Please see the full solicitation for complete information about the funding opportunity. Below is a summary assembled by the Research & Innovation Office (RIO).

Program Summary听

Materials Innovation Platforms (MIP) is a mid-scale infrastructure program in the Division of Materials Research (DMR) designed to accelerate advances in materials research. MIPs respond to the increasing complexity of materials research that requires close collaboration of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams and access to cutting edge tools. These tools in a user facility benefit both a user program and in-house research, which focus on addressing grand challenges of fundamental science and meet national needs. MIPs embrace the paradigm set forth by the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), which strives to "discover, manufacture, and deploy advanced materials twice as fast, at a fraction of the cost," and conduct research through iterative "closed-loop" efforts among the areas of materials synthesis/processing, materials characterization, and theory/modeling/simulation. In addition, they are expected to engage the emerging field of data science in materials research. Each MIP is a scientific ecosystem, which includes in-house research scientists, external users and other contributors who, collectively, form a community of practitioners and share tools, codes, samples, data and know-how. The knowledge sharing is designed to strengthen collaborations among scientists and enable them to work in new ways, fostering new modalities of research and education/training, for the purpose of accelerating discovery and development of new materials and novel materials phenomena/properties, as well as fostering their eventual deployment.

The scientific focus of the MIP program is subject to change from competition to competition. The first MIP competition in 2015 focused on developing new bulk and thin-film crystalline hard materials.听The second MIP competition, in 2019, focuses on the convergence of materials research with biological sciences for developing new materials.

Deadlines

CU Internal Deadline: 11:59pm MST November 28, 2018

Sponsor Application Deadline: 5:00pm MST February 4, 2019

Internal Application Requirements (all in PDF format)

  • Project Description (2-3 pages): Please include the following elements: vision, goals, rationale, platform/knowledge sharing, scientific outcome and research activities, how you will leverage existing instrumentation and infrastructure and justification for new instrument development and acquisition, user facility operation, and collaboration with industry/national labs/etc.
  • Project Team and Management Plan (up to 2 pages): Please include key leadership positions and personnel, major committees, and an organizational chart of the governance structure.
  • Budget Overview (up to 1 page): A basic budget outlining project costs is sufficient; detailed OCG budgets are not required.

To access the online application, visit:

Eligibility

Institutions awarded a MIP in the 2015 competition as the lead institution are not eligible to submit a MIP proposal as a lead institution in the 2019 competition.

Individuals may appear as Senior Personnel (Principal Investigator/Project Director, co-PI, and other faculty or equivalent with biographical sketches included in the proposal even though their names may not be listed on the proposal Cover Sheet) on only one MIP proposal.

Limited Submission Guidelines

One proposal per organization as lead institution.

Award Information

Award Amount: $15,000,000 - $25,000,000

Award Duration: 5 years

Estimated Number of Awards: 1 to 3

It is anticipated that $12,000,000 will be available in FY 2019.