigator DOE Basic Energy Sciences program, National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, large training grant, W.M. Keck Foundation proposal) over the next two to three years.

Proposal Content and Format

• Technical proposal
• Up to four pages, with 1-inch margins. 11-point Times or Arial font. The four pages include text, figures, and references. Cover these topics:
• Scientific challenge(s) addressed by the research and the overall approach to the research
• Expected outcomes and how those outcomes will address the challenges identified
• Relevance to the mission of NW IMPACT and how the research is distinct from currently funded efforts at PNNL and UW
• How the research will enable pursuit of future funding opportunities for team or center-level research projects.

• Biosketches
• Two-page biosketches for each investigator.
• Include current and pending funding for each investigator.

• Budget and justification
• Up to two pages.
• Please keep in mind that the goal of this funding is to seed active research teams. Requests for conference travel and/or summer salary by UW principal investigators are permitted, but generally discouraged, and will require high bars of justification, or risk being cut.
• Budgets past 12 months should include clear goals to be met for additional time, and explanations of why one year would be insufficient to obtain preliminary data. Requests for extended funding will be evaluated and released based on progress in the first year of awarded projects.
• Formal institutional budgets and signatures are not required at this pre-screening stage.

Previously Awarded Projects

In its first proposal call, NWIMPACT awarded funding for two projects in April 2018:

Engineering Sequence-Defined Polymers for Controlled Formation of Hybrid Materials

• PNNL: Chen, De Yoreo, Mundy; UW: Baneyx, Pfaendtner, Baker, Ginger
• Combine functionality of inorganic nanomaterials with ability of macromolecules to form ordered 3D structures

New Quantum Phenomena by Combining 2D Materials with Complex Oxides

• PNNL: Chambers, Sushko; UW: Xu, Li, Gamelin
• Understand and control quantum phenomena at complex oxide- 2D material interfaces

Scalable Engineered Chalcogenide Quantum Materials

• PNNL: Spurgeon, Perea; UW: Pauzauskie, Holmberg, Li,
• Create 1D photonic-nanowire quantum-material heterostructures from multi-layer chalcogenide films

Ion and Charge Transfer Across Complex Interfaces

• PNNL: Murugesan, Mundy; UW: Ginger, Pfaendtner
• Understand coupled ionic-electronic conduction across polymer membranes